To be honest, the biggest reason I write music and became a musician was to create the amount of joy that I felt about music to anyone else. To me, that's a job well done.
I believe 100 percent in the power and importance of music.
I have a memory of listening to Tracy Chapman and just being intrigued by her voice. Even as a young girl, I wanted to know more about her and her story. I felt I was learning about her through her music. That was a revelation to me.
Of course our music has a lot of positive messages and we try to reach out to kids our age or people younger because we feel we get motivation by songs.
I always judge my happiness by how much I listen to music.
I remember listening to the radio as a kid and finding that the songs always made me feel more peaceful. Funny, but the more hurtin' the music was, the better it made me feel. I think of that now when I write my songs. I may not be feelin' the blues myself, but I'm writing them for other people who have a hard life.
People live their lives through melodies. If you can't sing, then music is worthless.
As much as you act like everything is programmed or calculated or researched or numbers, spins, radio, and clubs, it's still human beings out here you can reach with music.
Obviously, I want to sell records, but I do it because I find it therapeutic. In music I can be myself.
We don't care about our audiences that much. We just go out and play.
Music used to change people's minds - and it still changes mine.
Anytime someone uses one of my songs for anything - a ceremony or a sacred moment - that, to me, is a high honor. I'm proud of the song at that point because I'm trying to write something for humans - whichever humans want to get on board and put this in their soundtrack to their soul's development or spiritual lives.
I'm surrounded by music; I always was when I was growing up and continue to be. And I love music. And when I imagine a fictional world, I imagine there's music in it for those people, too.
I have to be able to have music at all times - to shower to, to listen to, to warm up, to dance.
My main focus is to help people through music.
My soul needs music all the time.
Once you see how powerful music is and how it can affect people, then you want to use it to impact the world.
Music, for me, has always been a community thing. It's always how I make friends and hang out with people, because I didn't know how to do that. This is what makes me special.
Some people lose sense of what their music was when their life starts to get better.
I have a working-class approach to music.
That's what music is to me. Like, stuff that I really like to play loud. And I've got my quiet CDs, too, that I listen to around the house, but if you can't go there, then... Everyone gets so upset with me, I can't win.
