The thing I find frustrating about rock music is, how different can you make an acoustic drum kit sound, an electric guitar and vocals?
I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.
When I create a song, I immediately think about what I'm going to wear when I perform that song. I think about the music video treatment and about how I'm going to look on stage when I perform the record. The connection is so obvious that it's a single package. An outfit, to me, is almost a tool to express the music.
I've always been very spiritual, since I was a very, very young child. The older I get, I'm reading more, I'm experiencing more, and so that's all reflected in all of my music. All of my fans are pretty familiar with me and my beliefs. It's all about connecting to yourself and sticking to your own spirituality.
I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.
I think K-Pop is a type of expression.
R&B is my home. It's who I am. It's who I've been. It's the first genre I fell in love with. It's the reason why I've been able to do other genres of music.
I love the string band. I love the sound of it, the possibilities of it, I love the physical sensation of creating and performing in it. It's my voice.
If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise, you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there.
I find in music there's a space and a language I can use to express things in ways I can't describe conversationally.
I got my first guitar when I was 16. I'd play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn't something I ever thought about.
My music is how I feel, and that's changed from being twenty years old to being forty-three years old.
I'm grateful to the LGBTQ community for giving me the courage to write music about who I am and not just about my sexual orientation.
I see myself as a hip-hop artist, but I never wanted to make music for a specifically white audience. That's not what I grew up around.
I studied piano for seven years and play for my own enjoyment.
I wouldn't use a song I didn't think was my brand or image.
I just don't like to get intimate. I don't want anyone to know what I feel and what I think, and if they can't get some kind of an idea of what sort of person I am through my music, then that's too bad.
I think it's really cool to embrace the pain of something that may have hurt you and be able to express it through music.
People ask who I am as an artist, who I am as a person. I don't ever want to tell them who I am; you can find that out in the music.
I said if a woman sings an aggressive guy's lyric, it can't miss.
I don't think it's ever changed, whether its Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Zeppelin, Guns n' Roses or anyone today, the reason why you get into music is because you love it, and if you're good at it, that's a plus.
That's the cool thing that music can do: make you feel this or that way. That's all I've ever wanted to achieve - I'm a music guy, you know? That's my occupation.
My whole point is like, well, if I'm the pop star, then it should be whatever I am. There's, you know, room for Katy Perrys and Adeles and Rihannas and Lady Gagas and Ke$has and me and Pinks. I think what's great about all of us is that we represent something different.
I auditioned for 'The Voice' because I really wanted to try and figure out a way to get myself out there. I really couldn't imagine doing anything else - music was the only thing that I really clung to.
I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening - the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed.
