Everyone is trying to make these huge songs; I just make things that I want to listen to. Music that I will be comfortable listening to 10 years from now, that's my only thing.
I'm a man of different types of flavors and tastes. I like listening to things that inspire me. Older music, when instruments were being played, not just people hitting buttons. It's manlier. You're touching things to make sounds appear.
I find it quite difficult to think that there's, you know, about 20 million people listening to my album that I wrote very selfishly to get over a breakup. I didn't write it being that it's going to be a hit.
As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.
I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.
What is certain is that singing is not merely modulating a song by means of the voice: we sing and we celebrate the beauty that we can grow and live every day. If you want to sing and give emotions to those who are listening, you must have something to tell through your singing; you have to use singing like an instrument to tell something.
I knew from the age of four that I wanted to preach. I didn't even consider it strange that grown people were listening to this kid preaching until I was around thirteen. I have never believed in limitations.
The late sixties and early seventies were kind of a breeding ground for exciting new sounds because easy listening and folk were kind of taking over the airwaves. I think it was a natural next step to take that blissful, easy-going sound and strangle the life out of it.
My real passion is for opera. It was born and developed by listening to records, and my dream as a child was to record entire operas when I grew up, and this dream came true.
