I was keenly aware that I didn't want to draw on too many typically doomed aspects of the fated singer. Whether it's Judy Garland or Norma Desmond, there is this tragic quality to older women that one can revel in, and you want it to be more three-dimensional than that. So it was important for the character to be strong and resilient, because there are so many victims in opera.
I'm quite happy for my voice to be pushed up, whereas in the past I wanted it buried with the guitars, or part of the band, not like I was thinking of myself as 'the singer'.
I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.
I think the more removed I feel, the more I warm up to the role of singer.
I'm always shocked by that! I'm not the singer, I'm the songwriter who sings.
If you're a good singer, you're going to make anything sound good.
I leaned across the table towards the crumb-thrower. "Do that again," I said, loud enough to be heard over the opera singer, Dolly, my mother, and the smell of the breadsticks, "and I will sell your firstborn child to the devil.
I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.
I traveled the world as a DJ, as a singer, as a songwriter, as a producer.
The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
My brother is the lead singer of The Torn, and my parents are in a country duo.
For me, I'm more of a songwriter than a guitar player or singer. And not having things to work on was really kind of nice.
I didn't want to just be another girl singer. I wanted there to be something that set me apart.
The singer who really opened the door for me was Sarah Vaughan. But I listen to so much music, especially when I was growing up. My parents loved jazz music, so on Saturday [laughing] it would be the "Longine's Symphonettes," and on Sunday it was Mahalia Jackson.
I joined Tommy Dorsey at the Paramount Theater in New York as a singer. I replaced Frank Sinatra.
If you're the singer in the band, you always get more attention than anyone else.
I never had any other thought in my mind. I was gonna write songs, I was gonna be a star and a singer and I never thought of doing anything else.
A jazz musician is a combination orator, dialectician, mathematician, athlete, entertainer, poet, singer, dancer, diplomat, educator, student, comedian, artist, seducer, public masturbator, and general all-round good fellow.
I think you inherit most of your talent from your parents, although sometimes a fabulously talented singer grows out of the union of two tone-deaf people
Sometimes I like to make music together with a singer or with singers.