I signed up to be a musician, I want to perform, I want to sing.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

Even though I’m known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don’t see why I would stop.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It’s an individual-feel thing, you know?

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.

I believe in singing to such an extent that, if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing becomes a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for cooperation with others.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

What was important to me was entertaining the audience, and whether that meant winning, losing, singing, or whatever it was on the live show we were doing every week, which was awesome, I was game for it.

When you’re all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I’d call and pretend I was Lady Gaga’s manager.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

My first job was singing on the Cas Walker radio show in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was about 10 years old, and I thought it was big time.

I sang a lot of low stuff on songs like ‚Secrets‘ and ‚Rockin‘,‘ almost like Toni Braxton. On ‚Secrets,‘ I’m a different person.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

I’ve conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I’ve sang and danced at La Scala!

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

My whole life, I’ve sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I’ve had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

I just want to keep writing music.

I booked my first studio at like 12 or 13. Somewhere in that season of my life, singing along with the radio became me wanting to be on radio, you know.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice?

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it’s just kind of been like my habitat.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing ‚Happy Birthday,‘ like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, ‚Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!‘

People ask me where I got my singing style. I didn’t copy my style from anybody.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

I can’t see myself singing the same song twice in a row. That’s terrible.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

I really learned to sing in church, I think, really with emotion.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.

If I heard someone else singing like me, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

I want to be like Bruce Springsteen or something, making songs that are relevant.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

An operatic voice is like no other.

A chorus is not easy.

I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well.