I hate to say this, but I always listen to the music and the instrumentation first, and then grab on to the lyrics later.
I grew up at my grandmother's house and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding, which is what you do when you're a kid.
I'm lucky enough and wealthy enough to be able to buy photographs and buy art that inspires me from day to day. I don't want a Picasso on my wall; it's great art, but it's dead art to me. I'd rather have a photograph by someone I've never heard of that really inspires me.
Simon Cowell and I are great friends, and we wind each other up. Rod Stewart and I do the same thing.
If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.
Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.
And there's no guarantee that if you get HIV and you take these triple therapies, or whatever comes along next, that they're going to be successful for you.
I am the most well-known homosexual in the world.
I've never been jealous of anybody's success. I've been flummoxed by it because I don't understand it, but I'm not jealous of it.
I mean, in some cases with libel laws, you know, they can write things about people who have no course of action, because they can't afford to take legal action against them.
It's just so wonderful to have someone in the house like a child to turn your attention to. It's not about you anymore, it's about this lovely little human being.
I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.
I used to get my money at the end of the week, buy my mum something, or buy a record, and that was it.
I think performers are all show-offs anyway, especially musicians. Unless you show off, you're not going to get noticed.
We live in an age, in an era where there is so much negativity, there is so much violence in the world, there is so much unrest and people are at war, that I wanted to promote the word love and red signifies love.
There's no pressure for me to go out there and say, I've got to have a top 40 hit because it's not going to happen.
For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that's where I felt at home.
I could never go onstage in denims.
I'm very relaxed. I have a family, I have a partner of 20 years, I have a wonderful life; nothing could be better.
I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano.
