My inspirations include the Beatles - love, love, love them - Elton John, Carole King, and Stevie Wonder.
I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band - just for fun - when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish.
I spent 15 years on the road between touring and recording and I never saw anything. I want to enjoy life.
When I was a teenager, I was fat. I was shy. I wore glasses. I had a big eyebrow and hair all over my body. They were years of torture.
When you're a front man for a band, there's nowhere to hide. It took me a long time to get used to that. But music is my first love. I started singing when I talked.
I have great genes. Thank you to my mom and dad for that one.
I love Gershwin. I love musicals.
My mum had a very strong moral code, which I kind of came with. I never really had to be told what was right or wrong - I knew. I was very mature from early on and I was a very good girl, so she never had any trouble with me.
I hold 'Mi Tierra,' my first Spanish-language album, very close to me because that was all done in my native tongue and won me my first Grammy.
You want your fans to like what you do, because it's coming from your heart and soul. You write it, you produce this thing. It's like your baby.
The Internet has been a blessing and a curse. The curse we know: A lot of people appropriating your intellectual property without paying for it. But I think it's important to realize the blessing of the Internet, which is that everybody has a voice and you can break through, even without a record company.
The sad truth is that opportunity doesn't knock twice.
I'd love to have a program like 'Dr. Laura.' I studied psychology at the University of Miami, and when I rode the bus home from school, perfect strangers would strike up conversations with me and end up telling me their life stories. I think they could sense that I was studying to help people. That, or I have a face like a priest.
The responsibility of carrying and bringing a new life into this world is one that cannot be taken lightly.
I'm careful what I put out there into the universe, musically. I don't take it lightly.
I wanted very badly to be a mum. I'm a very maternal person. But at the point that I met Emilio I was focusing on a career. I never would have thought that I would get married at 21 and much less be a mum by 23.
My mother had a beautiful, soothing voice that made me melt.
Motherhood is... difficult and... rewarding.
Music is almost mystical to me. It really has an incredibly powerful force.
I was going to be a doctor, but I think my music allowed me to help more people than I could have done one-on-one as a psychologist. Just like other people's music really helped me.