I grew up making music in my mum's basement, and I used to tell her I was going down there to work, and she'd say, 'That's not work. Go get a real job!' It took me signing a record deal to change her opinion!
I want to make people feel certain ways when they listen to my music. Whether it's partying or going through relationship problems or grinding or getting dressed and feeling fly. I want to be who I am and have emotion in my music that affects people.
Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.
The great moments of rock 'n' roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.
As hard as it is, as ghetto as it is, hip-hop is pop music. It's the sound of music getting out of the ghetto, while rock is looking for a ghetto.
The roots of my music start from the ghetto.
I was a music fan first way before I started creating it, so I still get giddy when I get to be around people that I respect so much.
Growing up, I always wanted to be in punk bands, so I'm really enjoying the harder, heavier element. It's always been my dream to have people moshing at my gig, kind of that really feral element of the music coming out more. I love crowd-surfing.
Music can be healing, and with my history and my knowledge of both sides of what looks like a gigantic divide in the world, I feel I can point a way forward to our common humanity again.
'The bigtime for you is just around the corner.' They told me that first in 1952 - boy, it's been a long corner. If I don't hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I'm gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.
I love Monk's song, 'Just a Gigolo.' It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.
One of the most interesting things, at least for me, are the soundtracks for 'The Social Network' and 'Drive.' Basically, it's what I did in 'American Gigolo.' I could have done the music for those movies blindfolded. And one of them won an Oscar, and the other is this massive soundtrack.
I was studying music in college. I was singing, I was doing operas and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and then I was offered a job as the music director of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, in Bigfork, Montana.
I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.
With the 'Born This Way' album, generally we said, how do we find strategic partners that can help us with our vision? Part of that is about putting the music in places people wouldn't normally put music, like with Google and with Gilt.
I've never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I've wanted the music to do that.
No generation has escaped it - one morning, your skill with the eight-track or the record player or the cotton gin suddenly ceases to impress. It's just one of those inevitable disappointments that come with growing up, like the realization that Santa doesn't exist or the way that music always takes a turn for the worse after you turn 30.
I love that Euro-pop dance music, but with girl power. I also listen to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. I have a Beatles song tattooed on my foot. I'm all over the place.
My music, my songs are 100 percent inspired by girl power.
My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.
