Japanese people are not known for expressing their feelings through singing and dancing, but I like to sing a lot. I don't just sing to myself in the shower. I sing everywhere.
When I started out, Jay Leno used to say you're not as good as you think you can be until at least your sixth year. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? 'Cause I was in my third year, and I thought, 'I got this.' I kept videos of myself performing, and in my fifth year I watched my third year and realized he couldn't have been more right.
The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.
I don't like it when a player says, 'I like freedom; I want to play for myself.' Because the player has to understand he is part of a team with 10 other players. If everyone wants to be a jazz musician, it will be chaos. They will not be a team, and nothing will be possible.
I never called myself a jazz singer. I just call myself a vocalist because I love to sing all kinds of things.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
I wouldn't really call myself a Jazz singer I think it's offending to real Jazz singers to call me a Jazz singer.
I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.
I have to admit, I underestimated Billie Jean and overestimated myself.
God, I always just think of myself as a jeans and T-shirt kind of person.
I went through a period in my life where I didn't have money to buy ramen noodles and peanut butter and jelly, but I also needed to go to the guitar store and buy strings and picks and polish and rags. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't play guitar.
I'll never be Jennifer Lawrence or Tom Cruise, someone who can hold a movie and then be charming and charismatic doing promotion. I haven't got what they've got. But at least I'm now comfortable just being myself.
Jennifer Lopez, she opened so many doors for Latinas such as myself.
I don't want to go out there and jeopardize myself getting hurt in camp.
I'm going to stay respectful. The team comes first. I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize them or myself, so I'll just make sure I speak lightly and carry a big stick.
I'll get cast occasionally as sort of the jerk version of myself, and I have fun doing that. But it's really better for everyone if I stay behind the camera.
I injured myself politically when I took on Jesse Jackson' in the 1988 presidential campaign. I was too strident. I didn't recognize the emotional tie that he had with all black voters.
I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.
Ten years from now, I would like to see myself successful as a brand, like Jessica Simpson, with babies running around and a beautiful husband and my own reality show.
