My work is entertainment, and I look at what entertains people, whether it's a selfie video or a music video.
I'm all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they're just listening to the song.
I've noticed that a lot of people in film always seem interested in music videos, like it's some, like, really exciting thing they've always wanted to do or something.
The whole music world is based on the young, the very young people.
Alabama is somebody that I have always loved, but I think what is so cool about them - it's amazing, actually - is that even people who aren't enormous fans, you know their music. You know of them; you know what they've done in the music world. I think that really says something about them.
I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties - whether they're songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.
I think people like musicals. And when done with a modern comedic sensibility, musical comedy can be the most efficient delivery of both storytelling and jokes.
What gets people into trouble with records now is that they want to build something up without substantial musical ideas. Without that as a foundation, you can add all the layers of sound you want - it's still going to sound like a mess.
People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. And I made a record for myself just so I could have an outlet for my musical ideas.
'Hamilton' just asks us all to go a little bit deeper: whether you're a hip-hop fan seeing musical theater for the first time, or if you were thinking you were gonna see some reprise of 1776, and now it's this? And you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, these people aren't white!' It asks you just take a step and go a little deeper.
I went into musical theatre, which I'm not really cut out for - I'm not as skilled at it as other people.
In my case, of course, people had a lot of expectations, but that didn't pressurise me because I'm pretty confident about my musicality and my talent.
I think my children are definitely musically inclined, and they show it, and they're exposed to a lot of it. And they're their own people, and I think easily they could do something musical, or they could do something in acting or film or other types of the arts, and I would fully support it.
You're in for a live band. That's really what I wanted; I wanted to put on a show for people where they could come for the gay and stay for the musicianship. It's a live show; there's some rock stuff, too. Some rock and roll. Get ready.
To the outside world, I was pretty bad at everything my whole life. People didn't credit me for my musicianship.
Being in the European Union, we would be building bridges between the 1.5 bn people of Muslim world to the non-Muslim world. They have to see this. If they ignore it, it brings weakness to the E.U.
I found that a whole series of people opposed me simply on the grounds that I was a woman. The clerics took to the mosque saying that Pakistan had thrown itself outside the Muslim world and the Muslim umar by voting for a woman, that a woman had usurped a man's place in the Islamic society.
Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance.
No, the people standing before Christ and Pilate during the judgment scene do not condemn an entire race for the death of Christ anymore than the actions of Mussolini condemn all Italians, or the heinous crimes of Stalin condemn all Russians.
The thing that I hate the most is when people have prejudice - when they see me as the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini and not as Alessandra. That, really, I don't like. I didn't know my grandfather. I am me.
