With 'Fate's Right Hand,' I think I reached a level of completeness in forming and articulating ideas at around the same time I reached a place where I could match it with my singing voice. It was a kind of coming together.
First of all, I'm not a singer or rapper. I'm an artiste. Besides singing, I produce music, dance, write poetry, and sometimes I paint as well.
I enjoy singing my songs in front of people. I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.
Aside from singing, I'm also a dancer. I've been dancing since I was 8.
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
I was a theater major, and I remember being in college, and whenever my professor would assign me songs that I hated, I really had a hard time singing them. One time, I even faked sick so I wouldn't have to sing a song.
I always loved all kinds of music. I would watch musicals a lot as a kid, on TV, watch the Fred Astaire movies. I'd watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' I was a big Jerry Lewis fan, and they'd have these big bands and someone singing - some siren, or some guy singing some gorgeous song. I was always enamored of that style of music.
I'm an asthmatic. I have to be on that treadmill singing to get my lungs right.
Opera singing is in every way of inestimable value; a real heritage for all mankind that has been reached over centuries of studies, attempts, flights of the spirit.
When you're singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It's happening.
At school, I'd be the dude singing to the girls, always up in the auditorium, in the lunch room singing Christmas carols, in the halls between class. I was always singing, and same thing with my grandfather. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree; you know how that goes.
The one dream I have is to do a musical. I love singing, but most people don't know because I don't sell myself as a musical person. My dream is to play Audrey in 'Little Shop of Horrors' - it would be so interesting to have an Asian Audrey because it's all about achieving the American dream in a sinister, success-driven way.
When I was a kid. I started writing when I was 13. I got my first electric guitar when I was 13, but I'd always been singing. I had my first little acoustic when I was six. But I started being in bands when I was 13. Crappy rock bands, avant-garde things where we'd, like, 'wanna go against the norm, man.'
My last album as J. Tillman, 'Singing Ax,' that was really a premeditated death rattle of the aesthetic precedent I had set. I realized I wasn't creating spontaneously; I was enforcing all these parameters. I was too self-loathing or something, and there was this obvious dissonance between my conversational voice and creative voice.
I remember being young in the backseat when my grandma would take me to school, and I would be literally singing and belting out Tina Turner at 3 years old.
I was backstage at the House of Blues in L.A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.
When I'm not singing, I'm a lot of persons: I'm a producer. I'm a badminton player. I'm a writer. I'm a movie freak. I'm a documentary maker.
When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.
I like to sing ballads the way Eddie Fisher does and the way Perry Como does. But the way I'm singing now is what makes the money.
I started singing before I started talking. And that's the God's honest truth. I think it was something that I've always loved to do, even if I wasn't good at it. I just loved ballads.