I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.
So I got interested in singing and I have always used my voice. Not professionally as much, but around the living room, the campfire, that kind of thing.
I still get nervous about singing. I drink tea with honey and lemon before every concert. And I need to have scented candles in all of my hotel rooms.
I'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans.
If I didn't start singing in the cabarets and on my albums, I could have never even tried something like 'Capone.'
My high-school a cappella teacher would embarrass me in front of the choir. 'Mavis, you're in the basement. Mavis, you're singing with the boys.' I said, 'Mr. Finch, my voice isn't soprano. I can't sing up there with the girls.' So I just got out of the choir.
I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs.
I've got a superstar like Usher singing bachata, a tune featuring Lil Wayne. I'm offering people more than just bachata. That captures a new audience that would listen to bachata because Usher is singing.
I was always singing and dancing for my mother when I wasn't glued to the television watching I Love Lucy or the Carol Burnett Show.
I remember driving to North Carolina when I was a little girl in a snowstorm to get down to my mom's family in the Carolinas. There were chains on the car - it was the late sixties - and we were just singing in the car. Christmas carols.
You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.
I've always had mostly women come out to see me perform. That's the reason the guys show up; they know R. Kelly is going to draw the women. Most of the songs I'm singing are catering to women anyway.
Mostly singing was cathartic, writing was cathartic, therapeutic. I don't think I had a goal, particularly, to sing or put it out there for anybody.
I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing. When is it that the voice becomes an elixir? It's during flirting, courtship, sex. Music's all that.
In my early shows, I wanted to put myself through a new childhood, disintegrating my whole identity to let the real one emerge. I became a human jukebox, learning all these songs I'd always known, discovering the basics of what I do. The cathartic part was in the essential act of singing.
In Montreal, when I grew up, I'd go to the Notre-Dame Basilica, a gorgeous cathedral in town. I'd listen to huge symphony orchestras, Pavarotti singing operas; that was absolutely marvelous. I like that aspect of the cathedral, the spectacle.
I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris.
Singing is like a celebration of oxygen.
I enjoy singing, and the instruments which truly move me are the horn, the trumpet and the cello.
Singing is something that I have done all my life, but what I did on my first two records was to hide the vocals. Theyβre there to thicken the web of the cello.