Quotes About Music

When I sing, I go somewhere else. Every time after I sing, I'll ask, 'Did I do OK?' Because I feel like it's like my soul squeezing out of my vocal chords. I don't sit there and think about 'I'm gonna do this next...' I just sing. I sing from my heart, and my heart's got a little lonesome in it.

When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.

In this industry, all the heads of labels are men, but every artist has to prove themselves, regardless of their sex. I have always been very vocal about the women sticking together.

In every song, there is a vocal element that doesn't have any words. I wanted to play around with how emotive and expressive my voice could be.

Singing together is something human beings just do, and there are hundreds of years worth of just European vocal music available to read and hear.

Our music is an answer to the early Seventies when artsy people with big egos would do vocal harmonies and play long guitar solos and get called geniuses.

When I first started singing - before 'Treat Me Like Fire' when I was working with a vocal coach - I realized that I wasn't even breathing when I was singing.

All my vocal coaches have been pretty great. Thank God.

I think that our work and our music stands on its own without this knowledge about our identity around it. But I also think that we very consciously decided not to hold back that part of ourselves, but to be very vocal about who we are, kind of what experiences we've had in life, and how we identify.

I could probably use some tips from a vocal trainer or something about breathing, but we all know it's not about technical prowess.

Where prominent writers are expected to have a socially, politically responsible voice, musicians sometimes find meaning only in the voice which produces melodies with vocal chords.

The thing with One Direction songs is that you can probably break them all down to an acoustic guitar and vocal.

You are born with a sound; everyone is, less or more. And this sound has to be developed. I am not talking about vocal technique; I am not talking about how to sing. I am talking about how to produce a sound.

Every single place that's brushed upon me has made me the artist that I am - from Nigerian Highlife music and the vocal melodies that I grew up on when I would be sitting with my father and his fellow chiefs, to the funk and freeness of the Bay Area groove, to L.A.'s smooth G-funk legacy, Brooklyn's lyricism, and now Atlanta's trap history.

I'm more vocal about my ideas in person and music.

'Crash' is the hardest song I've ever sang in my whole life. It's the lowest in my vocal register and the highest in my register, all within 15 seconds.

I love Massenet - 'Manon' had been a wonderful role for me - and the music he wrote for 'Thais' is quite enjoyable and not terribly demanding in a vocal sense.

I had an explosion on my vocal chord.

I think one of the biggest sleepers that people are going to be able to dig into later is 'Fermi Paradox,' it's the song before 'Exist.' To me it's got the coolest, it's just so bizarre because it's got one of the most melodic vocal melodies, but we put it over a black metal blast beats.

What I love about piano and vocal is it's incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you're not distracted by an orchestra. When it's just a piano and a voice, it's about the purity of singing the song.

I think it was definitely a love for the four- or five-part vocal male harmony groups that really took me away. I'd always try and be, like, the fifth Drifter; I'd always try and find another harmony that wasn't there.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don't necessarily do them together.

On 'Utopia,' I mix sick beats with ethereal elements while trying to keep the focus very much on the songwriting. If you strip any of these songs down to just the vocal and a piano, there's a real song in there.

It's so much fun to have vocal groups out on the road because we get to see them do their thing, and at the end of the night, we come back, and we all do a big thing together for the encore with 'American Band.'