Quotes About Artistry

I really wanted to be a dancer, actually. Michael Jackson inspired me a lot.

Nothing is better than the moment you have Michael Bolton dressed as Forrest Gump and you see it in action.

Michael Jackson believed in making music that made people feel good.

Even for the most difficult scenes, and there are difficult scenes in the film, and because Michael Haneke is such a great film-maker - I think a great film-maker is not only being inspired, but how to do it, how to make it as real as possible, knowing that it's not real.

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

As you can imagine, between Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese, I've had quite a rich life!

None of the jazz greats made music for the purpose of you going to check out music before them. Michael Jackson didn't make music so you could go check out Sam Cooke.

Michael Jackson's one of my favorite artists of my whole life. In fact, I think he is my favorite. It's one of the first things I fell in love with before I learned about genres and before I knew what was cool to like.

My first gigs were at university: I'd dress up as Jesus, jump off a cross and dance to a Mick Jagger song. I don't know if it was funny or not, but it was a start.

Nobody gets between me and my microphone.

I feel like something I've wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out.

It's all about being comfortable, forgetting there's a microphone in front of you.

Playing and singing at the same time is pretty cool, but sometimes it's difficult to know when you can just really let go a bit because you've got to get back to bloody microphone and sing some stuff.

When it comes down to the music, it's just you and the microphone. It's not you and the record execs.

I've never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.

There is so much more than just what you do in the ring and what you do on the microphone.

It doesn't matter if you record with a microphone on a laptop or at a friend's house. Now it's more of a danger of things sounding too high-fi than sounding too low-fi.

I don't just throw out microwave records.

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

Composing means you have a beginning, middle and end and a fluidity to what you're doing.

I really wanted to take 'Dilbar' to Africa and the Middle East in Arabic because it was also a perfect way to launch myself.

When I was in middle school, that's when I first started making beats. I was maybe 14, 16, something like that.

If it was up to me, every show would start at midnight, and I'd give people the best of me.

I'd love to be able to take a 8-months off on the coast somewhere, like some of my musician friends, and create an album but instead I have to create what I do in the midst of chaos.