Singers Quotations

Audiences like their blues singers to be miserable.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

I'm a terrible singer. I feel lucky to play baseball. You can't be gifted in everything.

I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

I'm a terrible singer, but it helps when I have to call a taxi.

Most chick singers say 'if you hurt me, I'll die'... I say, 'if you hurt me, I'll kick your ass.'

Being able to fantasize for a couple of days at being a rock singer surpassed most things I've done on stage.

I never thought of myself as a good singer.

I don't know many singers who actually do like the sound of their own voice.

I'm a big singer. I really love it.

Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

There are two types of conductors. One is the good conductor who can do passionate music but also listen to the singers and do the orchestra. And then there are great conductors, who have their own opinion on the music, who are ruling everything - and not listening much to the singers, but the orchestra play amazingly.

Some have called we rock and roll performers who never retire 'troubadours.' I enjoy this misnomer immensely. While there are many differences between me and my distant predecessors in L'Occitane, I do believe there is a lineage that connects us of the last 70 years with those romantic singers of the High Middle Ages.

Oh, man, pop singers are terrible actors. We're all bad.

The question is not... if art is enough to fulfill my life, but if I am true to the path I have set for myself, if I am the best I can be in the things I do. Am I living up to the reasons I became a singer in the first place?

I always wanted to be a singer, but none of my friends thought I could sing.

I always knew that I wanted to work and I knew I wanted to be a singer and an actor. I knew that every choice I made would help me get to that point. So the better the choices I made, the more of a chance I would have to get to where I wanted to be.

When a singer truly feels and experiences what the music is all about, the words will automatically ring true.

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

Whether it be Beyonce or Justin Bieber, we see singers who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone as they walk off stage clutching three Grammys in each hand.

The word 'no' is a very good word in a singer's repertoire.

A singer starts by having his instrument as a gift from God... When you have been given something in a moment of grace, it is sacrilegious to be greedy.

I'd like to be remembered as a premier singer of songs, not just a popular act of a given period.

I'm not a singer. I'm a musician, which is different.

I advise wannabe singers to form a band, practise in your garage if you have to, but do as many charity or open mic shows as possible to get experience. I sang for seven years before getting a record deal, and I was already loving what I was doing. I just got lucky and got discovered.

Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he's saying. You can't put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can't hear what he's saying.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

I joined Tommy Dorsey at the Paramount Theater in New York as a singer. I replaced Frank Sinatra.

There is no prodigy in our profession. If you see all the great singer of the past, none of them are.

People saw me as just a singer - yeah, a pretty face who could sing - and not more than that,

Most singers have their idols. I remember Elvis Presley when I was a kid. When I was about sixteen, I always said I wanted to do 'Love Me Tender.'

If you don't take no chances, then you're not a performer. Performers always take chances. You go see a singer, they'll hit the high note. They'll hit that note, they're not afraid, they're gonna exaggerate the fact and make me enjoy it, make me say, 'Wow, I wish I could do that!

It's funny because a lot of people that know me as a dancer, don't know that I'm a singer, and a lot of people that know I can sing don't know I can dance. And so, I feel like at some point I have to show them both and really be able to display it and showcase it, and put that out there.

I was a kid from Oklahoma who never wanted to be a singer, but was told I could sing. And things snowballed.

My initial career, really, as a baby, was as a singer.

I'm proud of my mentors. Ray Charles is the strongest influence on me as a singer

I'm certainly not a trained singer. The only place I could probably carry a tune is my shower.

I wasn't actually trained by my mother, she said she never taught me but she was a great singer herself and I can't remember when I didn't listen to her sing and imitate her.

I don't know how much more expressive you can get than being a rock and roll singer.

I don't try to just be a blues singer - I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

Jokes rot. They're not like songs. I always envy singers - Sting is always going to sing 'Roxanne'. But people want to hear new jokes. I've written jokes as good as 'Roxanne', I believe. But I can't tell them again.

I love to sing and I do think that my strength as a singer is... I think I have a voice that is certainly sufficient under most any circumstances... but I think my strength is that I really am an actor and I really do have to own what I am saying.

Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.

I'm not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I'm a drummer that sings a bit.

I was kind of known as a ballad singer. People would send ballads. Some of them would go over my shoulder and float off the top of my head, and I just didn't feel anything. Then I would hear a song that would absolutely shake me.

My big brother still thinks he's a better singer than me.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

As soon as you get off stage, that's the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.

I'm not a salsa singer who wants to sing in English, and I'm not this American kid who wants to sing Spanish.

In the life of a singer, it's not all triumphs and happy memories; there are days you have to go out there when it's the last thing you feel like doing.

I'm about to start working with a singer I met on my last trip: she'll get international exposure, and I'll have a song out in that market sung in Cantonese.

I know I'm not the greatest singer or dancer, but that doesn't interest me, I'm interested in being provocative and pushing people's buttons.

I don't think I was considered to be a cabaret singer because I didn't have patter that was written.

Everyone wants to work with the big new producer or the hot new singer. The key is to find them before they're hot.

I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.

It didn't matter as much because I'm a singer, not an actress, but my face is more acceptable in a way now than when I first came on the scene, because I'm part black.

There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate.

The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But the fact of the matter is that none of us remember the Depression firsthand.

The Pleasure Seekers eventually turned into Cradle, when we started writing our own material. My younger sister Nancy was brought in as singer and I kind of stepped aside as main lead singer and concentrated on my instrument.

When I was very young I wanted to be a professional horseback rider. Then I wanted to be a pop singer. Then I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Then I wanted to be a movie director.

Hendrix was the first person I had come across who seemed completely free, and when you're nine or 10, your life is entirely dominated by adults. So he represented this thing that I wanted to be. Hendrix was the first person who made me think it might be good to be a singer and a guitarist - before that I wanted to be a footballer.

I'm a traditional singer-songwriter. I have a more organic sound.

The Four Aces asked me if I'd like to sing with them as they didn't really have a lead singer.

I'm not Bill Evans. I'm not Keith Jarrett. I'm basically a singer who plays along with his voice.

My credentials, briefly: I no longer go to church or believe in God, but I can still name every one of the fruits of the Spirit and reeled for days upon hearing the announcement that Audio Adrenaline was reunited with one of the singers from DC Talk.

There is a blueprint that young female singers seem to follow to make it, to make some noise when they first come out. And it's a hyper-sexualized persona. And the thing is that it works. And they do make noise. But the problem is if it's not authentic to you, then you're trapped in that persona. And you have to live that persona 24/7.

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

I don't think I get the respect as a singer. With this record, I wanted to bring respect to my band.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - its beyond belief.

I never had the influence of any other singer in my music, so I sounded like myself all the time.

Frank's audience doesn't care if a girl singer, a comic or an organ grinder with a monkey opens the show. They are there to see HIM.

Zamajobe is great. She's a terrific singer from South Africa.

We are a very typical Spanish family - a bullfighter, an actress, a flamenco dancer and singer!

And, you know, I never wanted to be a singer.

My mother was a singer, and both of her sisters were singers. There was always music around.

Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.

I used to read the criticism on blogs about other people - mostly female actresses and singers - and even when they are extremely perfect and harmless, people still go after them. So I figure, if I'm going to get negativity regardless, why do I have to worry about what somebody thinks of me?

Whenever I fill out the job description I put 'songwriter,' never 'singer' or 'artist.' Singers come and go.

I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.

I actually prefer female voices to listen to, mostly, but among the male singers whose voices I like are Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, that sort of voice. Contemporary crooners rather than rockers.

People have always had these weird things about how you have to be really good looking to be a singer.

I DJ all the time, as much as I possibly can. I'll never stop. That's my security blanket, that's what I'm good at. I still consider myself a better DJ than a singer. I can DJ in my sleep.

I always thought I was a singer, but I really am not.

The thing is that I'm an actor first, and in 'Once,' I was able to be a musician and a singer as well as an actor.

I am not a natural singer, but I can sing, and probably the way I sing is more imitative than from myself, which is why I am never going to be an amazing recording artist.

I'm a better writer than I am a singer, and I express myself easily through writing.

Barriers have been broken: rappers are singing, and singers are rapping. You might catch a rapper on a rock song, a pop artist on a hip-hop song - there are so many different things that are going on today. That is the same way in which we live our lives; we're all over the place. I like to try different things.

A ton of little girls I talk to, they want to be actresses or singers or models.

I always wanted to be a singer, it's what I wanted to do since I was little. I'm doing it now and I couldn't be happier.

I've never been comfortable as a lead performer, and I never wanted to be a singer, particularly.

We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something.

As a singer, I float around. I'm kind of scatty, bouncing around a lot. I try to adapt to what's going on around me in the song and the arrangement.

I think a lot of singers are shy people. I suppose singing on stage is not like talking; you are not as exposed.

I think it gets boring (for the audience) for the lead singer to have a guitar hanging on them all the time

My sole focus as far back as I can remember was all about my dream to become a singer.

In Nigeria, if you say you're a singer, people say, 'So what? Everyone sings.' In Germany, my voice stood out more.

I had classical training but I don't consider myself an opera singer though.