Well, I've always said that country music has always shared a very unique relationship with gospel music - the hooting and hollering, you know, always in abundance.
'Hatful of Hollow' and 'The Smiths' were lent to me, and they made me want to create music that might make another person feel like they made me feel - to have an effect on someone.
With all the movies and stuff that we do, it always does feel like this is our home base when Nat and I are playing music. Because we do acting, and that's so fun, and we do it, and we're really passionate for it, but when I'm playing music with Nat - I don't know how to really explain it - it just feels right.
There was a lot of music in our home. Mom played piano in church and gave piano lessons.
I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.
I actually went to drama school at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in Glasgow, so I stayed in my home town the whole time. However, I see more of my friends now than I did then. It's strange.
Portland in particular is a cheap enough place to live that you can still develop your passion - painting, writing, music. People seem less status-conscious. Even wealthy people buy second-hand clothes and look a little bit homeless.
When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have.
I don't really like being recognised, to be honest. People say nice things and stuff, but I'm not really in it for that side of things. I just want to play music.
I prefer career artists that have spent time honing their craft, as opposed to, 'I won a karaoke contest on a reality show and now I have a record.' That's such a drag. The music that comes out of it is so poor.
I am honoured that my fans worked so hard to help me win Best Act Ever at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards.
If you're from the hood and you black, you're going to have some type of music in your life.
When I started making music, I just wanted to be the producer who sang the hooks. I wanted to be Pharrell, honestly, the one who made the beats and was in the music video with the girls.
Hoover's Music Store in Springfield, Missouri - I would listen to records there for hours.
I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that's when I got to open up my musical horizons.
It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music. They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music.
You just let your lower self go, and then it takes on all these aspects of the society - the city with horns blowing, the people yelling things at each other, and the all-in-all violence and chaos of the city. Put that on stage with music, and that's what this is.
I believe singing should be like being an actor. People shouldn't have any problem buying an actor being in a comedy or a drama or a horror film. That should be the same way with music.
Hosting 'SNL' was something I'd always wanted to do. The show allowed me to play to my strengths - mixing music with comedy seemed like a way into that world.
'Music Hop' in 1963 was my first hosting job of a variety program.
