I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.
In the 1970s, for all the Stevie Wonders, I'm sure there were five artists that were making forgettable music.
What I love about Stevie Wonder is the way he makes people feel. He's one of the best examples of how music can heal.
Could a person really make a social contribution through music consciously? I mean, beyond making a person happy to hear the song and more making a social contribution consciously through your music? For me, Stevie Wonder is the paragon of that. And I didn't want to be Stevie Wonder, but I did want to do what he does.
I'm not worried about making a certain type of music or sticking to one type of music.
I've seen so many beautiful, strong, talented women stifled by male ego in rooms, and I want every young woman who feels that their music is being taken from them to know that they have a voice, and they have the tools, and that it's possible.
My biggest failure was trying to start and run a music label. The music industry was dying, and I wasn't ready to help other people the way that they needed to be helped. I was trying to, and I was stifling myself with it.
I love hooks, but getting radio airplay has never been a concern to me while I'm writing. That would be a very stifling and imprisoning way of writing music.
I'm really visually stimulated more than anything. I don't really listen to music. I'm more into watching telly or watching movies and visual art.
I couldn't imagine a day without music. It relaxes and stimulates me in equal measure and I hate the sound of silence - the concept, I mean, not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.
I feed on other people's creativity, photographers, artists of every kind. Sometimes a feeling that you get listening to a song can be so powerful. I've wanted to write whole scripts around what I felt just listening to a piece of music. I think music is important, and surrounding your visual field with stimulating things.
The music itself is very challenging, so I've never really felt the lack of stimulation. I love to be creating; I love to be making things and solving problems, I suppose, and when I'm not, then I'm not an incredibly good person to be around. If I'm not busy, then I think I would be disaster. That's just the way things are.
When I sing, I think mostly about the music. But I know that, through singing, my body shows everything that I am. I am a very passionate man and I suffer a lot and have a lot of joy also. In my opinion, it is very important for me to find this stimulus and motivation for singing.
For me, as someone growing up in a working-class suburb in Stockholm, I couldn't afford all the music. So back in '98, '99, I was really thinking about how I could get all the music and do it in a legal way while at the same time compensating the artist.
People have said it's hypocritical for me to call myself a feminist and make the kind of music we are making, because we signed to a major in the U.K., and that system objectifies women. Or people have complained that I don't dance. But I like the idea that I can stomp around the stage if I want.
I consider the Stooges to be pop music.
I love how my sport reaches out to people with the music and story lines, the glory of standing up for three or four minutes of tough, arduous, gravity-defying skating and all the stuff that goes with it.
I'm a very visual person when it comes to writing music. I like to see something besides just a script, even if it's just a storyboard or pictures from the set.
I wouldn't mind producing a movie with a music storyline, but acting in one is too close to home.
That's the whole point of my trying to achieve success in mainstream pop - to have straight people sing to my music that has a 'she' pronoun in it.
