Nobody in my family plays music professionally, but I definitely grew up around the culture of when my parents got together, as well as a lot of eating and drinking going on, they would also sing - they sat around in a circle, and everyone had a party piece.
No one in my family plays music. But since I was very little, I would go around the house singing and dancing. And when I was 8, my parents asked me to get up and sing something at a family meal. I had my eyes closed, singing - la la la la la - and when I opened them, the whole family was crying.
I'm from a big family; I have four younger siblings. My parents are still happily married together. I grew up moving around a lot, and my family was certainly not affluent.
I grew up in a big family with a lot of kids around, and I definitely want to have children as well.
I grew up eating quite well, even though the idea has got around that my family were terribly poor in Communist Georgia. I think it's partly because we had different standards then - it was tough, but we never truly struggled for food.
I lived in a small village outside the city and grew up in a large family, so my world was very much centred around that. I used to sing in the local church, and I would also occasionally sing in the local pubs for which I used to get a few bob. That, for me, was the start of my interest in music, which has obviously expanded since then.
I grew up around a lot of Rumi, Hafez and Omar Khayyam books. My parents in Kabul had all the volumes around the house.
I do a lot of cooking. I've always cooked for my family and my father and I cooked together. It's just one of the things I like to do. If you came around my house for dinner, you'd watch me cook as we sat around the kitchen and cooked and talked. For me, that's centralised... friendship and family around food and cooking.
Music was around in my family in two ways. My mother would occasionally sing to me, but I was mostly stimulated by the classical music my father had left behind. I had an ear for music, I suppose, so that's what began my interest in music.
I grew up around whites, I grew up around Jews, I grew up around blacks, I grew up around Hispanics. We moved a lot.
There were definitely curveballs in my growing up, from a family aspect. My parents got divorced when I was in second grade. I moved around a lot. Actually, I went to about four different schools when I was in fourth grade.
I did grow up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, around a lot of my mom's family. I had a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles around me, and my sisters and my brother. Probably the most formative part of it was that we grew up on the edge of a forest. It wasn't a big forest, but it was enough. When you're a kid, it feels gigantic.
My parents were big music fans, and my dad plays music, so I grew up with Madonna, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Alice In Chains... it was all over the place. I had a Third Eye Blind record, but I also had Korn, Courtney Love, and Shania Twain.
I think in general, doing The X-Factor with the Steve Aoki song was the most difficult time, but also weirdly the most rewarding as well. I definitely felt like I couldn't do it, and then I definitely felt the support from everyone around me, the friends and family but also the fans and people outside of that.
When I was five or six, I asked to sing at a big family party, and ever since I got up there in front of everyone in my suit - it had a blue collar, like in 'Scarface' - I had the bug.
Not just in Christian music but also in a lot of Christian culture there is a lot of pretending that everyone is perfect, nobody is really going through much.
I grew up as a Democrat in a very strong Democratic family, but I will tell you that the Democratic Party that exists in this country is not the Democratic Party I grew up around.