A Quote by Annie Lennox
I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.
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What I can't understand is why people still won't give me the credibility that I look for. If Mojo or any other of those magazines would give me the credit for only ever performing my own songs rather than someone like Rod Stewart singing other people's songs looking for success.
I just want to live on the road. I can't understand artists that don't want to perform and, like, get on stage and do their songs for all their fans every night. If I'm not performing every night, I get totally depressed. I know that sounds really weird, but I hate sitting at home and not having a 1 A.M. performance now. It kills me.
I would agree with that. But when I write lyrics, personally I don't care if the person who is listening to it understands what I'm saying or not; and I write them like that specifically. You know, I have my views; I don't feel the need to have people have the same views as me. So if they find the meaning in the songs and it's the same meaning as the one I intended then fine and dandy and if they don't, they don't.
Six months is the most you can ask of any fan in this day and age, with the Internet and all these new artists. I understand that my music is in a lot of mediums. Some people want me to make an R&B album. Some people want me to never sing again. I just don't want people to be able to draw comparisons between my old songs and my new ones.
If you're up on a stage, naked and solo and singing songs to people, there's not much place to hide, so you may as well confess what you want to confess and say what you want to say, whatever that is. Some songs just turn out as being more about me, and some are more through the eyes of other people, or third-person descriptions of people.
I want to be liked... No, I want to be more than just liked... I want people to say, "that Charlie Brown is a great guy!" And when people are at parties, I want them to look for me, and when I finally arrive, I want them to say, "here comes good ol' Charlie Brown... Now everything will be all right!" I want to be a special person... I want to be needed... It's kind of hard to explain... Do you understand? I mean, do you know what I'm talking about?" "Sure, I understand perfectly..." "Well?" "Forget it! Five cents, please!
When I'm performing, the crowd just disappears, it's like everyone merges - one big person. You just say the words and people will say the words back to you. And it's just so rehearsed. I have a lot of songs I couldn't forget the words if I tried. So you get in there, you lose yourself and it's all good.
I didn't want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn't really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.
I recorded a lot of songs that I knew I didn't like just because maybe part of me wanted to be nice, maybe part of me just wanted to be in the studio, but I've been learning that it's really important to do what you want to do. Even though I might not write all of it, I am still picking out the songs that I want to do. A lot of people who are writing for me are people I have worked with for a while so they know who I am and what I want. I have a lot of opinions and I have learned that it is absolutely okay to express them and to say, "No, I don't want this."
I'm huge on the dynamic of my show and the experience, not just performing songs. It's important to me to make sure that people experience every song, and feel like I'm singing directly to them. Your eyes never want to leave the stage because there's always something happening.
For the life of me, I'll never understand how you can be an artist but not want people to understand who you are as a person.
You know, a lot of people have an instinct to downplay the fact that they are performing and be, like, 'There is no theatre here. This is just me playing the songs.' At some point I just realised how much better it could be if you weren't shy about being a performer.
I don't want to sing songs that aren't worth while. Time is so rare. I just don't want to waste the listener's time and I think that my songs don't do that. That's what I pray for. I want songs that really touch people's hearts.
My people couldn't have survived slavery without having hope that it would get better. And there's some songs from the 19th and 18th century that say [sings], "By and by, by and by, I will lay down, this heavy load." And I mean, so many songs that spoke of hope and understand it better by and by. Amazing songs. So that the slaves, just knowing that he, she, did not have the right legally to walk within one inch away from where the slave owner dictated, and yet the same person, wrote and sang with fervor, "If the lord wants somebody, here am I, send me." It's amazing.
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.
Looking back, I'm surprised I had the nerve to do it, but I'm glad I did. Performing the songs and performing in film was just a part of my personality, just like football and boxing at one point in my life. I was able to lose myself in both of them, and that was a good feeling.
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