You see people you identify with, and you take pieces of people you like and shape who you are. Like, I sound just like my dad. But that's literally my vocal chords. I can't sound like anything else... I sound like him, but I act like myself.
I have a high range. Sometimes I sound like Stevie Winwood. Some people say I sound like Peter Gabriel. Some of the songs I write are funky. Others are slow. Some are ponderous, and some are there to shock. I must say some are pretty damn good, too.
There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.
Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.
I don't like listening to my music, not even new pieces. Generally, they sound pretty much like I expected them to sound, so it's what I wanted, and that's it.
Trying to determine the structure of a protein by UV spectroscopy was like trying to determine the structure of a piano by listening to the sound it made while being dropped down a flight of stairs.
'Delicate.' I say it all the time when I eat food; when I'm trying to sound smart. I'm like: 'Oh, it's really delicate.' And my friends - they've caught on. They know what I'm doing. Like, 'why do you keep saying it's delicate?' I'm just trying to sound like a food critic.
I have a lot of creative control, so I can decide what I want to wear, what I want my brand to look like, what I want my songs to sound like, so I don't sound like some fake artist that people can't relate to.
In New York, you are forced into having very public lives and observing all types of people, what they sound like, what they're reading, what they smell like, what they are listening to, how they talk to their friends.
I read some older books when I worked at Barnes And Noble, like some of the American classics. I read a lot of Hemingway. I fell in love with Hemingway's prose and with the way he wrote. I feel like he's talking to me, like we're in a bar and he's not trying to jazz it up and sound smart, he's just being him.
Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.
I've been really trying to put people onto, like, my sound since I was, like, 17, 16.
I'm a piano player. I never thought of myself as a singer, at all. I was always trying to sound like somebody else. I don't like my own voice, I like Ray Charles, Robert Plant, I like Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, people that have an edge in their voice.
Every human being in this world is interested in certain things. Everybody has a hobby. Some people like art; I know nothing about it. Some people like books, some people like fishing, some people like music. I like to look at cars.
I like working with sound; sound and rhythm. I like the abstract more than "What does that mean?" Nobody ever says to you, "Why did you use a harmonium?" Or "What is that ringing sound that occurs here?" The questions are always "What does that song mean?" or "What were you trying to say here?"
You search for images and stories and movies and music from people that look like you and sound like you and speak like you because you want to feel like, 'Oh, if they can do it, so can I.' There's a little bit of that need for validation, especially when you're younger and trying to look to someone to look up to.