The music and lyrics of Rodgers & Hammerstein connect seamlessly. Singing those beautiful songs was a joyous experience for me, and one that I will never forget.
I'm a Mexican girl from California, and I never grew up thinking I could be in a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. I didn't really see myself in that. Not that I didn't grow up loving Rodgers and Hammerstein, but I don't know - I just never put myself there.
I've been singing Rodgers and Hammerstein all my life.
Usually I will hear a sample, think of a theme and then it will take me a couple of days to write down some lyrics. Then I will decide that I hate those lyrics and rewrite. Then I will change all the music around. Then I will rewrite all the lyrics again. I am a bit of a perfectionist although you would never know it because all my songs are like chopped up and @#$%& up, but you see that's on purpose.
The genius of Rodgers and Hammerstein is that their songs become a part of the DNA of the audience.
In their plush melodies and plummy platitudes, many Rodgers-and-Hammerstein songs were secular hymns, which so insinuated themselves into the ear of the Eisenhower-era listener that they became the liturgical music for the American mid-century.
When they're singing the guitar lines of songs in South America? Never heard that before. And in Canada, when they're singing all of the lyrics to every song - that blows me away. I don't know all the lyrics to every song.
No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics.
After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Music is nostalgia. We often connect to a song, to its lyrics, its tunes so much that it feels like we have known those songs all along.
Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.
I've never met a Mormon I didn't like. They're really nice people. They're so Disney. They're so Rodgers and Hammerstein.
If the lyrics have meaning to it and it gives me a certain emotion, I think that's the most beautiful part about music - you can feel it and connect to it.
For me, singing was always about the lyrics. I'm hopeless at singing songs that don't have a core.
Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.
The challenges change depending on the song. There are some songs where the lyrics are really a challenge and then there are other songs where the lyrics are there and the music is a challenge. And then you've got rock songs where the challenge is the tightness of the arrangement with the band. The music and the lyrics are there, but it's a challenge to get the arrangement correct. So I wouldn't be able to point to one thing. What the challenge is changes all of the time.
Starting in music, where I get a chance to connect with the lyrics of a song, I learned so much about performing on stage and connecting to your audience and to what you're singing about. Singing is very emotional. Every song has its own purpose.