Top 1013 Backup Singers Quotes & Sayings - Page 11

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

People in Ireland take in the whole song. After a long history of great singers and songwriters and poets, they are able to consume the entire song - not just the external; they go inside.

Oh, man, I love the Staple Singers. I love Pop Staples' guitar playing, too. He's one of my favorite guitar players.

When I listen to gospel singers pouring their heart out to God, it's the act of pouring their hearts out that interests me.

There are so many soulful singers, even the ones coming from London, like Adele and Jessie J, who are just amazing. It feels like a really cool time to be making music now.

I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.

Those who are not trained singers will find that their voice quavers. That should not happen. The quaver should be used only where necessary and not because a singer cannot hold a note or a tune.

When we first meet what we love, we could become poets for our longing. When we are removed from what we love, we become singers of grief and weavers of elegant description.

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were

It took so long to make it in America. The year I arrived was a bad year for women singers, the record company told me. So I starved. I lived in a hotel so dreadful I can't even talk about it.

It often seemed like we had become a nation where the only heroes were rock singers and ball players and that there were no large men of probity who could be called upon for the task.

For a producer, you want to be in L.A. You want to be close to the action, and in L.A. there are always singers, artists, songwriters, collaborators and other producers. It's easy to get access to all that, which gives you more opportunity to work records.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune The Titanic sails at dawn And everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot Fighting in the captain's tower While calypso singers laugh at them And fishermen hold flowers.

Society certainly encourages women to be victims in every way. I mean if we want approval, we have to sing the blues, even as singers we sing the blues.

The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

World music can be sometimes like the lumber room in which all the non-English singers are dumped. When you are singing in Arabic, no matter what your style of music or artistic proposition is, you are faced with some of that reality.

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were.

Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.

In a lot of African music, the singers are just singing whatever they feel at the time - because the instrumentation is repetitive, they can come and go as they please. That's how we approach it. Not verse-chorus-verse.

There is a fault common to all singers. When they're among friends and are asked to sing they don't want to, and when they're not asked to sing they never stop.

I am glad so many women singers are being heard in music today. It is healthy for music . . . healthy because it means a lot of men are listening!

Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.

I've always been a bit of an orphan, because actors say, 'Well, he's more of a dancer.' And dancers say, 'No. He's really a singer.' And singers say, 'No. He's an actor.'

I originally wanted to be an opera singer. I studied classical voice at the University of Washington but soon realised I didn't have the instrument or the discipline. The road for opera singers is more difficult than for actors.

I have written with some amazing singers and songwriters - the moment with Snoop Dogg was amazing - but being able to tell an Aboriginal story is bigger than anything that I have ever known.

It's always beautiful to sing with other great voices. I like voices in general. It's a big privilege to have great singers next to me.

We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.

After ten years of struggle I reached somewhere, and then I see some people pulling me down. I tell myself that if this is what singers have to go through, I would never let my kid enter this field.

People ask me for advice. And the best advice I can give aspiring singers is to know in your heart this is your calling and there's nothing else you'd rather do.

Singers, musicians, and songwriters don't want to use the word "acting" because we want it to be more real than that - we want it to come from us: naturally, truly, really.

Young singers are much better educated musically, much better informed, through discs and videos, than I was.

Life is like a lunchroom at school. In this industry you've got little individual tables of actors, singers, rap stars, this, that, the other. But it's a big industry that also encompasses anyone in the public eye.

Honestly, I just want to have a good time, listen to great singers and great music, and just use my instincts, as usual.

I don't feel like I look like the other perfect little pop singers. I think I'm changing what people think is sexy.

I never pursued voice hard enough. I've done musicals here and there, but I was never dedicated to really being one of these fantastic, operatic kind of singers that you have to be in some of these musicals.

When you look at sort of pop stardom now, some of these singers, it seems like the idea of them was created in a marketing meeting, and then they just found someone to sort of fulfill that role.

People think top singers are overpaid, but opera houses have a top fee, which is a good thing. Of course concerts are different- everyone wants to make as much money as possible.

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.

I have a very clear understanding of what my voice is. It's like a B voice. It hovers around B-minus, B-plus. I have great friends who are wonderful singers, and I know I'll never be able to do that. But singing through a character is something I can do.

'The Voice' has lots of singers who fit the 'Idol' mold of young, innocent ingenues with psycho stage moms. But it also has long-suffering adult pros, with a whiff of thirtysomething despair in their voices. That adds an edge of realness.

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.

I played street hockey in Riverside Park when I was a kid. I played goalie. I didn't make the hockey team in college, so I played lacrosse instead. I didn't play hockey again for 20 to 25 years, and then my son became interested in the game. I decided to pick it up again. A friend let me play backup on his team.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it's cool .. consequently, they never really develop good rhythm skills .. since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it's important to learn to do it well .. learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head

Having hits buries a singer in the past. A lot of singers hide in the past because it's safer back there. If you've ever heard today's country music, you'll know what I'm talking about.

We singers have a different level of responsibility from other musicians. We have words that we must convey; we have meanings that we must convey through these lyrics.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

I think the kind of togetherness and understanding between music directors and singers, and between producers and directors, is not the same anymore. Now, it's all too professional.

The voice muscle doesn't last forever. I have a lot of friends who are classical and opera singers. My friend Beverly Sills stopped singing in her 50s, so I'm careful with mine. But I'll keep going as long as it lets me.

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

I'm very musically inclined. My parents were opera singers. As a young child, I could hear operas and I knew if they were sad, or if they reminded me of something, or they brought back a memory.

My parents were both opera singers, and they also were both heavily into religious and church music.

I listened to a lot of what my grandparents listened to: George Jones, Johnny Cash - a lot of old country singers. Patsy Cline.

When you talk about me having a favorite singer, it's Celine. She is not only one of the most amazing singers, but she is just an amazing person.

When it comes to R&B singers, people think of soft men and technically I am not a soft man, not your typically R&B cat, so with a song like 'Ice Box' I wanted to be the voice for others.

Nobody put the camera on the background singers who were singing. It was on Stevie Wonder. It was on Elton John. It was on whoever was the lead singer out front. We were 20 feet from stardom.

People are getting more used to another language; that's how I learned English and Spanish. I listened to other singers and tried to sing with them. Of course, I studied it, and I took classes, but music helps me a lot.

I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.

I believe I became one of the first singers to be launched via television exposure. I guess I was a new kind of musical stylist for a new kind of media.