My mother was always encouraging about my wanting to be an artist.
No film critic's going to say it, but 'Madagascar 3' is better than 'The Artist.'
So there's a cloud of rage around me, but being an artist kind of changes that. No matter what you thought coming in, what ignorant thing you believed, you're in show business for two years, you're like, "OK, I was wrong." It's hard to be mad at any particular group of people when you're an artist.
All the children of America, up to age seven or eight or nine or ten - they're really great artists. So here we've got this amazing work that very few people pay any attention to, and it's not valued by the culture.
I need to keep it spontaneous as an artist, so for me to repeat a face would be redundant and boring.
Women are emotional! And being an artist and a woman is probably more difficult because you have more stuff to overcome.
For a man it's like if something goes on on-stage you'll have a drink at the bar and talk about it. With a female artist it's a big deal, you have a meeting and she's mad at you for the next couple of shows!
The reason for backing tracks is to not veer off too far from the record and have what the fans actually want to hear. Artists use backing tracks just so they can stay close to the record and what the consumer heard for the first time. It's not to be confused with lip synching or anything like that cos that's not happening at all.
I always try to be the Madonna of wrestling in that she always changed her look and her style, but she always stayed true to herself as an artist. That's the best way to have longevity in this business, for sure.
I'm no expert in what country artists go through or how country audiences would react, but I'll say that the work I did to put myself in Will Lexington's shoes absolutely led me to believe that it would ruin his career. Meanwhile, I was getting lots of supportive messages saying, "Will Lexington should just come out! It's 2015 already, audiences are going to embrace it!"
I never liked the whole thing about pictures with the artists. You look back at an Elvis Presley record, and you don't see any producer credits, because the audience is not supposed to know about the producer credit.
Every successful artist comes from a family - parents or siblings or both - who, although equally gifted, chose not to pursue the treacherous and difficult path of the artist.
When I moved to New York a year and a half ago, I feel like I really was able to access my sense of humor and personality through my work for maybe the first time. The city has a really nurturing, positive kind of reinforcement...for young artists. Nothing is considered weird. Nothing is frowned upon. It's sort of a free-for-all in terms of experimentation, and I think that's a really great environment for someone who wants to work in a multimedia modality.
I was working within a figurative representational framework, and there was a sense of reading the painting as a transparency, or truth, or autobiography, which I think is partially the burden of artists of color - or women, or anybody who is representing a so-called minority position. Are you actually telling a true story, or your own story? You don't just get to tell a story. The readings of the work didn't necessarily conform to my own understanding of mythology, where violence and eroticism and the body and all of these different forms coexist all the time.
Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now artists, like writers and sort of course have an added option of using their scale and talent with this in view. It is their business to create an environment in which our people will prosper and be happy.
There is something about important stories that is not just the message, but also the way that message is conveyed, the arrangement of the words, the felicity of the language. So it's really a balance between your commitment, whether it's political or economic or whatever, and your craft as an artist.
Music has changed a lot over the past few years so I believe it's necessary to adjust in order to make music the fans want to hear. If I need to release single after single instead of releasing the album, that is what I will do to reacquaint fans with who I am as an artist now.
I see a lot of true artists... then you see them on the cover of Maxim. That's the lowest of low to me. I would never do anything like that.
TV does so much these days. It is such a great platform for an artist.
I'm against government giving money to artists, but I'm not against artists taking money. Just like I don't have a moral problem with people taking healthcare from the government, but I don't think government should give it.
Because when an artist has to assert that her intended audience is all humans rather than those who happen to be of her particular gender or race, what she’s actually having to assert is the breadth and depth of her own humanity.
I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.
When you sing live, you cannot expect any artist, except for the amazing Beyonce or GaGa, to get it right every time.
I find it so funny how people that don't write the music, and have no involvement in it, can make such huge decisions on behalf of artists.
I think I'm no different from any artist in music. At least once, you want to see your name up on the top.
