Music Influences Quotes

They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.

I used to be a pop singer; well, not used to be. I am an R&B singer. My emphasis was on Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan and Aretha Franklin.

I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.

I pull a lot of the stuff that I play off the rhythm tracks - and Keith Richards has been one of the main contributors to my inspirational playing.

I was inspired to play electric guitar from listening to a lot of Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and B.B. King, and that's always been the kind of music that I gravitate toward.

I was heavily influenced by big voices when I was younger. People like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, and Patti Labelle really spoke to me. When I got older, I was into Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, and Lauryn Hill, but it wasn't until I started working with a voice coach that I really dove into jazz music.

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me.

I think that my biggest influences are electronic acts. Daft Punk is probably my number 1, then Kanye West would be number 2 after that.

Two of my biggest musical inspirations are Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell.

I was a huge Beatles fan. The Stones, Dylan. Later on, I got into Stevie Wonder, and Bill Withers - he's one of my heroes. Al Green, too.

At 16 I was living in the Congo, and, you know, it's your teenage time. I really wanted to find a way to express myself, so I started to write songs in the Congo, and I think that's why my music is quite open, with a lot of different influences.

I grew up listening to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and lots of blues, R&B and Motown.

Jimi Hendrix came from the blues, like me. We understood each other right away because of that. He was a great blues guitarist.

I've always loved the blues, John Lee Hooker, Janis Joplin, Hendrix.

To a degree, rock fans like to live vicariously and they like that, music fans in general, but when indie music sort of came into prominence in the early '90s, a lot of it was TV-driven, too, where if you saw the first Nirvana video, you're looking at three guys that look like people you go to school with.

I'm of the generation that discovered Aerosmith because of Run-DMC. They just looked crazy to me. They were the dudes in the Run-DMC video. That's who Aerosmith was.

I think it'd be fun to tour with Kiss just because Kiss is the reason I got into playing in a band.

I grew up listening to bands like the Cure, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance - these are the bands that I actually grew up with, and I always had these things in my taste, too. And I always loved industrial music as well: I listened to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire. And shoegaze bands like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine.

Lauryn Hill's always been a hero of mine. And Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae and Adele, those are the current artists I would reference in terms of who's been able to do really amazing pop records with really cool, organic throwback elements of soul in there as well.

I'm a pretty big P.J. Harvey record fan and you can really hear New York in his record.

We didn't have the Grand Ole Opry or country radio stations in Nova Scotia when I was growing up.

When I started singing, I was covering Lauryn Hill, Brandy, and all the girl groups of the '90s. It's just what I would listen to and what I was singing when anybody asked me to sing for them.

My inner rock chick has always been there. I grew up listening to a lot of rock music through my sisters, who were teenagers while I was young, so they had control of the radio.

Our music did not sound like the Beatles in any way, shape or form. I could never find it in myself to use those Beatles tricks in Styx records because they were sacred to me. But what they did always influenced my thinking.

Growing up I really loved Mazzy Star, The Cranberries, Fiona Apple, Everything But The Girl. I listened to a lot of really random things too that I would find by myself. I would find Minnie Riperton albums that I would fall in love with, also, a lot of old country records.