When I was 14, I came very close to becoming a gay teen suicide 'statistic,' but I then turned to music, my piano, my loved ones, and discovered that it does in fact get better.
Rap music came along and saved my life. I started to tell the stories of the streets and that was my way out.
I've helped save so many families with my music and inspire so many people.
When people are feeling a bunch of feelings or there's something happening within the world, a lot of people get healing through music, or a lot of people's go-to entertainment to find some answers or understand something.
It's extraordinary to hear from people who are bereaved, or gone through a divorce, and they still take the time to tell me how a certain track or album helped them through tough times, or kept them sane.
I was talking to my spiritual advisor. I got a letter from somebody who said that they were about to kill themselves, but they listened to a song of mine and it saved their lives.
Music is almost like a therapy for me. It helps keep me centered and think straight. Before I discovered it, I was walking around, and it felt like there were 25 extra pounds of gravity on my shoulders. It's like you're mute or something.
I have a fan who suffered with leukemia, and apparently, the only thing that helped him through that was my music, so of course that's the ultimate sense of achievement. It's an incredible feeling.
Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting.
There's always something going on, and people need that 45-minute-to-an-hour-and-15-minute break, where they just escape and not worry about bills, health care and God knows what. That, to me, is when you're making great music: when people can just forget about what's going on.
When I do listen to music a lot of times I listen to old school music, I'm talking about Earth, Wind & Fire, I'm talking about the Isley Brothers, the O'Jays. It just eases my mind.
All my life, I've really enjoyed music: making music, playing it, and recording it. It's such a relief and a joy to do what I do for a living.
For me, music is for the soul - no matter whether the song is composed by me or by someone else.
I wasn't thriving socially, so I stayed in my room and played guitar all the time.
When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.
I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the guitars going off on tangents.
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
One of the saddest things I've ever done is download 'I'm A Teenage Dirtbag' by Wheatus and play along with it with my headphones on. Oh, God. If you were to walk in and see me do that, you would really worry for me.
When I'm feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, sometimes I'll read a book. But most of the time, I will either listen to music or play music. I'm basically always playing music, even if I'm not stressed!
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
Yes, there are times when I get extremely depressed and how I sublimate those feelings is through music.
There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful.
If there's ever been a dark moment in my life... well, I wanted to check out. Music was a big escape.
Everybody feels up sometimes, they feel down sometimes, sometimes they feel sideways, sometimes they feel weird. And the beauty of music is you can express all those different feelings in all the different songs you write. And hopefully, people can identify with those.
Times of my life, brief periods without music, have completely felt dangerously over the edge.
