I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I'm a big musical theatre geek.
I've never had a musical career. So I think it's been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it's sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit.
When I was a kid, I wanted desperately to be a jazz musician. I would practice the trumpet for hours, but when I got braces, that messed up my ability to play, so all of a sudden I had all this free time.
To be honest, and this comes out of left field, but I would love to do something with Jay-Z or Eminem. I have no limitations when it comes to the stuff I want to do musically. So to be able to do something like that I think would be really, really cool.
I'm thankful that I proved myself in music which is my first love, my first passion before I got involved in this media. I am hoping to bring it back to the music now.
Sometimes it feels like I've been in the business forever, but then other times, it feels like kind of a flash. Growing up, all I wanted to do was sing. All I wanted to do was get on a bus and ride around the country and sing for people and be a household name.
I wanted to be a guitar player and musician so badly, and I prayed to get this the very few times I went to church, and I feel like I got my prayer answered.
When I was 15, I made a solo record. It made Artie very unhappy. He looked upon it as something of a betrayal.
I don't have any dreams or aspirations or goals I want to meet music-wise, so there's nothing to keep me from being level-headed.
We always talked [with Andrew Ridgeley] about when it would happen - we always knew that I would go on to have a solo career.
When I perform as a solo, I think a lot about what I always wanted to do but have not done yet.
I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.
I would love to work with Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, B.B. King. I'd love to do something with Arctic Monkeys, Miles Kane, and The Last Shadow Puppets. If I got a call from Juliette Lewis or PJ Harvey, or Chrissie Hynde, that'd be a thrill.
But when I was a teenager, the idea of spending the rest of my life in a factory was real depressing. So the idea that I could become a musician opened up some possibilities I didn't see otherwise.
I'm from the suburbs, really, so I actually didn't go to Montreal until I was, like, 19. I wasn't allowed to go to the city at night or really be in the scene with other producers. It was hard for my parents to understand what I was trying to do as an artist, but it didn't stop me. They eventually saw that it wasn't a joke.
I grew up in Barranquila, Colombia, and I spent most of my childhood dreaming about becoming a singer.
All men in their 40s want to be in rock bands, and I reserve the right to be in a pub band at some point.
I don't remember ever not wanting to be a country singer. Even as a little kid, that was my dream.
I really didn't intend to be a musician when I left Japan.
When I was 15, if anything, I thought I was going to be a Delta bluesman, which is so ridiculous.
One of the big things that broke the band up for me, which I've become much clearer on over the years, was that I had no desire to be famous.
I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a kid growing up in Tennessee: that one day, I'd have the chance to come here to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis.
I knew when I was a kid that I had a Broadway voice. I wanted to be a rocker, because I grew up in that era of transistor radios at the beach.
Of course, when I started my career, like anyone else who was 16 at the time, we were besotted by the rock-n-roll scene from America, and all I was interested in was having a career of my own.
There were a couple of years when I wanted to be a football player, but I really always wanted to be a singer.
