Musical Catharsis Quotes

All of the drama with my family and me and my mom and the separation between us and all that crazy stuff - I actually wrote about that. I have a song called 'Dear Mom,' and it's about the trials and tribulations with my mom, so I wrote about that and just everything that I've been through.

Singing is a way of releasing an emotion that you sometimes can't portray when you're acting.

Even if my songs are a bit low-spirited, they make me happy. I become happy when I hear sad songs. When you sing about sad things in a beautiful way, the atmosphere turns upside down

I'm listening to a lot of John Mayer again. I stopped listening to emotional music because I was in a really emotional place in my life.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.

I've been trying to learn how to not be so conflicted about things like my own anger. I've always had a place in my music for my anger as a way of compensating for not having a mechanism to express it in my everyday life. So I've been trying to be more true to myself, and that helps me to chill out a little bit. But politically, uh-uh. No.

Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy.

The form of the blues helps us express our joys, our fears, our - anything you want to express. And it helps you get it out instead of it spiraling inward, and you're getting twisted up and exploding. So it's a bit of salvation.

We don't have a particular plan. We just do what we do. This is the only way we know how to do it. We make the music that moves us. We use it as therapy. The songs are cathartic. They're ways of dealing with life experiences and the world around you. It's meant to be as a release for us as it is for other people.

I've always said music should make you laugh, make you cry or make you think.

A lot of the time it feels like… music is some sort of excuse to be a human. It’s kind of like people need that excuse to go and put their arms in the air and sing their hearts out.

The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life.

I want to be ripped apart by music.

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

There's so many songs about heartbreak that exist this in the world, because music is somehow the perfect medium to express something like this.

I was singing the blues when I was six. Kind of sad, eh?

The emotions in a song - the anger, aggression - have got to be legitimate.

I paint my joy and I sing my sorrow.

Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That's what draws millions of people towards it. And, um, I found myself always going for these darker places and - people identify with that.

Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you. I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.

Artists who write songs... what they're going through usually comes through in their music.

Rap was more of a release for me, a journal.

People like Nick Cave - that ridiculous, over-the-top doom, taking it to extremes - I find it uplifting because it's like someone else is feeling what you're feeling and putting it into their music. Someone expressing extreme joy is just as valuable; it's just the fact that they're expressing their soul through music.

The last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling-and it washed over me.

I love movie musicals because I think there is an amount of emotional honesty that's needed to portray someone who feels so deeply that all they can do is break into song.