Sometimes performing someone else's song is more difficult than writing your own.
At the end of the day, I am singing the composer's creation, and I follow the instructions given to me. What I feel may be a right take may not work for the composer or his vision on how he thinks the song should sound.
When I did 'Wichita Lineman,' it was as good as I could do it, so I keep doing it that way. It's such a haunting song.
When I had to sing 'Kajra re' for 'Bunty Aur Babli,' I thought that my voice will not match that of Amitabh Bachchan's.
As I've gone along, I felt like I was discovering an aspect of my voice that I didn't know was there: an ability to interpret a song in a way that makes it more accessible.
When people come to a concert, they wanna hear the hits, the big radio songs, and they wanna hear them how they're used to hearing them. I like playing them how they were recorded.
No one's ever done one of my songs badly. People say to me, "God, so-and-so wrecked that song." Well, I'm unaware of it. Anybody doing one of my tunes has earned my gratitude, and I don't get that many covers where I have the luxury to choose.
And this one I wanted to do some covers. So I just really sang some of my favorite songs.
As soon as that little "ba-da-da-dink-dink" at the beginning of "Under the Sea" starts I think to myself: "Here we go! Let's do it!" When I first got the role, I was very intimidated because people have high expectations. But I have nothing to prove only to share. I'll do my best interpretation of what these songs should sound like in their current incarnations and it's quite an honor.
The song came out to be a gem, just came out to be a really, really interesting rendition of it.
The opportunity to record the song came when Phil Collins' record label, Atlantic, was doing a tribute album to him and they asked all these different artists to do renditions of his songs.
I've never really been nervous about any concerts. I enjoy it so much. All that matters is getting the songs played well, trying to get them to sound as close to the record live, which isn't easy, because my music is quite complicated to play.
Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.
Sometimes the magnetism of a song is impossible to ignore, and it demands that it be sung in a certain way.
I love cover songs, but I always mess up the words!
If you listen to old Jerry Lee Lewis records, he'll always - about nine times out of 10 have the lyrics different than the original record is.
