I enjoy the process of composing music. The first time I hear a song, it has to bring a smile to my lips. You have to tap your feet and be able to sing the song.

From a very young age, music was very much in my house. I would sit with my mom, with the old LPs, listening to The Beatles and Carly Simon and Lionel Richie. The old LPs used to have the lyrics. From there, I would put on dance and music displays for my family, just to entertain them and make people laugh and smile.

I wake up each and every day with a smile on my face knowing I get to do something musically.

Sometimes Queens' music is dark, but somehow it's ok to deliver it with a smile on your face because thing's are still going to kick in.

Y'know, smile, dance, get crazy... we sure do while we're making it, because music is our leeezshure; it's my fun.

We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile.

Country music in the mid-'90s was a big influence on my career, and I played all the songs that are referenced in '94' back in my club days. Joe Diffie was rocking a sick mullet, and he was hotter than ever... just putting out monster hit after monster hit. It totally takes me back to those days, and it makes me smile every time I hear it.

The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.

Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.

With sad music, or music that's perceived as sad, there's a sense of solidarity that can be really powerful. My songs are all joyful to me.

I play sad bastard music. For the money.

I think, honestly, that a lot of people think I'm sad and dark all the time, because of the music I have made. But there's a huge part of my personality that's really energetic, outgoing and goofy.

Music videos are notoriously long, not fun, grueling. You are known there as a dancer and it's kind of sad because dancers, in a lot of ways, are under-appreciated and kind of under-respected when it come to that so they don't necessarily treat you in a nice way when you do a music video.

Two or three notes of music can instantly make you feel sad or tense or afraid or angry. To do that in words is much more difficult.

I try to make an album that reflects what I love about country music. It's not just all about happy parties all the time. There are some sad songs.

But probably my favorite music, believe it or not, is sad music.

And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre; nowadays, it's so much harder than it ever was.

So many schools are getting rid of music programs and it's really sad because I know that when I started singing and stuff it was something that I always wanted to do and I never believed in myself to be able to do it.

I talked to ex-wives of musicians of the '70s for research. They're the funniest people in the world, yet there is this sad, beautiful thing in their eyes that says they've seen more than they could ever possibly tell you.

That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.

I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

The first beat that I ever made that I thought was actually worth a damn was called 'Toilet Paper Nostrils,' and I made it when I had a cold. I had the worst cold ever. And I had toilet-paper nostrils making music, but it was really reflective of how I felt. It was a really sad trumpet sound.