I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.

To this day some of my closest friends say 'Gaga you know everything's great. You're a singer your dreams have come true.' But still when certain things are said to you over and over again as you're growing up it stays with you and you wonder if they're true.

I've always been a bit of a decorator. I think if I wasn't a singer I'd probably be in stage setting or interior design or something. I like clutter and I'm quite visually greedy. I can't have things to be plain I have to have things looking interesting... maybe I'm just a frustrated interior designer stuck in a singing career.

I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut nice guys. So it's strange.

My mom was a dancer my dad's a singer and I've always had that kind of music in my life.

My dad and grandpa were in the army and as a country singer you're constantly playing at military bases all across the country and meeting soldiers and their families and hearing their stories.

My family was very supportive of whatever I wanted because my grandfather was an opera singer. My dad's dad. So my dad has an appreciation for the arts and he let me choose my own path.

The best thing I ever learned from my dad was he knew he wasn't the best of singers but he always knew he was a great entertainer and I always thought that was a good concept to bring along that ultimately acting is an entertainment art and you have to be aware of the fact that you want people to be excited to be watching you.

My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.

He was a manager one of the singers I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in a lot of my buddies.

Although becoming a singer was my plan A after first hearing Whitney Houston when I was 17 I started off with plan B by going to the teacher-training college that my dad went to. It was a slow coming of age.

My dad was a musician. He was a singer and he played the guitar so music was always around.

My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds and she did a few movies and she was really a great singer and when she married my dad and started to have a family she sang at parties.

Everybody even me sometimes had to compromise on something doing things we know to be wrong and this happens doing whatever job in the world. But a singer must have the courage of saying no.

Melanie Fiona is a singer a songwriter she's a super-girl. I can be silly goofy really chilled. She's like your cool chill girlfriend sister-friend. I'm just like everybody else.

It's really hard for actors to cross over and get any respect as a singer and if I could just keep it separate and not use my music in movies it's cool.

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person this singer this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer you have to change that's the way it works.

I'm a car singer in fact sometimes I pretend to take my dog out for a walk and I'll just drive him around and start singin'.

These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.

Like all soul singers I grew up singing in church but sometimes I would leave early and sit in the car listening to gospel band The Blind Boys of Alabama. Hearing their lead singer Clarence made me connect the idea of church and show business and see how I could make a career singing music that stirred the soul.

Johnny Guitar... just one of my favorite singers of all time. I met him when we were both on the road with Johnny Otis in the '50s when I was a teenager. We traveled the country in a car together.I would hear him sing every night.

When I was really little I would sit in the back of my dad's car when he'd be playing old-school music. He'd turn down the music and turn around and I'd be singing and know all of the words but I didn't even know how to talk. From then on I've always wanted to be a singer.