Tracy Chapman
I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.Collection: Change
I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night.Collection: Morning
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus.Collection: Art
If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.Collection: Chance
I was raised in a Baptist tradition, but then I went to an Episcopalian high school, and they were very accepting of people of all faiths.Collection: Faith
People's real hopes and dreams can be distorted and misdirected and packaged until you're not sure what you really want or what you even really need.Collection: Dreams
We have more media than ever and more technology in our lives. It's supposed to help us communicate, but it has the opposite effect of isolating us.Collection: Technology
There have been some gains made in terms of more equality for women in the workplace and in the way the legal system deals with issues of violence against women.Collection: Legal
I think religion played a huge part in Bush's re-election.Collection: Religion
There are good reasons for being in jail - for protesting.
At this point in my life I'd like to live as if only love mattered.
You have to pay attention to the moment and make it the best it can be for you. I've been trying to do that. It's really made a major difference for me. I'm a happier person.
I don't know - I'm not sure about anything as far as religion and spirituality go.
I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.
There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.
Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.
As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.
So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.
After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration.
That's what everyone should do with their lives: stand up for what they believe in or try to do some good in the world. I don't think artists have a greater responsibility than anyone else.
Music was never just a hobby for me. I'd pick up a guitar every day to work on whatever I was writing at the time. I would put my ideas in songs the way some people might put them in diaries or journals.
Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse.
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
I meet people in my daily life, people who seem to experience some change and some growth on a personal level, and that gives me hope.
I grew up with music in the house. I was told I could sing as soon as I started talking. Everybody in my family sang, always lots of records, blues and jazz and soul, R&B, you know, like Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Coltrane, that kind of thing.
We do need to think about how we have security - everyone has a right to that - but we also need to think about how we maintain civil rights and personal freedom.
I had a ukulele when I was much younger. I have no idea what happened to it but I think that was part of it, just being inspired and wanting to try to play an instrument that, to me, sounded beautiful.
I found myself in the middle of a race riot when I was about 14 years old, and I found someone pointing a gun at me and telling me to run or they'd shoot me.
As I started to consider a career in music, I hoped for success, truthfully. I didn't imagine anything that would amass the level of the first record, but I hoped that I would be able to sustain a career.
The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.
We all must live our lives always feeling, always thinking the moment has arrived.
Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.
I dressed up as a veterinarian for a Halloween costume party. I had the lab coat. I got a couple of stuffed animals for patients and put bandages on them.
I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.
I learn all these things about the record talking about it after it's finished.
I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
Love's a recurring theme through my work.
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.
The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.
When you feel like you've had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.
With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.
I'm a hopeful cynic.
I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.
Maybe it's naive to say, but it almost seems like, in the past, people tried to sell you something you would actually need, like a hammer or a broom or a toothbrush. But now there's this notion that they can sell you anything. And all they have to do is convince you that you need it.
As a child I always had a sense of social conditions and political situations. I think it had to do with the fact that my mother was always discussing things with my sister and me - also because I read a lot.
I don't try to project any image at all, other than the person that I am.
I think of the audience the way I would think of another person: You meet someone, then you take it from there; you see what's interesting to both of you.
I never assumed I would have that commercial success, so it was a total surprise. And honestly, I never assumed that it would ever happen again.