Brandy Norwood

Mom would kill me if I showed my navel.

When I was a little girl, I remember carrying my orange UNICEF carton with me as I went Trick-or-Treating.

I can’t believe Tina Turner actually was on the same stage. I can’t believe I set foot on the same stage, and it’s going to be an album, people are going to buy it, and it’s going to be a video.

It feels so great to be back on the scene.

All I could think about was, ‘I just wanna blow him away. I wanna make him proud, because I really wanna sign with Timbaland and spend the rest of my career making music with Tim.’

I wrote my own verses. Anything I did, I wrote myself.

There are always generic terms like ‘Americana’, but there are no boundaries as to where it can go.

I see two or three cars that are really good, but they’re not dominant. There’s usually somebody who’s got one that’s a little bit better than everybody.

That’s exactly what Dale Sr. was going to do. It was, ‘When I quit, I’ve got somewhere to go. I’ve spent my money, made my name. This is where I want to be.’ Junior is in the same suit.

Old men do it better. We’re not so sensitive in certain areas.

[asked about the ways she is discriminated against] I get discriminated against in three ways: I get discriminated against because I’m blond, I get discriminated against because I’m an actress and I get discriminated against because I’m from the South.

Before you, my life was like a moonless night, but there were stars-points of light and reason. Then you flew across my sky, and there was light. When you were gone, when the meteor had flown over the horizon, nothing had changed, but my eyes had been blinded by the light. I couldnt see the light anymore, and there ceased to be a reason for anything.

A lot of times we talk about the politics of it, the unfairness of it, which is all true, but I think it’s clearer to people when you go, ‘Hey, that hurts my feelings.’

I’ve got to the point now where I can poke some fun at my old image and really enjoy letting go when a juicy role comes along.

I think the yule ball is more attractive to the girls who read it, I never really thought “Oh I get to go to the ball!

I’ve always wanted to be a stand-up comic on some levels as well and I know I can play and sing but when people see me and say, “I didn’t know you were so funny… You’re like a real entertainer,” that’s what I like more than all the other accolades.

His (Freddie Mercury) words got better quickly. There were some very overt lyrics. Don’t Stop Me Now is a good example. He was having a good time, and that was very much a cri de coeur. Some lyrics we wrote together like I’m Going Slightly Mad, which was funny. We had fun coming up with daft things, all those ridiculous phrases. I’d say it was Freddie’s actual musicality which was the cleverest thing of all, the notes, and his harmonic structure was quite brilliant. When he wrote The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, on the second album, he was crossing sections of six-part harmonies, and I thought: “Bloody hell, that is tricky stuff.” Then there’s The March Of The Black Queen, which is almost like prog-rock, and so outrageously complicated that I can’t even remember the arrangement myself. When you write songs that complex, you have to work hard at it, and it did invoke a lot of head-scratching. But then he’d come up with Killer Queen or, later on, lots of simple things like Crazy Little Thing. He had it on all sides. Freddie evolved. I always called him ‘the man who invented himself’. I think the talent was innate, but he dug deep inside himself and forced it out. His determination was quite something.

I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.

This is what happens when you release a great body of work after they spent millions to ruin you.

In the middle of everything that I’ve done as a singer or as somebody who’s jumped on top of a few old books and turned ‘em into songs about hobbits f*cking vikings, I think I’ve danced a beautiful dance through it all, without becoming too much of a cliche. I’ve enjoyed the two-step. It’s brought me great gifts.

The things that people do come so easy to me. I could do it in my sleep. But I’m such a perfectionist that when something is too easy to me, I actually feel guilty.