Melody Gardot

I still do what I love, and I don’t really think about it. I try to make a beautiful show, so people go home happy. That’s my biggest aspiration: to make people happy.

After the accident, I had to reconstruct myself completely. I was taught to see again and to hear with hearing aids. My body had to be completely reprogrammed. And music therapy was at the core of the healing process.

People always ask, “Why jazz?” and I’m like “Why not?” It’s kind of like asking Seurat, “Why so many dots?” I imagine if you asked Bjork, “Why the Tibetan bells?” She’d probably be like “That’s just what I heard.” It’s the same thing. This is just the way I see music.

One of the problems of people who live with pain is that they spend the whole day thinking about it, and it’s exasperating. But even when I am having a bad moment and I can’t get myself together, I get on stage and for an hour or two the pain becomes super-small. It’s about controlling the mind, telling the pain to step aside. Music does that. It’s the most fantastic drug in the world.

Baby I’m a fool who thinks it’s cool to fall in love!

Jazz is a sideways glance at music. It’s like being an architect, knowing the basis of design but understanding that the façade can be whatever you dream. I’m a free person. I don’t want to be tied down.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Jazz stands for freedom.

I think the most important thing about playing is to walk out with confidence, look the people right in the eye and say ‘Here I am,’ and go and do your thing. As soon as they know you’re confident, they’re confident. As long as you adjust to them you’re not in trouble. You should eyeball them, find out what they want, and give it to them. They didn’t pay to come out and look at the tapestries.

Play the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you play.

I’m going to be on the road for the rest of my life.

Musicians tell me, if what I’m doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.

Once we’re inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

Your sound is you and what you really feel inside.

If everyone liked what I did, I probably wouldn’t be playing anything of depth.

What we do as artists is a combination of experience and imagination. How that creeps into your work is not so linear.

All I play is truth and emotion.

Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain’t.