Melody Gardot

I have a bit of supernatural take on life. For a moment, I went over to the other side. Since then, I can feel the presence of the departed. I’m very sensitive to it.

For me an album cover is like a movie poster. I wanted an image that was pure femininity, which could please a sculptor. I went through a lot of suffering. But managing to stand up nude on stage carrying a guitar is a victory.

The first time I went to Paris, it just felt like I was home. I didn’t question it.

For a long time I hated my body, because I was constantly suffering. But now I look at it like an old Mercedes with chrome bumpers. It costs a fortune to repair, it breaks down all the time, you can only use it once a week, the seat leather is starting to crack – but nonetheless it’s mine.

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.

The honest truth is that every day was new, every day was a challenge, every day was starting from a fresh place, and as time went on, over the course of about two years, things became better and better. But I don’t think that there was for me anything like, ‘Ah, this is taking too long’, because ‘long’ didn’t exist. So I see it as a blessing. I have to laugh. I mean there’s no other way to look at it.

Nobody has ever been able to define Jazz satisfactorily. This is probably because anyone who was capable of doing so never really wanted to, knowing how much you would have to leave out of the definition.

Jazz is something you have to feel, something you have to live.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.

I wanted to do the music, but not at the expense of being happy.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it’s never going to bug you. But here’s the secret about the guitar – it’s defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

You gotta love livin’, baby, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.

Even when you write it, someone’s got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you’re still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I’m really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

I still insist that American performers are the best performers in the world.

You can’t sing about love unless you know about it.

I’ve always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.

They said Bird played bebop, but Bird could still swing. I’ve heard a lot of guys play bebop, but they wasn’t swinging.

Jazz music has got to have that thing. You have to be born with it. You can’t even buy it. If you could buy it, they’d have it at the next Newport festival.

In this trumpet I hear our icons and the sound of the future.

You don’t chose your inspirations, they chose you.