Melody Gardot

Music activates the brain at a high level.

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.

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.

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.

Why Jazz? This is just the way I see music.

I think that age is irrelevant. We’re all pretty much spiritual beings – I consider myself to be about eighty-five. I feel like I’m ancient, like two thousand years old.

There’s always room for improvisation or changes of expression.

Musicians have the intimacy of bringing two people together and the aesthetic, romantic transference.

Deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state.

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

Yeah, it’s more like playing what you think is appropriate for the moment, not forcing any particular style.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors the ethos of the best parts of society.

A Jazz Diet will make you hipper, thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier and more attractive to members of both sexes.

I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do and then just go for it. I never know what the public’s going to like, anyway.

The fact that an artist is experiencing the joy of creation makes me feel like we’re in it together.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.

And ultimately the people who produce my records, they know that they’re here to serve the purpose of me expressing who I am at this period of time and augmenting that or pulling it forward and I love that process.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.