“I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that...” — Sam Smith Quote

I will sing happy songs, and I do sing happy songs, but the stuff that's going to move me and going to make me close my eyes is always the blues.

My main incentive now is to be so successful that I can get a private jet and sit with the pilot. I got upgraded to first class the other week, but even there I was still scared. I could be massaged for the whole flight and still think I'm going to die.

I've made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody - whether it's a guy, a female or a goat - and everybody can relate to that.

I want to make the music that's not there anymore. I'm so passionate about the singing voice... What I'm trying to do actually with my album is show that it's my voice that's leading. It's my voice that's the instrument.

I'd do the blues all the time if I could, that's what I'm into. But people just don't like to hear it.

The thing with me is, about that - about rock and all that - years and years of crate-digging, listening to old music, you kind of start to connect the dots. And I was seeing the thread that was connecting everything together, which is pretty much the blues. And everything soul or funk kind of starts with that.

James Cotton is a real blues guy, and he played with Muddy Waters, and it surprised me that they would want me to make a record with them, that he called me to do this record. I'd never done anything like that before. But I love blues, so I was very happy.

A long time ago, you couldn't say what you mean in blues. You had to disguise it, and that's where the double entendres and humour comes from and that's where we come from.