I think I'm a mama's boy who wanted to be a hockey player, who failed, and had to become a singer. I think that I'm a generous, impatient, kind, jerk.
I'm not a jazz musician, because, I mean, firstly, I can't play anything. I'm not bad on the tamborine. I have a certain way with the triangle. But I'm not a jazz musician ... my band, they always joke, they always say that I'm a disposable, pop, jazz superstar.
I was reading a Time magazine interview with an author named Brené Brown. She said, "People that fail seem to ultimately do the same thing they think works over and over again." I had an epiphany and called my manager and started a creed with my producers. I promised we'd do whatever was best for the song and the album - no ego would get in the way.
There was something that was very manly about having the strength and having the courage to sing about love and romance. And I don't know what happened in our world where that was turned into being soft, because I don't think it's soft at all.
I'm not talking about just Donald Trump's politics - it's what he's brought up. It's a real conversation. We're just people trying to fall in love as nations and human beings. We need therapy, man. The world does.
I met the [Frank] Sinatra family for a [performance] I did for his hundredth birthday and one of the first things Sinatra's daughters said to me was, "I'm so glad you make your own beautiful arrangements now."
My favorite music is '80s music which drives people around me crazy. I really love it.
Someone asked me the other day, 'Do you get upset when people say you are the young Frank Sinatra?' It doesn't upset me. It is a huge compliment, but it is false.
I had this strange belief, perhaps naively, that somehow, if I kept working hard, and I kept doing it with integrity, that I would get my chance.
If [my son] had any pain in feeling that he couldn't express to me, that would hurt.
A lot of artists talk about getting out of their comfort zones and being the most proud of their newest album. But it is true for me. I rethought a lot of what I do.
You can try to trick the people and come out wearing a fedora and a tuxedo but that's not me. I was born in the late '70s, I wear jeans. I don't hang out in casinos. The lifestyle isn't my thing. I don't drink martinis and I don't smoke cigars.
[Dean Martin ] had this really wonderful rich, authentic, distinct vocal style. His humour in movies [and] the self-deprecation and the coolness he had could overshadow what a marvellous vocalist in the Great American Songbook he is.
I can't sit and compare my trouble to Brian Wilson but I came from a blue-collar family of fishermen. Music was an escape and a way for me to dream of better things and a better place to be. Let's just say I was an insecure, scared kid.
I am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor.
I struggled more with my identity. Let's be honest - early on in my first records, I didn't have the power to tell David Foster or other producers what to do.
It turns out that I'm far too schizophrenic musically for people to categorize me. I think people judge me a lot before they ever really know who I am.
Christopher Hitchens is perhaps the greatest orator ever. He's such a famous atheist.
I honestly think that it was when the actual voices started to stand up for me. It was the iconic artists like Tony Bennett or Barbara Streisand or Liza Minnelli. When people like that take you under their wing and say in quotations, "He's the next one. He's got my stamp of approval," people trust them.
A lot of subjects blend into the same thing: intolerance. When you're a little kid, you don't know that it's going to get better. Your life experience hasn't told you that. I want to protect those people. I want to send out a message and at least try to get that across.
As I look back, I understand what [the record company] was getting at. They were trying to market a record and make it as commercially acceptable as possible. It hurt me and my credibility with critics.
I'm fascinated by politics. I love watching everyone from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Lawrence Krauss to people like Richard Dawkins and Noam Chomsky on YouTube.
I was so lucky. I had a dad and a mom that loved me and my sisters so much. My Uncle Mike and Uncle Frank were married. They must be together for fortysomething years now. Long story short, there was never any stigma attached to that. At the youngest age, I remember my dad saying, "Sometimes men love men and women love women. It's nature.
There was no way I was ever going to get a fair shake. How good could I be? I was Canadian. I wasn't from New York. I wasn't from Vegas. I was born in 1975, not 1917. My last name wasn't Sinatra or Darin or Martin. Early on and often, there was always the comparison. "He's good, but he's no '[fill in the] blank.'
When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.
