Melody is disarming. It's anarchic!
There's always apprehension whenever I launch anything, it seems. When I launch a tour, people are always, 'Oooh, is this gonna work?' And when I launch an album: 'Ooh, is this gonna work?' Or a new video. 'Really?' It's always like that - but I've always acted on the impulse that I have nothing to lose.
I'm a big illustration and comic book fan. In my eyes, comic books and illustration are the same kind of art forms.
Everything I do is very visual and very aural, so I don't read music, and I draw as much as I write out lyrics.
As a teenager, in my songbook, I used to script what my lighting would be like. I used to dance in my roo;, it was like putting myself in a trance, and making myself feel good about things, almost like a private ceremony of begging people to like you.
I'm always calling my doctor because I'm constantly injuring myself while on the road, like tearing a ligament, blasting my ears or losing my voice. Plus, I'm a total hypochondriac.
New York is a bit of a dangerous place to me because you often leave in a blur.
We all have to be dishes on a plate eventually, with the way we are marketed, but I have no intention of being a cheap Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet.
Strangely, I feel that I become increasingly reclusive in my normal life and more open and candid in my music.
I'm not necessarily that big of a clubbing junkie, but I really like dance music as a genre.
I love collaborating with strong women.
I was a show-off as a kid. I was wearing bow ties and matching coloured trousers.
Anyone who tries to diss me in comparison to Queen, it just renders all their criticisms completely futile. That's quite pleasurable.
I'm dangerously generous.
In my older songs, I used to hide behind fictional characters to deflect attention away from myself.
I'm not creating an enigma or leaving mystery, I'm just respecting myself enough as an artist to give myself room to grow and not to be devoured all in one go.
They say shyness is a form of egotism, and you are only shy because you care too much about what people think of you. And maybe its true, maybe I am just an egotist.
My first record was about childhood. There were a lot of nursery rhyme and fairytale references; it was all about being naive.
I'd never compare myself to Freddie Mercury because I look up to him far too much. As an artist, not necessarily as a person.
If I really like the smell of something - a piece of tar or my goddaughter's plastic doll - I put a tiny piece in a bottle with a label. I keep them in a fridge in my bathroom.
