I think Elvis Presley is a crooner. Even people like Eddie Vedder, I hear him sing some things and I go "wow". Seal, that kind of nice voice, too.

You want to be commercially successful and critically acclaimed. But the truth is, there's only a few Bruce Springsteens and Paul McCartneys out there.

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 am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor and I am only learning now stupidly that you can't read tongue. When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

Not that I'm some rocker, but what I do in a show is probably far more aggressive than what Dean Martin or Bobby Darin ever did.

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.