I think it's harder for each generation. Even I just feel completely separate from teenagers today who have access to the Internet. And I'm amazed that this interest in video games has never gone away. It just keeps growing.
I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.
If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.
Older people say, 'Oh I loved you in 'Sense and Sensibility,'' and that's the only film they want to talk about. Equally, there are people who only want to talk about 'Galaxy Quest.' And there's a whole bunch of teenagers who only want to talk about 'Dogma.'
Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.
As you might imagine, if you're a teenager having a couple of people with microphones and guns always following you around, that could grate on them. But you know, they've handled it with grace and I give Michelle [Obama] most of the credit for how well they've done, but I also just think they are graceful, good young, young women.
I'm a teenager, but I'm independent - I have my own apartment, I have my own life. And I think I have learned more than any of those teenagers have in school. I learned to be responsible, leaving my family and coming here alone.
Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.
These are young people who made mistakes that aren't that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made, we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system. It's not normal. ... What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things.
When I talk to people who have teenagers now, their rooms are filled with screens. There are their phones and their DVD players and TVs and all these things to produce distractions for them, and I think it would be hard to find the time to create something. I think that's really changing something about adolescence.
As a teenager I was very clear that I wasn't in the church just to toe the line, but I saw there was a capacity within Christianity and the bible not to fall into line but to question the status quo, that's what kept me in the church. I was listening to the sort of music that did that questioning.
The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced... It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed or, worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress.
We seem to be keeping old fans and are bringing on new fans that are teenagers. I think that is amazing. When I was a teenager, that was when I fell in love with music. It affected me in a deep way. That's why I love having teenagers at our shows.
It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.