You've got the words to change a nation but you're biting your tongue
It would be sad if we lost our instinct and our courage to love and protect.
I wasn't intentionally trying to create my own path or be original, it was just I needed to say certain things and I needed to express myself, and that's how it came out.
I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown. You're knocking on everyone's door trying to get them to believe what you're doing.
I couldn't help but feel very different from everybody, so I think that's why I found such a big world in music, and that's why I kind of - I was an introvert as a kid, but I loved the piano, and that's where I felt at home.
I was very quiet until I got at the piano, and weekends, lunch breaks, after school, before school, I was just making music.
I wanted to find a way to speak for people. It was important for me, because so many people spoke for me when I was a kid and made me feel less invisible, and I wanted kids or whoever is listening to my music not to feel so voiceless.
Sometimes you feel like a very small drop in this huge ocean.
I'd be smiling if I wasn't so desperate. I'd be patient if I had the time.
If I was singing like somebody else, then it was almost like I was expressing myself like somebody else. So it was always a very original thing for me. It's my voice, it's my diary, it's the way I connect with people.
I always wanted to be a musician from when I was kid. It was always a massive dream of mine. School was also really really important to me and having an education was top of my priority. So I really wanted to have a degree before I tried anything in the music industry.
I want to speak for people that may not feel like they're being spoken for at the moment. And I want to make a connection between the world around us and the charts.
From when I was a kid I wanted to write. It was so important to me that I was writing my own material.
Any song I have to work on longer than a day, I just leave it. It's not gonna work. Everything that's good is really instant.
I don't think there are any songs that I've written in the past that I now disagree. It's kind of like tattoos; I would never regret a tattoo, because it was how I felt at that time in my life. I don't think I've ever said anything that I would take back. So far, so good! I would probably change the music, or change how I sing it, maybe do it a little bit cooler, or a bit more grown-up. But I don't think that there are any lyrics that I regret.
I tried to bang down a lot of doors but Virgin were the only label who believed in what I was doing. I ended up with the label that understood what I was trying to do.
I think people don't realize how many hours of practice goes into becoming a musician and getting better.
I think on the first album, my aim was to write a good song and have a good melody, and I wanted lyrics that would connect with as many people as possible. On the second album, I took a lot more of a personal approach. I wasn't trying to make conventional, structured songs; I was really trying to get a lot of emotion and my own personal journey throughout it. I just focused more on being honest than getting the normal song structure down.
I was inspired by people like Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Stevie and "Storytellers." People that could really change the world with their lyric, no matter who sung the song, they had still been the source of that message. So that's what I really aim for.
I try to speak of a love that not necessarily romantic. I think there is so much love between people and so much love people want to give but it's harder and harder these days to show that, to celebrate that, you know?
People that come to my shows are definitely people that feel outsiders. They feel like I don't feel sexy, I don't feel like - I can't go out every night on Friday and I can't connect to that, and I feel so much pressure to do that.
I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.
The focus is on singer/songwriters now rather than huge shows. I mean, of course there's always a place for that too.
Songwriting is my main thing. I know that I'll do that for the rest of my life.
I feel like 'Next To Me' is a great introduction because it's a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I'm proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.
