What ever your doing right now, whatever your thinking, or worrying about. stop. take a huge breathe in, and just enjoy being alive.
I don't think competition is good in music. What is good, is the desire and the ambition to create your best work.
If people stop being interested it's because you haven't written a good enough album. Music will always be the most powerful thing. It doesn't matter what record labels or journalists say. It's the song.
Songs are about just being totally honest and putting those words to music.
Throughout my entire life, I constantly tried to fight normality. I hate it. I hate the idea of it. I hate routine. I hate anything that feels remotely regular or right.
I like it when people are opinionated. I like an opinion. I like people that will fight for their opinion 'til an argument and through an argument. When they believe in something, they fight for it. I like those people that are perhaps sometimes too full of life - perhaps it's very difficult to be around them; they're not easy going. But I like being around people like that.
I have always liked clothes and fashion. And really, being a British male, I am automatically the best dressed person in any room - especially in America.
There's always a part of my brain saying: 'Stop getting comfortable. Don't relax.' Because I find it difficult to write when I'm happy. I have to go out there and get battered up and bruised to write anything. I have to feel something.
I think particularly in music, popularity os a very fickle thing. You're only as good as your last song.
I don't really like over-explaining the songs. Everyone constantly asks what the songs are about, and I think the thing is that the songs definitely all have stories in them; it's just nice to let people decide what they are. I think it's important that people hear it themselves rather than having me annotate it.
I'm so used to it, I think I'd feel very naked on stage without a piano.
I think music is better listened to with other people. Music is better shared. It depends what situation you're in - if it's a song by Tom Waits, it can be nice to be on your own, but if it's something slightly more upbeat, it's amazing to be around people.
You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.
I love the band Haim. I would love to do something with them.
I just love to play music. I enjoy it more than anything. I enjoy it more than drinking with my friends in the pub. I'd much prefer to be playing live and playing the piano - playing is one of the most enjoyable things I do and I live for it. So it's very rare that I'd not be up for it. I'm very lucky to have something that I love so much; I don't know what I'd do without it.
I would consider myself a perfectionist, yeah. I don't think that is always that helpful, either. Sometimes it's good to be a little more open-minded; you can overthink things when things are actually fine, and it's that moment that you lose it. Looking back, sometimes I've made mistakes from being a perfectionist.
I really want to come back! I definitely want to come back. Some of my fondest memories are in New Zealand.
I think music moves me more than other people. I can hear a song and it can bring me to tears. It doesn't happen the whole time, but I find songwriting - songs - very, very moving. I always have and I don't think it's fading.
Playing live is very exhausting, which is partly why I feel so tired today. But I've always wanted to live like that. I'd rather feel the experience than to be sort of feeling something in between and dull and numb. I love feeling the highs and the lows, it makes life far more exciting.
I find myself, the more I grow up the more I hang around creatives, musicians. I find them more inspiring to be around. I'd probably say that. The more creative you are - I get along with them better. There is more of an understanding.
I just never really thought of not being involved, because when I write the songs I take them to a certain place and by that point I kinda know what I want them to sound like.
I find myself more affected by music the more I do it. Particularly when you're touring and you're in the bus and you're listening to loads of music. Life becomes far more dramatic, I guess - you're never in the same place, you're constantly meeting new people. You almost become more sensitized to music.
When you create stuff, you're always going to be progressing and where you're at a year down the line, as the creator, it's always going to feel immature. You're going to notice the flaws and the things that you've learned in that year aren't going to be there. So, I think it's important to see stuff as a capture of time - that's what I was doing at that time - and not be ashamed of it. That's how I try to approach music.
The sound is very much always in my head, I have to get the sound out of my head onto the recording.
I've never really not played the piano. I've played it since I was six or seven and it's something I've always done - I don't think I could ever really play anything else, I would be a bit out of it without a piano.
