I learnt that music cost something, and that's a good thing. Also, that I should exercise, because I didn't and I got very sick.

I had a pretty regular childhood, with a rad mum who taught me to love reading and thinking and laughing, and (as far as I was concerned) a regular dad who drove trucks for a living and did radio interviews on weekends and got stopped in the street a lot when we went out.

I learnt that music cost something, and that's a good thing. Also, that I should exercise, because I didn't and I got very sick.

Obviously, it was a big life change for me and quite a shock to suddenly have these songs I'd written in my bedroom as a far-too-intense teenager all over the airwaves and see my face on buses, especially in a small country like New Zealand, but at the same time it was such a thrill and an honour knowing that my music was reaching people.

People aren't problems to be fixed. People are people, for us to walk alongside and journey with and help pick up the pieces with and, when they drop them again, to get back down and help them pick them up again. And that's real love - without condition and without expectation.

I began dabbling in writing when I was 12, and there was never an official start to singing... I just sang my songs because there was no one else to sing them and no one told me to shut up!

At sixteen I was like: "I need to get an album out now!" - even though I was only sixteen. I was always in a little bit of a rush to be an adult.