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 was very quiet until I got at the piano, and weekends, lunch breaks, after school, before school, I was just making music.

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.

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 always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.

I wanted to make an album that melodically people can connect to; something that reflects our times and the kinds of difficulties we face.

Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.