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 so shy and so quiet, and the only time I had my own voice and I could really connect with people was when I was singing or on stage.

The focus is on singer/songwriters now rather than huge shows. I mean, of course there's always a place for that too.

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 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.

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.

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.