I spent my 16th birthday high as a kite, jumping out of a tree topless in my local park just because it felt amazing hitting the ground.

I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared, anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most, I don't know, I can turn on myself, and my imagination can take me dark places.

Having a soul, they say, is like taking sadness and turning it into something beautiful.

Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.

The first album, for better or for worse, was done over from the ages of 17-22, with a couple of different producers. Some of it was recorded in an old swimming pool, some of it was recorded in a synagogue - it kind of was all over the place.

I got to live out my 11-year-old fantasies - I got to go on stage with Green Day. Billie Joe called my name from the stage. 'Dookie' was the first album I ever bought. I covered the whole of 'Nimrod' and he'd heard it. That was like the 11-year-old girl dreamed.

I'd experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I'd written and recorded, but something wasn't quite right.