I have learnt through doing interviews throughout my life that the way that somebody can write about something can change entirely how it was meant, or what actually happened.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

I just started writing and writing for people. And then, like I guess after (a) year of getting some placements, I kinda got a shot to be an artist. Long story short I think, yeah.

In college, I thought I wanted to be solely an artist, and then when I got here, to college, I was like, "Okay, well I want to be a songwriter," 'cause it was like close to Nashville.

I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.

I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.

I like things that are beaten up, that have lived a little. I like things that are real. I like things that are made out of wood or string. I never feel very responsive to plastic machinery.

Everything from a lifetime's worth of collecting things. You know as we go through life, and something stays and ends up on your shelf and lives there until you die? Just those little things.

I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion.

I think you have to be very careful getting the balance right if you're going to talk about grand themes like war, death and nationhood. You need to use the right language or don't do it at all.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

You go back and look at some of the ancient writings that exist throughout the world about wars and it's the same; the human beings' articulation of events is the same. That really fascinated me.

I would never feel confident enough to express my views and opinions as the right ones because I just don't think that's possible. There are so many sides to everything that nobody is right or wrong.

I was really influenced by a lot of Disney soundtracks, because that's what I used to watch all the time, and they always put music in it, which is why I tend to have popular melodies over harder beats.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.

Ever since time began: What song is not about love? Whether it's about love from man to woman or parent to child, or grandmother to granddaughter... It just goes on and on. Or whether it's the love of one's country.

I don't hold onto anything, because it's a waste of energy to do so, really. There's nothing that I can do about the way people want to write about me. I just try and concentrate on my work and do that as well as I can.

I'd want to read the stories that I'd written, I'd want to show the drawings that I made. That was just purely natural. So I knew I wanted to go into the arts in some way and that I'd want to show that work in some way.

If you come at the record feeling really happy and optimistic, it can be incredibly beautiful and uplifting, and if you come at it in a bleak moment, it can feel like a very dark place to share. It's all down to the listener.

I always wanted to be an artist. I think I was just waiting on somebody to approve me and be like, "Oh, okay, you should be an artist," you know 'cause it wasn't until I stopped looking for approval that I could actually do it.

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

Folk music was to strengthen and unify people, whether it was through an uprising and rebellion or whether is was through hard work, bringing in crops. But it was to strengthen each other and that's still what music is about today.

In the past members of my family on both my mother's and father's side have fought in the war, in the first and second World Wars. Unfortunately, they're dead and I wasn't able to speak to them, but that was in our family history too.

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.

I think I just speak on what the regular people are going through outside of love 'cause, of course, there's always gonna be a love song, but there's so many other parts of life... being lost, feeling your way around, what you gonna do next.

When a poem might become a song, then certain parts are repeated and might become a refrain or a chorus, so they change in that way. But it's more the nature of the words and what they're saying that determines whether it's a poem or a song.

I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that.

And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.

The first song I heard from me was Meek Mill ["I Don't Know"], it was his first single before he went (to jail). I remember the first time I heard it was like eleven thirty at night, and I was like, "Yo, this is crazy!" And, I was smiling from ear to ear.

Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

If anything, I hope being an artist opens up more opportunities 'cause I feel there's a lot of things I could do, like musically and stylistic-wise that I can write, but I don't really have an avenue to show it 'cause most of the things I'm writing are in Hip Hop.

Any of these contemporary war situations, whether civilian or soldier on either side - that's what I was interested in. The people who are being affected. Not so much the political speak at the top of the food chain, but the people who are affected by it on the ground.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

As far as in my adult life, it kinda started (with) writing first 'cause I went to school in Nashville. I mean, not Nashville but close to Nashville, and I met my managers in L.A. at a convention randomly. And then, it kinda just started from there. And then, I got my publishing deal.

I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recognize in the way that they felt about their country. It's to do with the world we live in. That world is a brutal one and full of war. It's also full of many wonderful things and love and hope

I don't like things to be handed to me on a plate; that means nothing. I like to go through layers of unraveling and every time I listen to something, it makes me feel something different. Now I'm aware of the conflict that's going on, but at the time I just let what was happening happen.

I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way different countries treat each other. I've always been very affected by politics, society, but I never got to a place as a writer where I felt like I could begin to deal with such things and do it well.

I feel like I make a soundtrack for the come up, and I feel like there's so many people that's trying to figure out how to chase their dreams, or that are in the process of chasing their dreams, so they connect with that. And then being a singer, you don't really get to touch on nothing either.

If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.

I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters. But at the same time I care very much about my work and I would like people to know that it exists. So I appreciate that there's a meeting point, where I would like people to know about the work that I'm doing, and that requires me to talk about it.

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.

I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.

I feel like I'm being put inside a box, and I'm not necessarily getting a chance. Like I'm not getting the shot that I deserve. So that's what Rare is about 'cause I feel because I am the way that I am, and I don't necessarily fit the mold of a lot of different artists that's out, it's like I'm not getting the chance to show what I can do. So, that's basically all the frustration of that, and everything is pretty much Rare for me anyway.

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