Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started playing when I was about 13, mainly because Dad had guitars lying around the house. My dad taught me my first three chords, and I taught myself from there.
I'm really freaked out by time. How, for instance, what I did last week is not real in the sense that it's happened. It's just a memory that's filed away in my brain.
I got this advice that if you know a panic attack is happening, just sit back and go, 'Okay, this is happening to me, but it'll be over. You'll be fine. You'll live.'
To go from someone who would put something on SoundCloud and maybe get 15,000 plays in a year to getting 100,000 plays in one day felt very weird. I thought I was dying.
On one level, I am a massive joker and can't take anything seriously, but on the other hand, I'm incredibly serious and a deep thinker, so I have that dichotomy within me.
I think it's much harder now with the Internet to hone anything. It's easy to share things: you do one track, and it goes on Hype Machine; people are being exposed a lot earlier.
The fact that I can ever be open about my being gay is amazing! It's great that I don't have to hide it, but also it would be really nice if, in twenty years, it's not even a thing.
I worked in a post-production facility for television, but in the machine room, so I was one of the nerds, essentially - making sure everyone had their footage in and all of that stuff.
The hardest thing is having to do selfies even when you're on your period and you're queuing at Superdrug to get ibuprofen. That's when I'm like, 'You know what? I don't feel like Shura today.'
Pop should be weird, and I realize as I say this that I'm not the weirdest person in the world. But if that means a girl sounding like Kylie Minogue and looking like Kurt Cobain, then so be it.
The past isn't real because it's history, and the future isn't because it hasn't happened yet. I like it, it hints at virtual reality, which I think is how we sort of feel about life sometimes.
I've had relationships before where you break up, and you think you're going to die, and then you realise you're definitely not going to die, and actually, you're probably better off without them.
I didn't really want anyone to know that I wanted to write music or make songs because, in a way, I didn't necessarily know if I wanted to do it for a profession. I wanted to do it to express myself.
A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.
Perhaps a young boy or girl, after watching my video, can go, 'Maybe I don't have to be embarrassed. Maybe I can come out at school, maybe I can tell my best friend... and maybe I don't have to be afraid anymore.'
I take inspiration from so many places. I think, more than anything, it would have to be the music made by others that I've then fallen in love with, whether it's Madonna, Blood Orange, Fleetwood Mac, or Pink Floyd!
In London, I used to play 'Boys of Summer,' but it didn't feel right, because it doesn't apply to your surroundings, to the weather. I remember being in L.A. and listening to that record and going, 'Oh, I get it now.'
The first time I shared music was on Myspace. Then SoundCloud came along. The difference with SoundCloud is that people can comment on stuff, which was more frightening but also way more fun - especially if they liked it.
It's different obviously with a song when you're talking about narrative, you're talking about the verse leading into the chorus or whatever it is, but you have to have a sensibility of how something would flow either way.
A lot of people think I popped out of some pink cloud fully formed, ready for action, but I've been putting songs on SoundCloud since I was 16. Five people would listen and like them. I never had any expectations for myself.
I would feel really dishonest writing a song that was really sassy, or really confident, because I'm not a supremely confident being. I think that's what people find interesting about what I do; it's very different lyrically.
Your debut record, in terms of lyrical content, can be about the last couple of years of your life obviously, but your first record into the world is also about everything else that you've ever experienced in your life until that moment.
I think there's something antagonistic about bedroom pop. We're reappropriating pop and saying you don't have to be an ex-Disney star to make pop music. You can be from Shepherd's Bush and have spent most of your life listening to the Smiths and still make a pop record.
A recording of a moment in time, where I was physically there, and it's now in a song for all eternity, in a way. It's really weird. I had written the song, but I'm also physically there in a way I'm physically inside the song, because I've recorded something that's in there.
'What's It Gonna Be?' is about having a massive crush on someone, so it made sense to go back where - to school, where it all began. But it was important for us to explore those archetypal characters - The Jock, The Nerd, The Dork, The Popular Kid - and then flip expectations.
Some of the best songs are love songs. They're things that we all go through, and when we're going through it, we think that we're the only person in the world going through that. Having that music there sort of reminds you that you're not alone. It happens to me, too, as a music fan.
It's strange: I love pop music, and I really can enjoy it, but I didn't feel like the characters within pop music - like when Madonna sings 'Crazy For You', for instance, I don't feel like I would ever be the character she takes on in that song. I would never feel... I don't have that confidence in me.
My dad used to do a lot of music when he was young, so he had an 8-track MiniDisc recorder, and when he realized that I was getting on with it, he brought it upstairs to my room and showed me how to record and how, once you finished eight tracks, you can cut it down to two and have another six tracks to play with.
People think I'm cool - it's a virtue of my job! In real life I'm absolutely not cool, but I think if you have the courage of your convictions, and you're confident in yourself, people will maybe think that you are even if you're really a massive dork. Everyone has a different job where, to someone else, your job is really fancy!
I'm not one of those artists that can go away for six months and tour America and have 20 producers back in London or L.A. doing everything for me and I just come home and sing on it. It would be really useful, in terms of speed, to work like that. I just wouldn't find it creatively satisfying. I have to have my hand on the remote control.
There are two ways of dealing with being odd. One is to really try and conform, and the other is to do the opposite and really make a thing out of it. At school, it wasn't that I was bullied, but everyone was very aware that I was different. I was kind of the token weird person that people accepted into their group, almost like an accessory.
To a lot of people, my job is really fancy, so they're like, "Oh, whoah, you're a musician, wow!" Some people go to you, "Oh my god, you're a journalist!" And some people go, "What, you're a therapist? That's incredible!" So everyone, to a certain extent, has other people that you get impressed by, without even having a proper conversation or getting to know them. You're just like, "Oohhh, they're a bit fancy!"
Obviously I think it's really important to look back at your history, and that's why I think things like Pride are important. It's not necessarily about your experience of life, it's not about whether you find it difficult to be gay; it's about the fact that people have fought over hundreds of years for this to be okay, and also that there are many countries in the world where it's still not, and it's very dangerous to be gay.
Pop music often deals with subject matter like breakups, or you have songs that are like, "I will love you forever," or "you're so hot right now," or "I really feel you," or "We should be together." There aren't that many songs that are like, "I just walked into the room and now I have nothing to say because I feel so awkward because I fancy you so much." There's not as many songs that deal with that awkward bit about love; about how you can really have such a huge crush on someone that actually is completely disabling.
