Lapsley

“My whole career will be about sad things. Happy songs about nightclubs and shots? That's not me.”

“I was a very closed person before, and I wouldn't say how I felt about things, and now I've kind of opened myself up. And it's scary.”

“I think my songs serve a purpose in a very therapeutic way to do with relationships, very different to do with my opinions on world affairs.”

“Sometimes before I go on stage, I think about how people can be so judgmental and forget they're the ones who bought your album; they're the ones that are singing along.”

“I never started learning instruments with the hope of having a career in it. It was more kind of I quite enjoy messing around and writing or playing with the family and stuff like that.”

“The first time I'd ever had a go at production or recording, I just recorded in my room. I just put it on Soundcloud because I have family abroad, and I wanted to show them, 'Oh, hi, Uncle Carl, here's some music that I've done,' or whatever.”

“So many people have gone to music production schools for years and years, and they've wanted this their whole entire life, and part of me feels like I've kind of cheated that a bit because I'm not grade A on piano, and I don't know a lot about production. But I do what I do.”

“I'm quite an independent person.”

“I'm a very creative person, but that side of me was suppressed because I was academic. I was depressed at school, and I didn't know why.”

“I prefer to listen to a lot of male singers rather than females. Sometimes I find it a bit too shrill. I even find my own voice a bit too high.”

“I think I might have played a song on piano or guitar in a school talent show. I went to an all girls school, so there were always little things going on, but it wasn't really until I was 17 that I did a proper performance. My first big one was Glastonbury, before I was signed.”

“Collaborating on lyrics has never worked for me.”

“Maybe I'll want to go to Iceland and see the volcanoes, or attend some lectures, or go to Mexico and go to the jungle. On my own. With nothing whatsoever to do with music!”

“I'm more than just the face at the front of a band.”

“I don't feel like I have to prove a point and say that I love the kind of music that I make.”

“I had piano lessons when I was five or six years old, so my mom got me this little keyboard in my room. And then it progressed from that to classical guitar and drums and oboe.”

“I'd rather go on stage and talk or do public speaking than sing. Singing is very scary. It's very exposing.”

“The reason I can play loads of instruments is because I kept giving up and trying another one.”

“My parents never told me, 'You're supposed to wear pink,' or 'You're meant to do this because you're a girl.'”

“Sometimes I worry I've said too much. But it's easier to write about things that are fresh in your mind.”