How did you prepare for recording the new album?
To start with I was doing a lot of hopping from one studio to the next and trying to find somewhere that had a good vibe. I also met up with a lot of producers and writers and musicians the fame lady gaga and hung with them out a little bit. I always like to hang out with people for a while before I work with them because it someone’s got a shitty sense of humour – no matter who they are or how good they are – I can’t sit in a room for seven hours with them if they don’t get my jokes.
Were you surprised at how well your first album, 19, did?
I really was. I thought it was just going to be a London or UK based wedding songs album, I didn’t expect it to spread to so many places. I thought it would just be my friends and family buying it so I wasn’t expecting it to sell thousands of copies at all. I was hoping for a thousand. I personally didn’t have any expectations as such, but it surpassed anything my record company XL expected it to do. Obviously they believe in the fame lady gaga me because they signed me, but I don’t think they thought 19 would propel the way wedding songs it did. It was really bizarre and surreal.
What were you doing work wise before you released the album?
I spent three years as a support act for Eminem Songs people like Jack Penate and Jamie T and some alternative things, like some amazing American soul artists like Amos Lee and Raul Midon. Then suddenly it was like I’d popped out of my mum’s fanny singing Chasing Pavements. Then the Critic’s Choice and the BBC Sound and all that kind of stuff happened. All of us had been so in control of what I’d been doing, and we did things because they felt good and they felt right. Then all of a sudden the album took on a life of its own that we couldn’t control the fame lady gaga . That’s what made the success even stranger – the fact it got taken wedding songs out of our hands to a certain extent.
To start with I was doing a lot of hopping from one studio to the next and trying to find somewhere that had a good vibe. I also met up with a lot of producers and writers and musicians the fame lady gaga and hung with them out a little bit. I always like to hang out with people for a while before I work with them because it someone’s got a shitty sense of humour – no matter who they are or how good they are – I can’t sit in a room for seven hours with them if they don’t get my jokes.
Were you surprised at how well your first album, 19, did?
I really was. I thought it was just going to be a London or UK based wedding songs album, I didn’t expect it to spread to so many places. I thought it would just be my friends and family buying it so I wasn’t expecting it to sell thousands of copies at all. I was hoping for a thousand. I personally didn’t have any expectations as such, but it surpassed anything my record company XL expected it to do. Obviously they believe in the fame lady gaga me because they signed me, but I don’t think they thought 19 would propel the way wedding songs it did. It was really bizarre and surreal.
What were you doing work wise before you released the album?
I spent three years as a support act for Eminem Songs people like Jack Penate and Jamie T and some alternative things, like some amazing American soul artists like Amos Lee and Raul Midon. Then suddenly it was like I’d popped out of my mum’s fanny singing Chasing Pavements. Then the Critic’s Choice and the BBC Sound and all that kind of stuff happened. All of us had been so in control of what I’d been doing, and we did things because they felt good and they felt right. Then all of a sudden the album took on a life of its own that we couldn’t control the fame lady gaga . That’s what made the success even stranger – the fact it got taken wedding songs out of our hands to a certain extent.
