I want to go and see things as a fan again. I am a fan, but I can't remember what it feels like to be a fan anymore. Because I've become an artist. I've become the artist.
I don't want people confusing what it is that I'm about. I just stand there and sing. And I don't do stunts or anything. if I wanted to do all that, I don't think I'd get away with it.
My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute.
When it comes to staying myself - my career isn't my life, it doesn't come home with me. So it's a piece of piss staying grounded and not being changed by it. The same things I've always liked still satisfy me. My team's the same and my group of friends are the same. Of course I'm bowled over by people's response to 21, and when I meet artists I love, it blows my mind. But it baffles me as well. I go home and my best friend laughs at me, rather than going to a celebrity-studded party to rub shoulders with people who know me but who I don't know. I'm Z-list when it comes to that sh**.
I get shitty scared. One show in Amsterdam, I was so nervous I escaped out the fire exit. I've thrown up a couple of times. Once in Brussels, I projectile-vomited on someone. I just gotta bear it. But I don't like touring. I have anxiety attacks a lot.
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I’m writing about, and that’s why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, “Oh my God, this song is totally about me.”