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" The way I did the first album... the way I wrote 'Church'... was just to trust my instincts with the music and let it kind of do what it does. "

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" Someone had an eye on me as I was leaving high school. I had a chance to record demos, but they were kind of wanting to make a pop singer out of me, of the 'X Factor' variety. I didn't feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a songwriter. "

" Being in a studio is quite a creative and energetic process. "

" Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance. "

" I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll. "

" I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff. "

" You grow up and recognize that in any educated secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognize in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society. "

" I think all that we would know of America back home is foreign policy, and maybe the snippets of the madness of political culture. "

" Especially on the road, it's very hard to find time to actually sit down and write. "

" The best vocalists I can think of are female. There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it. "

" I love a lot of Irish folk music and Irish folk songs. "

" If I don't think something's worth saying, I don't think it's quite there, I'd rather just not say it, to be honest. In that case, I'd rather wait 'till the thought is ready, 'till I feel like I'm happy with everything. "

" I'm reading a lot of poetry because it's a lot easier to dip in and dip out when you've got 10 minutes to yourself. "

" My musical education was grounded in blues and Chicago blues - John Lee Hooker and Otis Redding. "

" No Facebook status is as worrying as a vote and no tweet is as noticeable as an angry cry from a crowd outside a government building. "

" I look at all good things with a bit of a dark lens, I suppose, especially with something like love. "

" Biggest musical influences would be people like Nina Simone and Tom Waits. A huge amount of writers like Leslie Feist and Paul Simon. "

" I think marriage is a scary concept. It's a scary concept for anybody. I'm not sure where I sit with that. "

" I am a politically motivated person, and that will come through in the music. "

" Regardless of the sexual orientation behind a relationship, it is still a relationship and still love. "

" I think my parents took me to see Sting when I was very, very young. "

" It was a rural upbringing by the seaside. A real quiet place surrounded by fields. I had to travel into town for school and stuff like that. "

" I hate nightclubs, and I get fed up very quickly in crowded rooms. I enjoy being around people I know. "

" Growing up, I always saw the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. The history speaks for itself, and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words. "

" I have a bit of a love affair with fairy tales and some of the ideas of Irish mythology, like Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats, who captured a lot of that very beautifully. "

" I love making music, but if you make something that inspires somebody else to make something, without getting too airy-fairy, you've contributed to the zeitgeist in some way, and that's just an amazing feeling. "

" I know I'm not the kind of music that's going to have tons of screaming fans, and I'm not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. I just want to do as good a job as I can. "

" I think it all started with Nina Simone. When I was maybe seven or eight, I used to listen to one of her albums every night before I went to sleep. For me, her voice was everything. "

" I'm uncomfortable with selfies and status updates documenting mundane pieces of my life, which I don't think should be of interest to anyone else. "

" Anyone close to me will be familiar with my frustrations with certain aspects of social media: the behaviour it encourages and attitudes towards the self it can breed. "

" I'm still finding my feet in many ways as a performer. I'm not an extrovert, and certainly the attention isn't what drew me to it, and I find that quite jarring at times. I used to stress a lot about shows and get palpitations before shows, but eventually you learn to love it, and it is a thrill. "