"Whitney Houston, what a phenomenon! Now that she’s gone even more so, I think maybe the world just didn’t recognise what we had. Maybe in the 80s and 90s people understood, ‘cause she was just this shining star. When I watch her performances – there’s one in particular, where she’s singing to the sailors that’ve come back – and she sings “All The Man That I Need”, I just think it’s the most perfect performance I’ve ever seen! I can’t believe it’s live!
“'My Love Is Your Love' is probably one of my favourite songs ever. I heard it once on the radio – I must have been 12 when it came out – and I fell in love with it instantly: the voice, the track, the production. My parents and I went camping in the Lake District, and I went to Woolies and found the CD. I was so excited, but we didn’t have a CD player!
""For a whole week of camping, I remember staring at this CD with the memory of how incredible it was on the radio from one listen, and the excitement of ‘I can’t wait to get back! We have to drive nine hours to get back! We have to finish the camping trip!’ Getting home, I just ran to the CD player to listen to it!
""I love the accessibility of music through streaming, and now everyone everywhere can listen, which I think is a wonderful thing. The one thing I do miss is the anticipation of music, and the listener having to make more of an effort to hear it. For me, the appreciation was more. When you’re a kid, you don’t really have money to spend on anything, so you were investing everything you had on this feeling. I always think back to that every time someone asks me about streaming. I want that feeling back, of really having to make a physical effort to listen. I just remember cherishing music in such a different way.
""It’s a hard one to balance. It is great that we can all hear everything we want all the time, but for me as an avid music lover, I feel a difference. If there’s something I really love, or an artist I really appreciate, I will always make sure I go and buy the vinyl. I’m really excited about my next album – I’ve been told they’re going to make cassettes of it! Just for nostalgia’s sake, I think that’s so exciting! Beyond the physical aspect to listen to it is the maintenance of it. You have to keep your CDs safe; you can’t scratch them! You have to be careful when you rewind the tape! That care is all part of the experience.
""Every artist that I’ve fallen in love with has been because I’ve been able to see all sides of them, and some sides of artists aren’t going to be as popular or as streamable as others! I think it’s important to have a full sense of who someone is. For the artist, to have the anchor of an album is quite stabilising: if you’re thinking in singles that can get quite confusing and go in so many different directions"
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