Emeli Sande Quotes

I mean, there'll always be room for big productions and everything but it's good to see the other side.

I was very quiet until I got at the piano, and weekends, lunch breaks, after school, before school, I was just making music.

We started very slow in America. It was small acoustic shows. We played places like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago and everywhere there has been a great reaction. It has been really lovely. They listen to the lyrics and the melody over there and the reaction has been fantastic.

People that come to my shows are definitely people that feel outsiders. They feel like I don't feel sexy, I don't feel like - I can't go out every night on Friday and I can't connect to that, and I feel so much pressure to do that.

I was so shy and so quiet, and the only time I had my own voice and I could really connect with people was when I was singing or on stage.

Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.

I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown. You're knocking on everyone's door trying to get them to believe what you're doing.

I feel like 'Next To Me' is a great introduction because it's a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I'm proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.

Any song I have to work on longer than a day, I just leave it. It's not gonna work. Everything that's good is really instant.

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

If I was singing like somebody else, then it was almost like I was expressing myself like somebody else. So it was always a very original thing for me. It's my voice, it's my diary, it's the way I connect with people.

I always wanted to be a musician from when I was kid. It was always a massive dream of mine. School was also really really important to me and having an education was top of my priority. So I really wanted to have a degree before I tried anything in the music industry.

I'm not too bothered about what category my music goes in and there's no point in limiting in who you can reach, but I want it to be respected.

I wanted to find a way to speak for people. It was important for me, because so many people spoke for me when I was a kid and made me feel less invisible, and I wanted kids or whoever is listening to my music not to feel so voiceless.

Sometimes you feel like a very small drop in this huge ocean.

Just thinking of all the things I'd done getting there and everything I've sacrificed to do so. But what's happening now makes it worth it.

The focus is on singer/songwriters now rather than huge shows. I mean, of course there's always a place for that too.

I wanted to make an album that melodically people can connect to; something that reflects our times and the kinds of difficulties we face.

From when I was a kid I wanted to write. It was so important to me that I was writing my own material.

I always knew I wanted to be a musician, and I always knew I wanted to write, 'cause the people I was listening to all wrote. I never thought it was an option to sing anyone else's songs.

Anytime I write something that's trying to be too smart, it doesn't work.

It would be sad if we lost our instinct and our courage to love and protect.

I try to speak of a love that not necessarily romantic. I think there is so much love between people and so much love people want to give but it's harder and harder these days to show that, to celebrate that, you know?

I tried to bang down a lot of doors but Virgin were the only label who believed in what I was doing. I ended up with the label that understood what I was trying to do.

I wasn't intentionally trying to create my own path or be original, it was just I needed to say certain things and I needed to express myself, and that's how it came out.