James Bay

Being exhausted is all part of the fun. I'm cool with it. I'm not going to wish that it would slow down.

Up until the last minute, it was art and drawing for me. That was the first real and natural thing I thought I was good at and loved to do. But I developed a similar kind of love for music.

When I was 16, I spent a year pushing trollies around a car park, and that wasn't fun. I didn't love working in a supermarket; it wasn't for me. It is for some people, and that's totally cool.

I love the intimate, single spotlight, troubadour-y quiet, delicate moments. But I also love Springsteen and screaming and shouting.

I bought a guitar CD-ROM because we had a new computer, but I had no attention span for that. I spent about three hours on it desperate to be brilliant. Eventually, I got some proper lessons.

Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer, and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me - and with everyone else - is what's real.

My family quite innocently don't understand the ins and outs of it all, but they see things like the Burberry show and the Live Lounge, so they understand the gravity of those things, but they're proud - it's cool.

I'm very close in age to my older brother, and we had a field at the end of the road where we could run around, climb trees, play football.

I like drawing people in the airport or on the bus or in venues. I like catching people in the moment. It's a similar inspiration for me in terms of songwriting.

My songwriting process, and maybe loads of other people's, is just this sort of smashing together of emotions and stuff to make some music. It's kind of simple and really complex at the same time and, as you can see, incredibly hard to explain.

The Internet is the Wild West of the world, where anybody can throw anything down. Everything can be as relevant as the next thing; it doesn't matter who posts it. In that environment, the Critics' Choice is still very important.

My songwriting process is painful. Songwriting is brilliant. It's a load of fun - when it works. It's really difficult as well.