Ella Mai

There's a lot of young females doing R&B in England who are extremely talented and deserve more light on their stories.

I could never have imagined that, so early in my career, that I'd be ticking off boxes that I've dreamed about since I was a little girl.

There's a place for R&B in the U.K. industry - a huge market. I hope that 'Boo'd Up' can be a testament to the fact. Sometimes, it takes you moving outside the box to prove that it can be done.

There's loads of eyes and expectations. People are almost waiting for you to make a mistake so they can say, 'Oh, she's a one-hit wonder!'

I played soccer for nine years, so I took that route instead of singing. I played on the outside team as well as in school, so I was always playing soccer. It wasn't until I moved back to London that I really, like, started investing in music again and realized, OK, yeah, this is definitely what I want to do.

When I went into high school, I don't know why - because I've been performing since I was little - but I think it was just the pressure of being somewhere so different, and I already stood out because I had an accent, and everyone always wanted you to talk, that I kind of shied away from singing a bit.

I was 12 years old when I first moved to New York, and at that age, you're trying to find yourself. It was hard being so different from everyone I was around, and I felt that nobody could really understand me because everyone was American, and I was this little English girl with an accent.

I'm very big on feeling.

I feel like everyone has been in a bitter situation, regardless whether it's cheating or just not being over someone who is over you - you compare yourself to the next.

I wanted to show people that I don't just make love songs that are about purely being in love.

A lot of the times, if relationships go badly, you concentrate on the negative. But in those situations, there is always a positive outcome that you can learn from. So, I like to concentrate on the lesson and how I can learn from this. I concentrate on me rather than concentrating on the actual situation.

A lot of 'Time' was actually about a friend's relationship and me seeing what she went through and how she felt.