Quotes from Corinne Bailey Rae

All the changes you go through personally really affect the music you make, and my music on the one hand is personal and the other it comes from my lived experience and the interaction with the world around me.

I love Singapore's rooftop bars.

I think that every day should be savored, and so a lot of 'Stop Where You Are' comes out of that idea that life is really precious, the people around us are precious, and every single moment is worth celebrating.

I loved music from a young age. At school I played the violin but I didn't sing much; there was an expectation of the kids in the choir that they'd have really pure tones, and my voice had all this texture to it. The anodyne soul of Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey was in the charts and I couldn't relate to it.

I read someplace that when I was signed to EMI, they reeled in the 'hit-makers.' The presumption is that 'cause you're a young girl, black, smiley, with curly hair, you can't have written the songs. It totally winds me up.

On the first album, it was me and a producer in a basement going though hundreds of snare drum sounds to find the right one.

It's kind of a journalistic thing to say, 'This person is the next so and so.' I think actual musicians are never really into those kinds of comparisons.

Letting my guard down, trusting that someone will look after me... I've found that hard to do.

Till then I wasn't alive, I longed for you like the love sick moon pulls the tide

I love the sound of a Fender Rhodes or James Jamerson-style bass lines that are their own melody, and live drums and Moogs.

I'd always thought pop stars had to be really sophisticated and grown-up. So I was enchanted by Bjork's childlikeness. I'd never heard a voice like hers, with all its character and glottal pronunciations, or music recorded with background noises, like the sound of the city or a bus pulling up.

I've written a soulful record but it's informed by my sort of indie guitar past.

When I did my rock band, I pined for a more soulful sound. I wanted music that was very melodic and blues-based.

Being mixed race in Britain in the '80s and '90s, there just weren't loads of people who looked like me.

I find so much freedom in singing and so much expression of my self. I feel so connected to the people in the audience, and I feel spiritually connected when I'm doing it.

I didn't expect my popularity to be a mainstream thing, 'cause I'd only ever been an underground artist.

We live in a capitalist society, so our power as people who consume is significant. I boycott unethical companies and avoid buying stuff made in sweatshops and stuff that will end up in landfills.

You know, losing my husband in 2008, that was a completely unexpected thing. And that process of grief and mourning that has taught me a lot about life, and how we never know how long we have.

I never stop working on songs.

We went to Baptist church as a family, and that took up so many nights a week.

When I was singing in Helen, the style was to have a really unusual voice. The order of the day was to have emotion and passion and a recognizable style.

I think it's weird that we expect ups and downs in friendships, but not in relationships. It all has to be romance, romance, romance - but there's two people and there are always going to be disagreements, and you have to work at it.

There's something really wrong with using Botox: it stops you making facial expressions - people are so interested in how they appear that there's no intention of projecting how they feel.

I was Corinne Bailey. I added on Rae, my husband's name, when I got married. There's no hyphen. Stops it being posh!