Quotes from Ella Mai

People make careers off of Instagram. So in that sense, it's really good, and you can put yourself out there and be open.

It's okay to wake up and look however you look. You are beautiful regardless.

I think it's harder for R&B to break in England because the radio and labels don't really know what to do with R&B music.

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.

It's been cool to have my name mentioned when people say R&B is on the comeback and I'm the leading person. If you had told me at 16 that I would be that person - you're lying.

Sometimes we misinterpret, sometimes we misunderstand, sometimes we make mistakes.

From the end of 2015 to the start of 2016, I was always at the studio with Mustard, just figuring out a sound.

'Naked' embodies what everyone, at the end of the day, really wants and how they should feel.

The word 'album' makes you nervous, especially 'debut album.'

As much as a lot of my music is very R&B, there's a bounce to it that obviously makes it easier to perform live. It's upbeat and uptempo.

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.

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 think originality is something that's important and catches people's eye.

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.

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.

To find out my song made the top 10 was honestly a dream come true. I think it's something that I've dreamed about, and anyone dreams about, their whole life.