I spent 19, 20 years of my life being terrified about what I looked like. I was a ginger white kid.

I enjoy the music I make because I have to - if I didn't, I wouldn't want to make it, and I wouldn't want it to be heard by other people.

When I was younger and played acoustic guitar music, I got a lot of Sheeran comparisons, along with guys like Paolo Nutini and James Morrison.

I find it really difficult to turn my head off. I find it difficult to zone out.

I watch cartoons a lot. I'm a big 'Rick and Morty' and 'South Park' fan.

I studied at university for a term and a day, and then I dropped out.

I just hope people enjoy 'Phase' as much as I've enjoyed making it. I hope it's a good reaction.

I wanted to be a teacher because that is all I knew. It was a great course on primary school education, in which I could specialise in music, but I ended up dropping out after I was honest with myself about what I really wanted to do with my life.

I don't want to write the song that I wrote yesterday, and I don't want to write the song I'm going to write tomorrow; I only write the music I'm writing now.

I hope that I am, in a way, helping and touching other people with my music, and being a musician and having this as a job gives me a sense of purpose beyond my own selfish needs.

I'm ultimately a perfectionist who doesn't believe in perfection.

There is a pressure, but my job essentially is not to listen to that pressure, not to buckle underneath that pressure, but instead to continue making music in the way that I have been making it.

Winning the BBC Music Sound Of 2016 poll has left me feeling pretty stunned at the end of one of the most emotionally and physically intense years of my life.

I found a way to connect with lots of instruments rather than just fixating on one of them. I just loved making noise on anything.

When I perform live, I'm doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don't think about it too much.

The most difficult thing for me as an artist, as a creator of music, is lyrics. But everything else, I just do it.

People forget that, for example, Adele wasn't always the Adele we know. Sam Smith wasn't always the Sam Smith that we know.

I wanted to create a body of work that I was proud of. It's come from honesty and integrity, without forcing anything from myself, the ideas had to come instinctively and organically. Whether that translates to people in that way, it's kind of out of my hands now.

I had a passion and a soul in me that was screaming to be heard, and I had to let them out in as honest and challenging a way as I could.

When I was a kid and writing more acoustic songs, I was doing it more for the attention than for the love of the music. I knew I needed to change something because I wasn't having fun and wasn't liking the songs I was writing.

If you can fool every single member of the audience into thinking you're confident and you deserve to be there, everyone will jump on your side.

For me, creating music is just as relaxing as sitting down and doing nothing.

My grandfather was a church organist and would sing in choirs and was a musical genius to a certain extent.

The music in my family has always been there; it's been quite an obvious trait that seems to have trickled down the bloodline.

I remember, from aged six to nine, I was loud and abrasive and loved making noise and loved playing instruments and doing all those things. When I was about ten, I realised I could get attention by doing that, so when I was eleven, I started writing songs.

People don't want to hear the same song 12 times in a row on an album.

I don't think there's any such thing as perfection. But I'm a perfectionist. I don't believe in the idea of perfection, but I will strive to achieve it.

I've always said that I would only ever release something that I would want to listen to as a fan.

I feel the best way to respect my audience is to not give them what they expect from me... 'cause it's fun that way.

I was a huge pop music fan as a kid, but the bands I was into were like 5ive and N-Sync. It was like watching a cartoon. There was so much going on, and the production was so well mixed. Stevie Wonder was able to give you those melodies and production but back it up with such creative integrity and real musicianship and artistry.

My guitar setup is inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I saved up my pocket money when I was about five or six years old. I just wanted to buy a CD, and at that age, I didn't care about what it was, and I ended up buying 'The Teletubbies Say 'Eh-Oh!'' I started off strong.

I'm fascinated by film scores, especially film scores for children's movies because they have to be able to entertain an audience that isn't interested in music yet.

I listen to podcasts when I run because it means my mind still gets stimulated by something else.