Gabrielle Aplin

Looking at your cover of The Liar and the Lighter on MySpace, how important do you think the Internet is for new artists? I think it’s really important. I think nowadays there’s a lot of music stuff that goes on online. I think fans like to know that they’ve got contact with the people they’re listening to. You know, it feels a lot more real now. I think being online is just a thing you have do now if you’re an artist.

Do you think it’s important to be personal then? Yeah, I think that you don’t have to but I think it’s a really nice thing to do. It’s nice to be able to go out and say thank you to the fans that are buying your music.

You rose very quickly with your feature on the John Lewis advert. How was that experience on a personal level? Was that quite surprising? Well kind of - it was over and done with and I’d finished recording. I knew about it for a very long time before I was allowed to let anyone know about it, but it was kind of like it came around twice.

Where did you get most of the writing for your first album done? I wrote a lot of my stuff at home, but I go to Hertfordshire sometimes to write music with my friends there. I wrote some of it up in Aylesbury, where I produced the album. I kind of wrote everywhere, all the time.

Why is the album called English Rain? It was just a lyric from one of the songs. We had it as an idea and then we did the photo shoot for the album cover and we ended up choosing the umbrella shot. Then we were putting the last touches on the album, with all the strings, and all the arrangements have this kind of English, wartime feel. That’s kind of where it came from.

Are you excited about supporting John Mayer in Denmark in the upcoming months? Yes! Well I don’t quite believe it’s actually happening. I saw that he was doing a show and I said well, we should ask… Shall we just ask him? Surely you know his agent? Of course they were like “Yeah, alright then…” but then he said yes! It was very, very strange and quick how it all happened. Yeah I’m so excited, you can probably tell.

How’s life on the road? I really enjoy being on tour, I mean I haven’t really done a tour on this scale in Europe, or an arena tour, so that’s going to be really different. That’s going to be an experience.

What’s the best venue you’ve played? Um, I don’t really know. I love Koko in London. I’ve played loads of weird places as well; I’ve done gigs for parties, like I did something at the top of the Gherkin in London and that was quite fun.

In the light of the Bastille collaboration on Dreams, is there anything like that coming in the future? Nothing’s planned, but I really want to. I’d be really interested in working with an artist that’s completely different, maybe like a dance thing or something like that.

Are you planning a second album now or just focusing on the tour? Well we’re going to do this tour but I think there’s one more single from this album before we start thinking about the second one. I’m always writing though, so I’m sure that stuff that’s already been written will end up on the second album.

Final question, who have you been listening to lately that you’d recommend? Hudson Taylor are really good. And I really like Lorde at the moment - her new single’s really great.