Celeste got fired over her love of music - now she's won the BBC Sound of 2020
Congratulations on winning the Sound Of 2020. How does it feel?
There's an element of heightened expectation, potentially. You really want to make sure you live up to it but, ultimately, it's really encouraging to know you're on the right track.
What do you hope it will do for your career?
Hopefully it'll mean more people will hear my music. At the moment, there are people listening to it - but it's not, like, everyone in England, so I hope that will widen out.
Let's go right back to the beginning... What were you into as a kid?
All sorts of things. I was very hyperactive and I was very much into sports, and on Saturday I'd go to ballet. The teachers there took a liking to me and they told my mum, I could go to a performing arts school on a scholarship. So I went there for a year when I was 10.
What was that like?
It was really intense, everyone was being nurtured to be a product of the school.I remember saying to my mum, "Everyone's like robots!" So I went back to normal school with my friends.
Was there a lot of music at home?
None of my family played a musical instrument - but there was such an appreciation for lyrics and melody. On a Friday night, we'd put music on and my step-dad would pick it apart, he'd be like, 'the strings in this part are nuts'. So without really thinking about it, I began to take note of those things myself.
Which artist got you hooked?
My granddad had this cherry red Jaguar, and he only had three CDs in it - but one of them was Aretha Franklin, and that's the one I remember the most.
I love her for her storytelling - just how she structures her songs and her raw delivery and her emotion. From the first note she sings, it doesn't relent. That's something I'm interested in, in any music I listen to. It just has to be really raw and real and true.
Is it true that you started collecting vinyl in your teens?
Yeah! There was a charity shop at the top of my mum's road and I used to go in there and rummage around the vinyl section. Initially, I was just interested in the artwork - I didn't even have a record player at the time!
A few years later, I got to listen to those things I'd been collecting for three years, music from the 50s and 60s like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan and Shirley Bassey, and I was like, "Woah, this sounds amazing!"
Were you already thinking you could become a singer?
Actually, at my college we were all encouraged to go to university and I started really optimistically. I took on loads of subjects - English literature, history, fine art and media studies - but then my dad passed away in the first term. I came back after that a bit bewildered and confused. I stopped working and going to classes, and I wasn't handing in my work.
My teachers were confused because I hadn't told them, or even my friends [about my dad dying]. When I finally explained, they gave me the opportunity to drop some subjects - and that's when I took up music. But most of the focus I put into that was in my own time. It wasn't in that class.
Was it hard to be creative in school?
Definitely. If you're slightly more introvert, which I was at the time, you don't necessarily want to sing in a room of 20 or 30 people.
But I had some friends who played in bands and they were like, "We've heard you can sing, do you want to come round to our house after school and try and play some stuff?" And I loved it. It was self-discovery through my friends helping me build my self-confidence.
What was your first gig?
We played a cover of Wild Wood by Paul Weller, and some other songs in a little bar underground near the seafront in Brighton. I just remember the process of being in that room and performing took over; and any nerves I had evaporated. People were surprised because they'd known me growing up but they had no idea I could sing.
Daydreaming was the song that got you noticed. When was that written?
I was actually working in a pub! It was one of the hottest days of the year and all my friends were texting me like, "We're going to the beach!" but I was stuck in work.
And there was a little side door that used to blow open sometimes; and a tiny beam of light came through and hit the stage my boss had built to the left of the bar. I started imagining what it would be like to be to be in one of those amazing concert halls of the 1930s, singing under the spotlight - which was the light coming from the door - and I started writing down the lyrics for Daydreaming.
"Another day, another wage, work again / I'll play away, I'm drifting, not listening," and those were my thoughts exactly.
Your family obviously play a big role in your music. Isn't that your mum on the artwork for She's My Sunshine?
Yes it is! That song's about her and the cover is mum in 1994 when she was pregnant with me. The other day she was like, "I've gone viral!" I was like, "I don't think so".
Father's Son also talks about growing up in a single-parent family.
Yeah, a lot of my friends grew up in similar situations, especially my male friends, and we'd been having conversations about whether they'd inherited traits from their fathers, even though they hadn't grown up in the same household.
When I met my dad for the first time as an adult, we had a very similar personality but it wasn't something witnessed and learned from him. So I thought, "Yeah, maybe I am my father's daughter".
Why do you sing "Father's Son" in the song?
I went to a football match with my friends and there was graffiti on the wall that said, "Father's Son". I remember it like a film: England had lost, and it was all smoky and there was a pandemonium on in the background - people throwing traffic cones up in the air and all this stuff. But the phrase really struck me.
Straight away I thought, "Maybe I'm my father's son, because I'm surrounded by men and I feel this affinity with them, but I'm also myself and I'm still feminine". That's why I wanted to write the song in the way I did.
Your most recent single, Strange, has taken on a life of its own.
I'm really pleased. Initially, people thought it wouldn't be easy to get it played on daytime radio, so I'm pleased I stuck to my guns.
The first time I first sang it, I got a feeling I'd be singing it a lot more...
The vocals are incredible. You're barely there, it's almost like a whisper, but it's so moving because of that.
Thanks very much! It's funny because I was actually in America when I recorded it and there were a lot of fires at the time. There was so much ash and smoke in the air that I found myself really husky, so when I went to the studio, I couldn't sing to the full extent. It made me approach singing and the chord structure in a different way. I went in with a whisper, because I was trying to be careful with my voice.
I think it's that song in particular that's earned you the Sound Of 2020 and the Brit award... so what do you have planned for the rest of the year?
I've hit the ground running in January and I'm not going to stop! I'm still working on my album and I'm aiming to complete it by the end of this year. I'm just hoping everything will align.
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