The singer answers your questions on the time she met Nelson Mandela, working with East 17, stopping work for 11 years and Bob Dylan loving her using his music
In 1993, my best friend and his father died in a car crash. I was 16, and it was hard to take. Your song Dreams seemed to help us make some sense of it. What inspired you to write it? TopperJK
It started as a poem about how every time I took a step closer to my dreams of singing and writing songs, they seemed to move further out of my grasp. There were various incidents. When I was singing covers in a club someone told me I’d never amount to anything more. When I was unemployed a guy saw that my middle name was Gabrielle and said: “I can’t imagine that name in lights, can you?” People said I couldn’t be a star with a lazy eyelid. So it was about being down to me whether I was going to sink or swim. Did I believe their negativity or did I believe in myself? I’m sad to hear that story, but I’m glad you were able to find some kind of solace in the song.
Rise – the song and the whole album – were so uplifting they got me through a very dark period. What inspired you? ddhillon365
My life had fallen apart because of a certain highly publicised event that saw me disappearing for a while. So that song was about that association being over and the album was my return to the industry. The song’s about hope and hanging in there through dire situations, sung by someone who lived to tell the tale. When I sing it now, it’s almost like it isn’t about me, because I can’t believe I was where I was. The song was written with Ferdy Unger-Hamilton, who signed me, and Ollie Dagois. Ferdy was a huge Bob Dylan fan and presented me with the music from Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. I wrote over the chords and unbeknownst to me it was sent to Bob Dylan, who loved it. I’m eternally grateful and proud that such a legend allowed us to use it because we didn’t plagiarise it and I like to think we did him justice. I didn’t get any threatening letters from people saying, “What have you done to Bob?!”
