Emeli Sandé recently spoke to The Quietus about the idea behind her new single, 'Next To Me'. When asked if it was about music or men, she explained: "I wanted to talk about a real type of love [on 'Next To Me']. I’ve never been the type of girl that is interested in hanging out with boys or what their opinions of me are or anything like that because what I really love is having something that is stable and that I know is [there for me] unconditionally..."
She continued: "So it could be about my partner or it could be about my dad or my uncle. There are some great men in my life that are always there for me, my manager [Adrian Sykes] for example, I’ve been with him for eight years. So what I really value in life is loyalty and stability and that’s what I wanted to write about."
Discussing her lyrical inspirations, Emeli said: "Usually songs come from a discussion. I love it when people challenge me or make me look at something in a different way. If people phrase something in a way that I’d never considered before. Like with ‘Heaven’, my friend just said, ‘Oh you’ve just got to keep your heart clean.’ And I’d never heard someone refer to being good as keeping your heart clean or the image of a heart being dirty. But I love poetry and I read a lot. I love how one word can change a sentence and it’s almost like a science putting it all together, making it mean something but still in a simple way."
As the interview progressed, Ms Sandé was asked which artists get the most slack from the public and the media, and her sympathies went to a certain pop star: "Cher Lloyd would be the first name to pop into my head because I wanted to work with her, because she had this soul and you could tell that she needs music to be part of her life. She needs it as a form of expression and she needs it more than most people I’ve met. She had a real hunger for it and she was a really lovely girl. And she’s had really horrible press and I don’t think it’s fair. She’s young, she’s ambitious and she just wants to make music."
Read the rest of the interview: H E R E
Words: Maz Khan (@MazHalima)
Online editing: Joseph 'JP' Patterson (@Jpizzledizzle)
