I'd say it's harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you.
Especially for my first album, I struggled with even the thought of being a solo artist.
Spotify stresses me the hell out.
The word 'album' makes you nervous, especially 'debut album.'
I just think I have too much anxiety to listen to music. Sometimes it feels like noise, and sometimes it's so affecting that I can't recover from it.
I always did music privately as a hobby, I think partly because I was nervous to do it in front of other people.
I'm afraid of a cappella. I don't read music, and I have a hard time harmonizing. Basically, I'm a melody singer only.
In most multiple composer situations, you find it because someone got nervous about the music and insisted that somebody else come in and help.
For me there's insecurity when you're releasing an album because you spend all of this time working on that one thing and then once it's done, it's done. After you put it out there to the public you never know which songs are going to work or even if the album is going to work as a whole so there is a little bit of nervousness around predicting what the numbers will be and if it's going to be well-received.
Every artist has a moment where they think about quitting music for a moment because it's scary.
It's not so much that I don't enjoy playing live - that's one of the best parts of playing music - it's that it's nerve-racking with 300, 500 people watching.
The honest truth is that it was just traumatizing with the piano, with the authority of the piano teacher, getting rapped across the knuckles, and so whenever you put a piece of music in front of me, there's a Pavlovian reaction where it starts off.
Solo concerts are murder, I find; I don't like doing them.
At every concert I've sensed a certain insecurity about the tempo. It's clearly marked 80...uh, 69.
Nobody plans on playing their own songs in front of thousands of people.
I hated singing and getting up in front of crowds.
I'm not going to play gigs as Jamie xx. I'm just going to DJ. I'm not comfortable performing my songs on a stage. It's not something I think I'm particularly good at.
I'd say it's harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you. After all these years, I still get nervous in front of people. I can't help it.
I love music, I love to sing, but I am terrified of singing in public.
