The first song I remember hearing
Eva Cassidy – ‘Songbird’
“I grew up in north London – Muswell Hill, kind of Bounds Green way… My parents love music. They come to all my shows. They can’t get enough! They used to play this around the house when I was younger.”
The first album I bought
Spice Girls – ‘Spice’
“There was a CD shop in Muswell Hill, and that’s the place I would buy all my albums. I can’t remember the name of the shop, but you could go in there they had these little [listening booths] with big headphones, and you go and listen to the CDs… It was really exciting because we didn’t have streaming so it wasn’t like you could go and listen to music anywhere.”
The first gig I went to
Spice Girls at Wembley Arena, 1998
“I was so excited. I was really young and my dad took me, my sister and her friends. I was around eight. I just remember being really small and not being able to see anything and my dad having to get me to stand in the aisle [so I could see]… Then [in 2019], I did a whole bloody stadium tour with them! It was the most mental thing ever… It came all the way back around.”
The song that reminds me of home
Aretha Franklin – ‘I Say A Little Prayer’
“I was always obsessed with it – and it reminds me of my dad, being in the front room while he’s upstairs, getting ready before friends came round.”
The song I wish I’d written
Beyoncé – ‘Halo’
“I think it’s one of the cleverest written songs… I had this same conversation a couple of years ago actually – and it’s a hard question, because there’s a lot of songs I wish I wrote… This is just one of those songs, like, when you see a performer and the lyric and the emotion [all comes together].”
The song I can’t get out of my head right now
Muni Long – ‘Made For Me’
“I don’t go on social media a lot, but for some reason I’ll open it and this is the first thing I’ll hear… I kind of love it [when my songs go viral on TikTok]. Like, Jimmy Fallon did this skit to [2015 number one single] ‘Hold My Hand’. It’s the most relived song, every freaking six months! And then there’s the Jet2 advert [which is soundtracked by ‘Hold My Hand’]. It gives the song a bit of an extra life. I actually haven’t gone on a Jet2 holiday before, but this year is gonna be the year that I do!”
The song that I can no longer listen to
Adele – ‘Set Fire To The Rain’
“It’s a good question, you know, because when I love a song, I listen to it about 100 times. So then I do get a bit bored and I have to take a break from it, but this one I’ve never been able to go back to. I think it is definitely linked to emotional baggage…”
The song that makes me want to dance
Beyoncé – ‘Pure Honey’
“It’s like the old school groove… There are two stages of the song: it’s got the first part where you’ve got the bounce and it’s makes you feel good. But then it kind of hits the drop and it just goes into this groove. I just love it. I’m always excited when it comes on… I met her and Jay-Z at a show once. She’s really, really lovely.”
The song that makes me cry
Jess Glynne – ‘Enough’
“The last time I cried I was singing this. It’s been such a journey, making this new album [Glynne’s third studio album ‘Jess’]. And that’s, like, the first song that I wrote that I knew was going to be on the album, coming up to four years ago now, which is crazy.”
The song I do at karaoke
‘Defying Gravity’ from the musical Wicked
“I love karaoke – and it’s the maddest thing because I’m really bad at it. I can never sing in tune when I’m doing karaoke… My manager loves it too. She’s obsessed with karaoke and she took us to this karaoke bar in SoHo, New York. It was so dive bar vibes. We played this and we looked at each other like, ‘Oh, my God, this is impossible to sing.’”
The song I want played at my funeral
Prince – ‘Purple Rain’
“It feels quite epic… I just want people to celebrate and have a good time. The one thing I would never want is for it to be a depressing funeral. I want colours. I want good music and good times.”
‘JESS’ is the upcoming third studio album by Jess Glynne, out on April 26 via EMI Records
