Jack Garratt

I've purposely made my music to be challenging and different. There's some electronics, R&B, blues, Motown, country, jazz and lots of soul.

When I was a kid and writing more acoustic songs, I was doing it more for the attention than for the love of the music. I knew I needed to change something because I wasn't having fun and wasn't liking the songs I was writing.

I would go to school and try to talk to my mates about music and playing instruments and stuff, and they would turn around and go, 'What're you talking about? Shut up.' And I realised that I was the weird one.

I had a passion and a soul in me that was screaming to be heard, and I had to let them out in as honest and challenging a way as I could.

I find it hard to not like music if it has passion behind it and good integrity. Only if it's made for the wrong reasons and shows a lack of respect for its audience will I find something to dislike.

I genre-hop quite a lot. I love manipulating genre and deconstructing it and making it irrelevant. Genreless music is great because it means you get to write in any genre that you like.

I got to a point when I was 20 that I dropped out of university because I felt I didn't have any purpose, and I wanted to find a fire in me.

Festivals are the best because you can't control anything, and for a control freak like me, that's a wonderful experience.

I spent 19, 20 years of my life being terrified about what I looked like. I was a ginger white kid.

Winning the BBC Music Sound Of 2016 poll has left me feeling pretty stunned at the end of one of the most emotionally and physically intense years of my life.

I remember listening to 'Songs In The Key Of Life' as a kid. Stevie Wonder has an ability to manipulate pop into something globally obtainable. Anyone can listen and enjoy it because there's something for everyone. That woke me up to the possibilities of pop music.

Music has always been part of my family's life. My brother, sister, and I all have the same ability to pick up an instrument and play.