Celeste is planning to spend 2020 focusing on “writing as much music as possible and getting bigger and bigger”.
From 8pm tonight (February 5), BBC Radio 1 will celebrate new music with its Sound Of 2020 broadcast featuring performances recorded at Maida Vale Studios.
Celeste – who starred on the cover of Music Week’s New Music Special last month alongside Maisie Peters – was crowned the winner of the BBC’s annual poll, and we caught up with the singer again at Maida Vale.
Since our cover interview, which took place on the day she found out she’d won the BRITs Rising Star Award, the buzz around the Brighton singer has intensified. But, she told us, she’s not feeling any extra pressure.
“It’s not really pressure, but I guess there is a heightened expectation compared to my musical peers now,” she said. “It’s just something to strive and live up to.”
The singer is looking forward to a sold-out show at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire in April, and said the work isn’t going to stop there.
“I’d like to do a Brixton Academy, that would be really cool,”: she said. “We’ve just sold out Shepherd’s Bush and that’s my first show of my own that’s to over a thousand people.”
“It’s about just trying to be yourself, you have to work really hard,” she continued. “The most important thing is writing as much music as possible.”
Released on Polydor, Celeste’s new single Stop This Flame has racked up 2,618,525 streams on Spotify since its release last month. She said her days growing up in Brighton served as inspiration for what she’s doing now.
“There was such an abundance of young people making music and I found that really encouraging to see them do well. On a local level there’s a singer called Alice Russell who everyone in Brighton knows, and she’s amazing,” she said. “I met her once when I was younger because she came into my mum’s work and gave me her CD. Seeing people doing it whether loads of people take notice or not was really inspiring.”
Subscribers can read our Celeste cover story in full here. To subscribe and never miss a music biz story, click here.
Interview: Sarah Thomas
PHOTO: BBC
