"I had it in my head that, because I was a girl with a guitar, I had to write songs about my ex-boyfriends. Maybe on the piano if I was feeling particularly sentimental. I was almost too scared to do anything else."
Fear, you feel, is no longer an issue for Gabrielle Aplin. For some, the notion of making a deeply personal record would be a frightening prospect. For the 23-year-old singer-songwriter, the major hurdle to clear when it came to recording Light Up The Dark, her sophomore album, was turning the lens outwards.
“I guess I dropped my ego a bit,” she reflects. “My first album was written when I was 19; it’s not too long ago, but as someone who hadn’t released anything before that I was really, really young. I felt like it had to be about me, and I didn’t think my fans would like anything otherwise. But when I started pushing myself a little bit, I realised I have a strong fanbase regardless; it left me feeling free for this album. It was a big step for me, realising that I didn’t have to write about myself; having toured for a year and a half, I had plenty of other things to write about.”
The result is an album which revels in a boldness and confidence which was not nearly as evident on her debut, English Rain. As the title might suggest, there’s a rich vein of contrast and juxtaposition running through the record, as well as a sound far meatier than the delicate acoustic style of her previous work.
“That also ties into dropping the ego,” she points out. “I was obsessed with playing everything on the first album. That, obviously, meant I couldn’t record it live, whereas with this album we did.”
The record’s genesis lies from when Gabby crashed the London pad of her friend, Luke Potashnick of The Temperance Movement. Fresh from touring with the Rolling Stones, he had plenty of rocking ideas for the record. As it turns out, there were plenty of ideas waiting to emerge from Gabby’s head, too.
“All I wanted to do was go in and see what happened,” she admits. “But I ended up in there for the rest of the year. It meant there wasn’t a situation where I wrote a bunch of songs, and the label said, ‘Right, you have 13, let’s record them’. Instead, we would write a song, have some lunch, record it, and then repeat the next day. It was amazing going in with nothing, and having a song by the end of the day.”
With the finished product now on the shelves, thoughts have turned to touring – first, a UK and Ireland jaunt in the New Year, with sights set further afield too.
“I’ve been to Japan and Australia with the first album, so I hope we can get back there. I’ve seen a lot of love online from South America, and I’d love to go there too.”
Wherever the road might take her, it certainly holds no fear.
“A lot of people ask whether I’m nervous about this album not being as successful as the last one,” she reveals. “No! I think it’s exciting that I might release something that everyone here might hate, but everyone in, say Japan, loves.”
She giggles: “And anyway, I could always just do another one...”