I like playing with light and shade. I like saying awful things in very pretty ways.

I've definitely received a lot of support in Nashville; it's a huge music town. I like country music. Like any genre I'm largely unfamiliar with, there are elements I really enjoy and elements that go over my head.

By the time I was in my teens, I was listening to Delta blues and jazz.

I think marriage is a scary concept. It's a scary concept for anybody. I'm not sure where I sit with that.

I had just discovered jazz, and I started singing in a kind of blues cover band at the age of 15. We called ourselves - it was a terrible name - the Blue Zoots. We couldn't actually get our hands on zoot suits, nor did we dress in blue. We did covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and kind of Blues Brothers repertoire stuff.

I look at all good things with a bit of a dark lens, I suppose, especially with something like love.

I was essentially raised on blues music. My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.

I think it is important to differentiate between lip service towards something and actually making change.

I'm not cross about the idea of baptism; I just think the idea that when a child is born it is inherently sinful and carries sin and needs to be cleaned in order for it to be all right and all good with its creator, I just think that's an absurd notion.

You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.

I think all that we would know of America back home is foreign policy, and maybe the snippets of the madness of political culture.

The public discourse online is not done through the polite language of debate.

When you play to an audience, you come away energized. It's the promo that really breaks an artist. Some lad sitting on a box trying to create a drum sound in a dry little studio. Everyone goes, 'Great - okay, now on with my day.' You go back to the bus, and you weep.

Anyone close to me will be familiar with my frustrations with certain aspects of social media: the behaviour it encourages and attitudes towards the self it can breed.

There are a few Irish writers who have a very strong influence on me, especially on the 'Take Me to Church' EP.

I didn't know what to expect of real America. What shocked me was the diversity of it and how different every city is. But also just how polite and usually good-willed and optimistic most Americans are.

It's a very, very interesting experience to be talking to people who are such icons in their own right. When Adele came to a show, I was just talking to her, and at the time, I thought, 'I'm just having a chat with somebody.' But then I heard myself say, 'Oh, I was talking to Adele the other day,' and it's as strange as you'd imagine.

Biggest musical influences would be people like Nina Simone and Tom Waits. A huge amount of writers like Leslie Feist and Paul Simon.

I'm influenced a lot by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, even Paul Weller - Billie Holiday as well: People who wrote and sang songs that were reflective of their times. I quite like that. I quite admire that.

I love Muddy Waters and Nina Simone. I also watched 'The Blues Brothers' movie over and over.

I figured the songs wouldn't make much of a splash. I didn't think 'Take Me To Church' would play on the radio or get in the charts, and I didn't think about dealing with a global audience.

You grow up and recognize that in any educated secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognize in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.

I have a bit of a love affair with fairy tales and some of the ideas of Irish mythology, like Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats, who captured a lot of that very beautifully.

Religion wasn't imposed on me.

Certainly in the case of having to answer questions about where a song comes from, it's a hell of a lot easier when you say, 'I've removed myself from it.' But they start from quite a personal place. They always do.

You just feel like you're doing a job that you want to be doing, and then one day, somebody asks you a question like that: 'What's it like to be famous?' It doesn't really mean anything. The only difference is some people stop you and ask you for photographs.

I think it's very hard to write things about being joyful. I find that quite difficult. I think when you're happy, you don't want to write songs; you just want to enjoy being happy.

Growing up, I always saw the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. The history speaks for itself, and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words.

It's kind of strange to hear your songs sung back to you! You get a big insight into what people connect to, what's moving to people or what songs people are really into.

There was a moment, a few weeks after I signed, that it actually hit me. I was signed to a major label.

A lot of the 'leave' campaign was centered around a thinly veiled xenophobia, just 'control our own borders.' It's not a good look. I don't think it represents Britain; I don't think it represents the U.K. all too well. It breaks my heart for my generation in Britain who are going to suffer.