“I remember in 2016 when I got signed to my record label Good Soldier, ...” — Freya Ridings Quote

I remember in 2016 when I got signed to my record label Good Soldier, which is a very small indie label. They took a big risk on me because ballads were the furthest thing from cool at the time.

All my songs are based on personal experience, and 'Lost Without You' came out fully born.

I heard that your subconscious is on the right side. I always shut my right eye when I play, or both eyes. I feel like you go to a deeper place in your subconscious, and you tell the stories that are more deeply within you.

Going to school, sort of not realising that caring about things was going to make me stand out and make me weird, and I think also being a redhead and being tall, bigger than the other kids... Anything that makes you different at school makes you a target.

I am a balladeer. People fall in love to ballads, and that is what makes the world go round.

I'm a great lover of ballads.

I get to work a lot of times in nightclubs and large theaters, so I wanted to make music that is fun to perform in those settings. But I also wanted to contrast it with really serious, sincere ballads.

I do sing ballads, but I'm not a balladeer. I'm not the next Celine Dion.

I've been fascinated over the years by the way refrains work. Think, say, of the refrains in Yeats' ballads. Ideally, each time the refrain comes back in a poem, it is both the same and different. It works by counterpoint and reiteration. It accrues meaning.