As a family, we have been very fortunate to find a happy lifestyle in this country and we feel we belong. We still consider ourselves to be Georgian,… - Katie Melua

Don't come into the music industry. It's almost inevitable that you'll psychologically be quite screwed up. Fame isn't a natural, human, behavioural thing. You get alienated. You're not really surrounded by truth.

I think I am easy to make fun of. I try not to pay too much attention. You can't let critics dictate what you do... The thing that fascinates me, is the emotion in music, the way it can make me cry or laugh or be angry. I'm not trying to be hip or cool, and I'm not scared to put everything I have into songs. Passion is the greatest thing that music can evoke. We live in a society where I think people often find it hard to express themselves, but sometimes a song can do that for you. It might not be groundbreaking, but there is something about the simplicity of presenting songs where it's all about the lyric and the melody. People don't need to get through a whole lot of production to get to the root of the song. It's just music doing what music does best... A lot of things in the mainstream are repetitive and soulless and have been churned out without any real conviction. It is really unfair to call Coldplay insufferable, when they obviously care about what they do. James [Blunt] too. Too much of the music industry is controlled by lawyers and businessmen, making music like it's a product on the factory line. That's what I call insufferable.

When I was 14 or 15 I was into the whole Spice Girls and I was a huge fan, but two years ago I heard The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and I was like - fucking hell, I've been born in the wrong bloody decade!