I tend to think about love, most of the time. Whether it's falling in love, falling out of love. I find that love, I know it's ridiculously cliché, but I find it fascinating.

When I'm not in love with a woman, I'm thinking about her a lot, like I wish I were. So, that comes up a lot in my songs because it's on my brain. It's universal, obviously.

Someone told me, I don't know if it's true, that 90% of all Beatles songs have the word love in them. They're my favourite band. Obviously, they didn't write just about love.

I'm not a religious person, I'd say I'm more spiritual than religious. I think all the major religions are rooted in love. As corny and cliché as it sounds, that's what I'm all about. When I play shows and meet fans, I try to meet as many as I can.

What keeps me touring, and travelling, are people coming up to me and saying that they broke up with their partner and they listened to my record and it helped them. That really is what keeps me going.

-You mentioned The Beatles. What other acts are an influence on your songwriting?
Bob Dylan is, in my mind, the greatest songwriter ever. The best duo would be Lennon and McCartney. Paul Simon is a huge influence. Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty. Classic stuff.

I'm not throwing out anyone that you're not going to know of. I don't listen to a tonne of music. I've never been that person - whether it's music, art or literature - who goes and seeks out to the art that no-one really knows, the underground stuff.

Maybe I'm a little more safe about it. I don't know whether that's good or bad, but I always tend to like the classic stuff that stands the test of time.

There are some new acts that I think are really great for music in general, like Adele and Mumford and Sons. It's almost like music's coming back on the radio. Any musician loves to see musicians like that break through and have worldwide success. Musicians who write their own songs, play instruments, and can do it just as well live.

There's so many acts on the radio that don't write songs, play instruments or sing live. It's so nice when you see people like that play live. It's inspiring, it makes you feel like the world is ready for some real music.

-Do you prefer the live side to being in the studio?
I think I do. I started really late. I would never consider myself a real guitar player. I just know some chords to get around on a guitar, and write songs. I love writing lyrics and melody. I don't play any other instruments.

I once watched Ryan Adams record an entire record in one night. He played all the instruments, all he had was an engineer. That was incredibly inspiring, I was so envious.

I wish I could do that! I didn't grow up playing music, so what am I going to do? I'm playing catch-up all the time with guys like that.

-Early in your career, you had songs featured on shows like Scrubs, and then films. How much has that helped you?
It's helped, career-wise, enormously. If you listen to my songs, I think most record companies would've heard the first record and thought...why should we pick this up?

It's a bedroom, intimate acoustic record that they would never have a Top 40 radio hit on.

The fact that music supervisors for TV shows, films and adverts wanted to use my songs was just another way of getting my music out there. It was worldwide.

I could go to Australia and sell out huge concerts without even having a record released in the country, just because people had heard it, looked it up online and passed it to their friends. It's a total word of mouth thing.

What's cool about that is that when someone is watching a TV show or movie, and they hear a bit of your song in the background, and they remember a lyric and Google it themselves, they feel a little more ownership of the music.

They feel like they've found me rather than some huge corporation shoving me down their throat. Even though I'm on a major record label, when people hear about you that way, it's almost like "Oh, I heard about you in a way that I'll love you forever".

That's what people tell me at shows, at least. They always say they found me. They got back from the movie theatre and looked me up online, and then listened to my music. Then they'll come to a show, and we'll meet. It's more intimate that way.

-What are your plans now, past the album release?
Just to tour round. That's as simply as I can put it, I guess. I'll just keep playing music for people as long as they want to hear it.

In this day and age, so few people buy music anymore. To have a record company even investing any money in you, to send you around to promote the record and touring, things like that, is so rare.

I feel so fortunate. Everyone always thinks there's this great battle between the artists and record companies.

Maybe there is, maybe that's the way it was back in the day. Nowadays, there's so little money to be made in the sale of music.

I feel so lucky that I have any sort of business partners funding me going around and playing songs for people. So, that's what I'm going to do as long as they let me.

Female First - Alistair McGeorge

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