Joe McElderry is writing an album of his own songs.
Joe McElderry
The 27-year-old singer rose to fame when he won 'The X Factor' in 2009 and has released five studio albums to date, but the star has now revealed he'd like his sixth project to be made up of "self-written material" that's penned over the years but hasn't had the chance to release yet.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Joe said: "I'm planning my next album at the moment. I've been in the studio doing some songwriting myself, so I'd like the record to be based on my own material. When my tour finished in two weeks' time I'm going straight to work on that. To be honest I've written a lot of my own songs over the years and I haven't actually released many of them so I have a huge back catalogue of self-written material that I really would like to get out there."
The 'Dance With My Father' hitmaker already performs some of the songs he's written when he's out on the road, and says playing them on stage helps him to gauge which ones get the best reaction from his fans.
He added: "When I'm on tour I do sing some of these songs and introduce them to my fans before it has been released or is out there. I find you get a real test for a song by playing it live to an audience. There's no motive behind it other than to test if an audience likes it and you can tell that by an audience's reaction.
"There's a song I've been performing on tour called 'Hollywood'. I've been singing that and the audience have been loving it so I really want to put that out. It's an uptempo, feel good summer pop song."
Joe gets his inspiration for songwriting from strange places, including train journeys, and says he can't force his talent.
He said: "If I've gone through something I feel I can get inspiration from then I'll write about that.
"Other times I could be sat on a train or somewhere and I'll start singing and record into my phone, I get a few strange looks from people - they think I'm going crazy! But I'll sing lines into voice notes on my phone. But I'm one of these people who has really got to be in the mood to write songs, sometimes I can't do it for months and months and months and then I can do it for weeks and weeks, then I don't want to do it for months again. I try to not to force it. I hope I don't lose my phone, or someone hacks my iCloud and steals all my ideas."
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