John Newman ignores pop music "trends".
John Newman at the BMI London Awards
The 25-year-old singer doesn't worry about being fashionable compared to other artists in the charts and just wants to focus on making the best songs he can.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz at the BMI Awards on Monday night (19.10.15) at London's Dorchester Hotel - where he was honoured with an award for his hits 'Love Me Again' and 'Blame' - he shared: "I'm not a trend person. I don't like anything with a gimmicky lyric. (I like) The Rolling Stones through to Major Lazor through to the Arctic Monkeys through to Brookes Brothers or Chase and Status. I listen to anything as long as it's actually good. And I just focus on writing songs that work for me."
The 'Come and Get It' hitmaker released his second studio album 'Revolve' last week - which includes a dramatic intro voiced by his pal Idris Elba - and despite hinting he's ready to build a record label to develop other artists, he's promised he won't give up on writing his own hits any time soon.
He explained: "That's important to me, to stick to my priorities. I'm a good man at choosing my priorities. I take so much interest in my career in terms of marketing and timings and everything so I'm not stopping at all in terms of music. The success of this new record 'Revolve', the reaction to it shows that - not in an egotistical way - I shouldn't be stopping being a singer any time soon."
Elsewhere, Sam Smith won the the Song of the Year prize at the ceremony, while the highlight of the evening came when BMI Icon Award winner and 10CC frontman Graham Gouldman duetted with British songstress Lisa Stansfield.
The pair sang a beautiful acoustic rendition of 10CC hit 'I'm Not In Love' and speaking prior to the performance, Graham credited The Beatles for sparking his passion in music as a teenager.
He said: "They still are (my inspiration). For me they're what I aspire to do and it's slightly pathetic that I was doing that as a young teenager and I'm still doing that now. I'm obviously not a young teenager any more!"
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