La Roux has always preferred quality over quantity.
The 'Bulletproof' singer - whose real name is Elly Jackson - explained she is a person who would much rather spend "three months" on a project and make it perfect, rather than rush just to get more work done at a much lower standard, and admitted she was even like that at school.
She told the Sunday Times newspaper's Culture magazine: "I was the person that would spend three months on one drawing. Everybody else would be handing in tons of coursework, and I'd be like, 'Look, this drawing is amazing'.
"And they'd say, 'But Elly, you're supposed to have handed in another 10 pages of this'. 'Yeah? But this one thing I'm handing in is, like, way better than the rest of the class.' "
She has carried this belief into her musical career, and as she prepares for the release of 'Trouble in Paradise' - the follow-up to 2009's self-titled debut - she is still happy to take her time.
She added: "Time doesn't really mean anything these days. We're already half-way through 2014, and what have most people achieved?
"It took us two and a half years to make this record, but I'm like, 'Do you know what? Two and a half years ain't very long' ... We'd say something [to the label] like, 'We've only done three songs'.
"And then one of us would go, 'Yeah, but they sound really great'. I don't understand how people do it quicker, though ... It's almost like you can hear the panic in them."
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