Laura Mvula not a good pop star

Laura Mvula doesn’t think she’s a good pop star.

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter narrowly missed out on winning a Mercury prize last year after James Blake claimed the honour and she’s now in the running to receive a best British Breakthrough Act prize at the upcoming BRIT Awards, but she still doesn’t think she’s a very good pop star.

She told the Independent on Sunday’s The New Review: ”I’m still very shy, and very private. Being a pop star is something I don’t think I’m very good at. I’m worried it’s making me too paranoid, because all of a sudden, life has become this constant assessment.

”When you put something out there and people get to hear it, then those people react to it, socially, culturally.”

The ‘Green Garden’ hitmaker – who only eighteen months ago was still working as a receptionist at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – has also found it hard to adjust to her fame and doesn’t like being the focus of people’s attention.

She explained: ”Nowadays, whenever I sit down with someone, or I see someone I haven’t seen for a long time, or even if I’m in the toilet in a restaurant, people want to stop and talk about me.

”They tell me either that they love my stuff, or quite possibly – and this has happened, at least once – that they don’t. They want to know about my hairstyle, or what I’m wearing, who I’m wearing.”