Imogen Heap: We're making a horrendous job of existing. Maybe AI is the next stage of evolution'

"Back then if you were lucky you got into NME or i-D magazine. The only real coverage I got was in the techie music mags, but then Hide and Seek was in The OC, Headlock got on the radio and I started getting recognition. If only we could have had TikTok and all this free promotion 20 years ago but if I'd received then the kind of attention I get now, I might have made different life choices, so I wouldn't have changed anything."

"I spent four years making an album in [the electronic duo] Frou Frou on Island Records, but it never recouped so I never saw a penny. Making another album with that label would have felt like taking your best dress back to the dry cleaners after they burned it. After I got out of that deal, no bank would lend me any money."

"I met Jeff when I was 19 at a songwriting camp in [the Police manager] Miles Copeland's castle in the Dordogne. I was much younger than everybody else and socially awkward so I got pretty drunk. I was sitting outside playing guitar very badly to myself and Jeff said: Let me show you some shapes. I said: Wow, you're good! Later that night I ended up drunkenly driving a golf caddy around the estate and crashing into Miles's mum's prized terracotta pots."

Imogen Heap remortgaged her two-bedroom Waterloo flat to finance Speak For Yourself after a failed Frou Frou deal that left her without bank backing. Early coverage was limited to niche music magazines, but placements—such as Hide and Seek in The OC and Headlock on radio—brought recognition. She managed creation, advertising and marketing largely on her own and avoided changing past choices despite wishing for modern social platforms earlier. Recent TikTok attention repopularised Headlock and produced her first Frou Frou royalties after 25 years. She met and was mentored by Jeff Beck at a songwriting camp when she was 19.

Read at www.theguardian.com