| Paolo Nutini "Musically where I'm at, I don't really have a genre or style that I feel a part of," explains Paolo. "I skip from Djhango Reinhart to Cab Calloway to Canned Heat. It's a bit of a random mish mash. I honestly wanted it all to come out, and not harness it, not manipulate it. I just wanted it to be organic, and so immediate it's in your face and you can't help but take it all in." Paolo's musical journey has been quite unique. He recalls hearing The Drifters "When My Little Girl is Smiling" aged five: "I was just looking at the CD player, and I'm so happy. Nobody's tickling me, nobody's making me laugh, I'm just happy." It was all downhill from there. "I latched onto singing as the one thing I could do." He dropped out of school at 16, singing, roadieing and working as a studio engineer. He moved to London and signed to Atlantic Records in 2005, shortly after his 18th birthday. "The first album there was a lot of angst. I was very naive. I thought I was on top of the whole thing but I really didnt know what I was getting into." He had written songs "like a diary" about splitting up with his teenage sweetheart, Teri, but in the middle of recording he ran into her in a bar. "It was two years on and we've been together ever since. I had to go and record these songs when she was back in the frame. It was bizarre. I had that relief, while singing about wanting relief. This album is a more positive record. Any of the conflict is now in me, looking at myself, deciding who I really am. Everything I thought I knew I was and where I thought I was going just seems to be opened up completely. It's a whole new playground again. There's a feeling of freedom."
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