Paloma Faith has candidly revealed she was left feeling a shadow of her former self as she poured the heartbreak of her recent split into her latest album.
The singer, 42, split from husband Leman Lahcine last year after nearly a decade together. The couple share two children, which, by her own admission, has made speaking about the split even worse.
But, speaking about her new album during a radio interview, she confessed that her latest album is by far her "most personal" music to date. She said: "I feel emaciated and it’s because I’ve had around 700 break ups in 12 months."
She told Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2: "It’s due to my new single. It’s all for the art, it’s like 'what does a breakup feel like again?'" At the time of her shock split, Paloma had remained silent but now she appears ready to explain how her heartache had an impact on her life.
The singer went on to add: "When there’s kids involved you can’t just go out there and talk in interviews like you would in the past. I used to go out there and be like 'yeah, this guy is a real awful man' you can’t do that because there’s children and you have to build a relationship and we have to work something out. Our family is still our family but it’s changed shape and I still feel kind of protective of it."
Pop icon joins Katy Perry and Take That to 'perform at King Charles' Coronation'She went on to explain to listeners the reason behind her title of her sixth studio album, The Glorification Of Sadness. She said: "That title came about because it’s all about that feeling when you get to a really low point and you’re like 'what am I going to do with this?' It was the first time in my life that I’ve ever felt like I might need some help. I’m not very good at asking for help and I’m a bit of a brave face person.
"I got myself to a low point where I thought 'I’m a bit worried, it doesn’t feel like I can get out of it'. As I was writing this music and thought I’ve got to wear it like a badge of honour so it’s glorifying a tragic moment – which is essentially what you do as an artist when you put your work out there, you make your tragedy into commodity, it’s quite sort of sick and twisted."
Paloma married Leyman in 2017 after dating for four years and, just two years before, he told Glass magazine that he loved living in London because that was where he met "the love of my life." But last August, the couple felt unable to make their relationship work. The pair didn't officially announce their split but the hitmaker revealed for the first time that she was a "single mum", confirming they had parted ways earlier this year.
And during that time she described the year as being "s**t" and went on to describe herself as a "broken woman." But this is not the first time that Paloma has publicly spoken about her breakup. Earlier this month while on ITV's Lorraine, she confessed to feeling "alone" at times. She said: "[This is the] first time I'm promoting music about an experience I'm still in. I'm not really doing much acting just literally on set crying, 'have I done the right thing'."
She added: "My album which is due out next year chronicles all the stages of grief from any loss, you know. It doesn't take much for me to tune into those feelings. When you've got kids with someone it's a completely different story. It's still our family it's just a different shape to what it was before.You know at night when you're on your own, your kids have gone to bed and its silent in the night, you're just sitting there and you're like, it can be really... alone."