The first time the singer-songwriter Birdy was interviewed, she didn’t speak. Her heart-wrenching piano cover of the American band Bon Iver’s song Skinny Love had hit the charts in 2011, making her an international star aged 14, and she was very shy. “I was just asked a question and I didn’t respond,” Birdy, now 27, says, laughing about that day. “It took a long time to learn how to do them. That was the hardest thing for me.”
Birdy found fame on YouTube. It was very quick — she uploaded a video that was noticed by a record label, then Skinny Love amassed hundreds of millions of views, and her first album, Birdy, reached No 1 in numerous countries. Four more albums have followed
