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Presenter: Hello, everybody, and here we are with our weekly programme, Five Minutes with a Star. Today in our studio we have Eva James, a world-famous singer, songwriter, and pianist. A classically-trained pianist, Eva started composing songs when she was 12, and signed her first contract when she was only 15 years old. Good afternoon, Eva!

Eva James: Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure being here.

Presenter: When you entered the music industry, you were only a teen. Was it hard for you?

Eva James: When I first started in the world of music, it was such a shock for me. It was a totally different world. In a lot of ways, I started to think that I had to be perfect, look perfect, sound perfect, and say perfect phrases. The entertainment industry is particularly judgmental.

Presenter: How did you cope with that?

Eva James: Well, at some point I just realized that there is a lot of judgment in the world. We judge each other at school. We judge each other at work. We compete. Now we’ve got social media, and we have to look at everybody judging us, telling us what they think about us and what they don’t like about us. You just grow up and realize that everybody’s opinion doesn’t matter. You just start to care less.

Presenter: You’ve just released your new album. What is it about?

Eva James: In fact, my new album is partly about what we’ve just discussed. It’s about breaking out of people’s opinions of you and redefining whoever you are, and who you want to be. It’s about life as it truly is, not as how we’re made to think that it should be. It’s about imperfection, the reality of who we are as people, and celebrating that truth.

Presenter: How did you start writing songs?

Eva James: When I was young, I wrote things down just to get them out of my head, almost to make space – because I haven’t always been so good at communicating one-to-one. So, I’d always have to write it down first and kind of understand it and then be able to talk about it. I needed to get it out of myself, out of my mind, out of my heart, out of my way – to understand it. I guess that started the ball rolling.

Presenter: Does it mean that most of your songs are very personal?

Eva James: Of course, a lot of my songs are about the things that I personally have wanted to talk about and get off my own chest. I’m not afraid to be emotional. In fact, I believe that strong people are the ones who are in touch with their emotions and their feelings. Such people can just cry at the drop of a dime, because they relate so much to someone else’s pain. I think you rob yourself of life, and rob yourself of your own experience when you don’t let yourself feel whatever it is that you feel.

Presenter: How does it feel to be a woman in the entertainment industry today?

Eva James: I speak to a lot of businesswomen and I find that they do feel very held back. It seems to me that there’s some fear about allowing us as women to rise, to go to the next level. And obviously there are still so many issues with equal pay scales and equality, and I find that pretty crazy, because obviously the more diversity there is, the stronger the business. But unfortunately, a lot of people are very archaic in their thinking, so I think that there is still that challenge. You still have to work extra hard, harder than a man would, you still have to prove yourself more. It’s very frustrating, but I also do know that this is the time of the woman – and if you don’t know it, you’d better start to get it, because otherwise you’re going to get left behind. So, I do definitely see an improvement in the world in that sense.

Presenter: Thank you very much, Eva. It has been very interesting talking to you.

Eva James: Thank you.

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