Anne-Marie reveals how therapy helped her during lockdown

Anne-Marie has said seeing a therapist during lockdown “honestly changed my life” after she found herself in a “really bad place”.

The Essex-raised pop star, 30, recently released her second album, titled Therapy, reaching number two in the charts, a personal best after her debut Speak Your Mind went to number three in 2018.

Appearing on Sunday Brunch on Channel 4, she addressed how a combination of professional help and making music aided her during the pandemic.

She said: “Beyond music being therapy for a lot of people and helping people through situations and all that, I went through a really bad place during lockdown and just had to speak to someone. There was just no other option. I decided to speak to a therapist.”

She added: “I actually tried out a therapist about three years ago, or two years ago, and I didn’t really feel a connection. So, I think the second time around when I felt really low I was like, ‘Well, I have tried it before’.

“That was the thing I thought first of all. Then my manager was like, ‘It might just be the wrong person’, so I tried again and luckily met this woman and she has honestly changed my life – changed my brain.”

Anne-Marie has been open about her mental health struggles including severe anxiety which at one time stopped her from leaving her house.

She added: “Before I found an actual therapist writing was that for me, because I had never wrote a diary at night, I never told anyone how I feel really and without even realising I was putting it into music.”

The star also explained how her collaboration with close friends Little Mix on the single Kiss My (Uh Oh) came about.

“I feel that was a collaboration that everyone was asking for for years,” she said.

“Whenever we would see each other at festivals and stuff like that we would talk about having this collaboration and we tried for so long, sending songs back and forth and we never really found one.

“As I was putting the song list together for this album Kiss My (Uh Oh) was a solo song and I just listened to it and I was like, ‘No, they need to be on it’.

“So I sent it to them and luckily they loved it and then they recorded it, made it better and it became a single.”