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I have been long associated with British music. I have favoured it as my alternate music next to American.

We didn't really expect to achieve anything outside of the UK, and it just went crazy. It's just crazy that people know our music. We're just humbled by it.

My music was typically continental - nothing like, say, The Beatles.

A lot of new genres were being born at the time I started going out to clubs in South London, and I was part of an exciting movement that has now blown up around the world.

When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation.

I have always felt an excellent rapport ever since my very first concert in Britain at Hampton Court. I have always felt understood. The British understand opera very well.

After school I moved to London to get involved in music. I took the whole thing very seriously.

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.

But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.