SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER <strong>2018</strong> | <strong>2018</strong> ISSUE | ISSUE #71 | #71 GABRIELLE R: One of my favourite songs is ‘Rise’, you probably hear that all of the time? No, I love that, I never take that for granted. A lot of the time people pick out my favourites anyway. So I am happy ‘Rise’ is your favourite. R: Do you have a favourite song to perform? Right, I’ve got a few, ‘Rise’ is definitely one of them, I love the response. I also love ‘Sunshine’ and ‘When a Woman’, that’s a song that makes everyone’s booty move! I also love that I can be a bit of a bully with that song, I can get everyone up and dancing! [laughs] Lastly, ‘Dreams’, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but that is the song I leave to last as it’s one of my favourites that was the song that launched me. R: You’re known for styling your look with an eye patch or a streak of hair, due to an eye condition named Ptosis… I actually didn’t know what the condition was until I read it in a newspaper. Yeah, I just call it a lazy eye. It creates a lazy eye; and have had it since I was young. I had an operation as it was a deadeye muscle and they removed it. It’s one of those things where it’s better than not seeing, so when people think I don’t have an eye, no I have got two, just one of them is quite sleepy looking. It’s not something that I show. Some people have this in both their eyes, so I am just grateful its in just one of mine. I have covered it with an eye patch, sunglasses and now it is just hair, but I love that; I love the fact that this is just me. R: I think now a days its so hard when the young girls look at people in the media and sadly they can become selfconscious about the tiniest of things, I wondered what advice you would give them? I think like you said; they have these images of what they think women should look like, but women don’t actually look like that, with these filters, and thinned out effects, so for me, I think you have to be yourself and do you. I grew up at an all girl’s school, they were bitchy and I had a lazy eye and people would make jokes about it. I had the last laugh, as later on I would be out there making music. You just have to believe in yourself, if you don’t believe in you, how can anyone else? I could have let my condition hold me back but, I decided to get a big eye patch and I draw all the attention to it. R: I think that was my point of the question, I think you’ve been inspiring and I think that anyone else with any self doubts or any similar conditions about themselves will be inspired by that too. I hope so; I had a lot of letters from mum’s with children who were wearing eye patches, who didn’t have eyes. It was a case of; I was glad to represent people who were different, or not 40
SEPTEMBER SEPTEMBER <strong>2018</strong> | <strong>2018</strong> ISSUE | #71 ISSUE | GABRIELLE #71 FEATURE 41