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GLAMOUR's April digital cover star, Anne-Marie, opens up about her battle with anxiety: 'If I look back at the last seven to 10 years, I can’t remember it, that time in my life is gone'


Anne-Marie’s GLAMOUR cover interview took place before the Coronavirus outbreak hit the UK, but her personal account of severe anxiety and how she has learnt to manage it is all the more powerful now. Here, the popstar opens up to GLAMOUR’s Josh Smith for our Mental Health Issue about how her negative thoughts almost prevented her meteoric rise, and she shows how, even in the darkest of times, we can – and will – get through it…

Photographs by Aitken Jolly, Photography Assistant Ezra Jolly, Styling by Phoebe-Lettice Thompson, Makeup by Kim Roy, Hair by David Wadlow. Anne-Marie wears top by Paule Ka, Earrings by Alan Crocetti, Rings Anne-Marie’s own, Tiara by Halo & Co. Shot on location at www.girlfriendlondon.co.uk

I first met Anne-Marie just over two years ago when I presented a video where I challenged (and she readily accepted) the then 26-year-old singer to imitate Kylie Jenner and prank call her long-time musical collaborators Rudimental. She also confessed that her best pal – and songwriting partner – Ed Sheeran had gifted her “the biggest dildo you could buy in shops”.

She was warm, energetic and refreshingly confident and didn’t seem to me to have anything on her mind except chart domination. Her debut album Speak Your Mind followed six months later and she went on to become the biggest selling breakthrough artist of 2018. Her songs, 2002 and Friends became two of the bestselling songs of the year and she has now been nominated for nine Brit Awards.

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WATCH: In the latest episode of GLAMOUR UNFILTERED, Anne-Marie emotionally recounts the depths of her anxiety

Despite diamond record sales and downloads, and her 5.8 million Instagram followers, behind the scenes Anne-Marie was suffering from severe anxiety that got to such an intense level as her success increased, that some days she struggled to even answer the phone. Her anxious thoughts – especially in relation to her own body image – started when she was a teenager growing up in Essex with her mum, dad and younger sister Samantha.

“I think I became conscious of how I looked at around 13 years old because of magazines and pictures online,” Anne-Marie reveals. “I started setting myself against others and thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t like myself anymore because I wish I had that, and I wish I had that.’ I formed hips when I was a teenager and I used to get picked on for them. The whole of my teenage years I’d think, ‘I’m not going to eat food because I don’t want to have big hips.’ But then when I got older, I was like, actually I do want hips cause they’re sick.”

Anne-Marie wears Blazer from stylist archive, Body by Wolford, Boots by GCDS, Earrings by Kenneth Jay Lane at Susan Caplan, Rings by Alan Crocetti, Necklace by Monet at Susan Caplan

“Then I started munching loads of food – which was the opposite of what I was doing before,” she adds, shaking her head. “For me, it went from being, ‘Oh, I want to be thin, I want to be slim,’ to ‘I want to be thick. I want a big bum!’ At that point I realised when I’m skinny, I’m not healthy and when I’ve got too much weight on my body, I have no energy. I had to learn that you have what you have. My bones are the size they are, and I can only change the outside layer so much – this is how my body shape is meant to be and I am OK with that. I just need my body to be where it’s supposed to be. I don’t need to do anything to change anymore.”

Her anxiety and negative thoughts continued – albeit in a different form – once she started experiencing success as an artist. But today, sitting in a very pink south London café – which aptly complements her new pink bob and exclusively pink wardrobe (part of the campaign for her yet-to-be-named second album) – Anne-Marie has enough distance from those experiences to be able to open up completely about them.

“I realised when I’m skinny, I’m not healthy and when I’ve got too much weight on my body, I have no energy. I had to learn that you have what you have. My bones are the size they are, and I can only change the outside layer so much – this is how my body shape is meant to be and I am OK with that.”

Anne-Marie on body image

“If I look back at the last seven to 10 years of my life, I can’t remember them, that time in my life is gone,” she admits while looking down at her nails that are so heavily bejewelled, just lifting her hand could be deemed a workout.

“Anxiety almost blocked me from thinking normally and remembering things, because I was so anxious about everything,” she continues. “I thought I was going to die; I thought my family were going to die and that was mixed with a lot of things like OCD, which added to the anxiety as well. I regularly found it hard to leave the house.”

Anne-Marie wears top by Adeam, Earrings by Alan Crocetti

The anxiety Anne-Marie was experiencing almost toppled the success she had worked so hard for, since releasing her aptly named 2015 debut single Karate (she began practising martial arts aged nine and became a three-time Shotokan Karate black belt world champion). “In my worst moments, I’d think, ‘Well, how am I even going to go on stage? How am I going to do what I do when I’ve worked so hard and for so long to get to this point? And now I don’t even want to do it.’ That was hard,” she admits.

Going to therapy was Anne-Marie’s first step to managing her mental health, alongside, surprisingly, a good Google search. “I’ve literally done everything that you can do,” she says. “I tried therapy, hypnotherapy. Googling about anxiety helped a lot and listening to other people’s stories. I think hypnotherapy was really a big part of it. I guess talking and listening to other people helped.”

What were her lessons from therapy? “As soon as I say something I had been thinking, it makes it feel normal,” Anne-Marie replies. “In my head, the thoughts are so bad and then as soon as I say them out of my mouth, it’s 25% of how bad I thought it was going to be.”

“In my worst moments, I’d think, ‘Well, how am I even going to go on stage? How am I going to do what I do when I’ve worked so hard and for so long to get to this point? And now I don’t even want to do it.’ That was hard.”

Anne-Marie on the peak of her anxiety

Being such a truthful songwriter helped her too. There’s a reason why Anne-Marie was recently named in PRs for Music’s prestigious 100 Most Influential Songwriters list, having penned deeply personal songs about everything from f*ck boys on her banger Ciao Adios to her physical ‘imperfections’ on Perfect To Me. “Writing it down really helped,” she says. “I’m so lucky that I’m able to write my thoughts in songs. I think without that I would have been a recluse. I don’t know what I would’ve done with my life, to be honest.

“I think the songwriting has helped me so much, so that’s why I say to people: if you’re too scared to go to someone or worried about what people are going to think about you, or [think that] are people judging you, just write a tweet, or write it on a piece of paper next to your bed. If you just write it down so it’s in existence, there in front of you rather than just in your brain, it really helps.”

The real turning point, however, came at an unexpected and very normal setting. “I think it was just one day around January 2019,” she says. “I woke up and sat in my living room, and I felt like I was actually here and actually experiencing my experiences. I think it was after the hypnotherapy, after the learning that there is never a straightforward answer to how you get over it.”

Anne-Marie wears full look by Dior, Earrings & Rings by Alan Crocetti, Necklace Anne-Marie’s own

Did coming through this testing period of her life teach her a lot about your power as a person, I ask? “Honestly, I feel like I’ve not [fully] got myself out of it yet. I’ve relied on a lot of people to help me, which is why it’s so important to talk about it, because hopefully I’ll be that person to someone else, like how other people were there for me. Now I can actually walk into rooms first, before anyone else, which is great and I can answer the phone, which I never used to be able to do,” she says before conceding it still is, and always will be, an ongoing struggle. “I have bad days too. But at least it’s only a day now, whereas before it was all the time, so that is where the improvement is. It’s going to be a constant battle, but to know that it’ll be OK is the best feeling.”

Anne-Marie’s advice for those suffering from anxiety is all the more profound as the world locks down due to the Coronavirus outbreak and we all start to worry about our mental health. “With everything that is happening in the world at the moment – especially now – you think, ‘I’m not going to worry about my little thing.’ But you need to. My advice? Just try and help yourself as soon as possible and not let it get to a really bad place. Come to some realisations, talk to your friends and go to therapy when possible. I wish I would have talked about it sooner rather than let it get to a really extreme place,” she admits, her eyes filling with tears. ”I know that some people only start to deal with their problems when it gets to bad levels.”

“Writing it down really helped. I’m so lucky that I’m able to write my thoughts in songs. I think without that I would have been a recluse. I don’t know what I would’ve done with my life, to be honest.”

Anne-Marie on managing her anxiety

For me, Anne-Marie is a symbol of positivity: proof that you can, and will, get through your current situation. And most importantly, that it’s OK not to be OK at times.

This newfound place of personal positivity is not a destination teenage Anne-Marie would have ever dreamed of arriving at. Yet it exudes from the lead single of her second album Birthday, with such lyrics as: ‘It’s my birthday/ I’m a do what I like/ I’m a eat what I like/ I’m a kiss who I like.’

Now, she is more comfortable in her skin than ever – although she laments the time it’s taken her to get to this point. “It’s taken too long, that’s what my issue is. If I just started this self-love journey a little bit sooner, I would’ve had all of my 20s to have fun. I feel like my 20s were a lot of learning and dealing with stuff that I should have dealt with earlier in my life.”

Preparing to slip back into popstar mode to pull some poses for her GLAMOUR cover shoot, Anne-Marie leans in to me and says, “I really needed that chat today.” And as she skips off to slip out of her tie-dye Prada shirt and into a full Diorlook, I can’t help thinking that she is just the kind of role model we need right now. One who talks openly and honestly about her experiences and one who encourages us all to do the same. In these times more than ever, Anne-Marie – her story and her empowering, fist-pumping lyrics – have never felt more important.

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Anne-Marie’s new single Birthday is out now and her second album is coming soon



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