GAYLE is heading out on tour with Taylor Swift following the tremendous success of her breakout hit, “abcdefu,” a song she said taught her a valuable lesson about herself.

Speaking to Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe, the singer recalled feeling “very intimidated and also excited at the same time” when the song took off. “It’s hard with music because for me it’s my hopes and dreams. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted,” she said. “So, when everything I’ve ever wanted is happening, especially at 17, but it’s not necessarily what I thought it would look like or what I thought it would feel like.”

She continued, “It was really overwhelming and it was hard for me to regulate my emotions, and regulate my perspective on life and my career” because her lighthearted song “was getting taken so seriously.”

“I felt like everything I was doing was getting criticized or torn apart and I kind of was in this moment in my life where I just felt like everybody hated me,” she added. 

So, how did she overcome those emotions? She said she learned “to sit with the fact that I know my truth and that’s the only thing that matters.” She also learned the importance of self-love — and that inspired her new song “everybody hates me.”

“I almost contorted it to be empowering because if everybody hates you, you might as well like yourself and like what you’re doing,” she explained. “I wanted to capture that moment of time where I was feeling really overwhelmed and stressed, and felt like I was being torn apart.”

Said GAYLE, “I wanted to show this moment of where I was trying to make this empowering for myself.”

The singer added she is now “more confident and just learning to care a lot less.”

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