The latest guest on chart-topping music podcast STRAIGHT UP is Hannah Reid, frontwoman of award-winning band London Grammar, who went to No1 again earlier this summer with their third album, Californian Soil, and have sold more than one million gig tickets worldwide.

Released across all streaming platforms, this episode of Straight Up saw Hannah Reid sit down with Kathleen and Eleanor to chat through the songs that have soundtracked her highs and lows, tracing her journey from the band forming at Nottingham University and finding overnight fame, to dropping out of a world tour after suffering from burnout and her struggles with chronic illness.

Over some passion fruit martinis, made with the pioneering non-alcoholic STRYKK NOT VANILLA V*DKA, Reid also spoke powerfully to Straight Up about her experiences of sexism in the music business and how she’s seen macho culture corrode men as well as women in the industry. Straight Up and Hannah also drilled into why some male critics write about women’s music so patronisingly, the problem with the complicated male genius and how Hannah felt pressured to desexualise her image to be taken seriously. Plus, Hannah revealed how her first heartbreak influenced her lyrics, the one person she stalks from the London Grammar Instagram account and the alternative career she secretly fantasises about.

Hannah Reid on her first experiences of the music industry…

I had the experience that everyone has in the music industry. No matter who you are, because people are so young when they first sign record deals, I think it’s pretty hard to know what’s normal, how to protect yourself, how to be business savvy. As a band we had a couple of unfortunate experiences of feeling taken advantage of. It’s a battle to hold onto your vision… and on top of that for me I felt on the back foot as a woman.

On experiencing sexism…

When I look back I’m sad at how quickly I lost confidence. I wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what was going on sometimes and I didn’t see how much it was actually wearing me down. All it takes is for there to be one man in the room who is misogynistic who is making you feel like you’re being difficult… It can have such a profound effect on you if you’re having to work alongside someone like that. I learned very quickly that, if I’m reasonable and lovely about this, it’s not going to get me anywhere. If I’m very firm and aggressive about it, that’s also going to get me nowhere, because that’s the goal, for me to get nowhere.

Trying to have control over the beast that London Grammar had become at that time was very difficult and I definitely was suffering from exhaustion and it got to the point where I just didn’t turn up to the airport one day to do a show because I just knew I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t well enough. And I do remember telling the people we were working with at the time that I was not well, that I didn’t know what is wrong with me yet but I’m really suffering. The person in question didn’t realise they were on loudspeaker and they said to Dan and Dot that I was just irrational.

On how her first heartbreak inspired her writing…

That was my first love, he just didn’t fancy me anymore. I was 14 and I was obsessed with John Mayer because he was. I wrote a song after we broke up, I think it was called “Blue Eyes”. Thank god that happened because then I just kept on doing it. With every failed relationship came an album.

On being diagnosed with a chronic illness…
There are definitely genetics involved but they do say that stress can trigger auto-immune diseases… The first time that I got seriously ill was at the end of our first album campaign. I was really ill, I didn’t know what was wrong with me, having a whole host of blood tests. One that came back off whack was my liver function. I was completely teetotal, obviously, and my doctor asked me if I was using intravenous drugs… it took me a long time to recover from that, I’d been working through exhaustion for a long time.