My Song, My Home: Alice in Leeds
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Hello. This next episode is part of our music series, My Song, My Home, where we meet a musician who tells us about their hometown and plays a song for us. Listen to hear real English speakers, learn through songs and hear common English expressions. We hope you enjoy it. MUSIC PLAYS

Welcome to My Song, My Home. In this series, we meet musicians around the country and learn some English from their songs. You can find a full transcript for this episode on our website bbclearningenglish.com. In this episode, Alice will tell us about becoming a musician in Leeds and perform one of her songs for us to learn. I wanna scream, so I'll just sing.

We meet Alice in the city centre in a busy cafe in an area called Granary Wharf. There's lots of places to drink, lots of places to eat and then it's got a really good sort of like open area where you can sit outside and eat food and catch up with friends and take a stroll along the canal so it just feels like a nice open space in the heart of the centre, that's why I love it. Granary Wharf is by the canal. That's a man-made stretch of water where boats can travel between cities.

Alice likes the area because it's close to the locks. These are gates in the canal and river to help boats get through. And it's just such a beautiful place to be in. It's kind of like this wide open space within the city centre. MUSIC PLAYS

Alice has lived in Leeds for 13 years, since moving here to study at university. She originally grew up in a small village. It's a tiny little place and there isn't much going on there. It's pretty quiet, it's beautiful, but if you want to be a musician, there aren't many platforms to kind of use and utilise to kind of develop yourself, so that's why I decided to come to Leeds.

Alice says there weren't many platforms, opportunities to reach the public, to become a musician in the village where she grew up. And so she moved to Leeds and fell in love with it.

I would describe the city as a small, friendly, walkable city. Like, you can walk anywhere, really. It's so small. There's always new places popping up. It's been really interesting to stay put in one city and watch that kind of... that sort of culture and community grow and change and be part of that, and I think that's really influenced my music, so, yeah.

In Leeds, there's always new places popping up, opening suddenly or unexpectedly. And Leeds has been a great place for Alice to be a musician. So what is life as a musician like? I'd get up around 10 o'clock because I've probably done a gig the night before. I'd have some breakfast. I'd listen to some music whilst I'm doing that to just kind of wake up and feel inspired. I'd usually have a little sing-along to kind of warm my voice up in the morning. And then I'd go to bed.

And then it would either be off to the studio to record or off to a rehearsal with a band or off to a writing session.

Alice usually uses her morning to sing and warm her voice up, practice to get her voice ready. Then she spends her evenings gigging, that's performing to audiences in venues around the city. And then usually in the evening I'd be gigging in Leeds, so I have a couple of residencies here which start at different times of the evening. One of them starts at midnight and finishes at 2am, so...

Alice loves the variety of being a musician. She couldn't imagine doing anything else, even though she finds describing herself as a musician hard. I absolutely love it. And this is a funny thing to say, but I think I find it really hard when people say, oh, what do you do? And I say, I'm a musician or I'm a singer, because I don't actually feel like a musician or a singer. I just feel like myself.

because it's just so built within me and I will just do it for the rest of my life. So yeah, I absolutely love it. I love it. We headed down to the side of the canal to hear Alice perform one of her songs. The song is called OK. I want to scream, so I'll just sing. Do the things that I've never said. And you'll never whisper back, so make believe.

Pretend it's okay. Pretend it's okay.

So that song kind of, it fell out of me in a way. And it's about being, thinking you're in love with someone and not knowing how to tell them. And it's kind of, yeah, accepting the feelings and also just accepting that thing will never be.

So OK is kind of like saying it's OK and moving on from those feelings that you have for someone. Alice says the song fell out of her. It was really easy to write. It's a song about being in love with someone but not being able to tell them about it.

Let's have a look at some of the lyrics in more detail. Remember, you can find all the vocabulary and the full lyrics to the song on our website, bbclearningenglish.com. In the song, Alice uses the expression, speak out loud. Speak out loud.

If you speak or say something out loud, it means you say it so that other people can hear you, rather than in your head. In the song, Alice says she's tired of playing games. Now we use the expression playing games to say that someone is not being serious or honest enough. In a relationship, if someone is playing games, they're not being truthful about their feelings.

In the song, Alice says, a silence fell. And this is a common expression in English. And if silence fell afterwards... If something falls silent, it means it becomes completely quiet. Often, if silence falls, it can be a dramatic moment. Let's hear the rest of the song. Listen and see if you can notice any other phrases in the lyrics about being in love or wanting to tell someone something. So I lay my shoulders...

It's where I'll have the sipping next to a stranger is better. Stitching dreams that don't end. I know I speak out loud. I'm tired of playing games too hard. I know if you feel the same. And if silence fell after a moment. Giving you more than just my words. I

Cry for a line that's crossed. Cry for a love that's lost. Kneel down at the altar of us and we'll tell you it's over. Tell you it's over. Tell you it's over. Tell you it's over.

Thanks for listening to my song, My Home. If you want to watch Alice perform her song OK, head to our website for a video of her performance, where you'll also find other musicians from the places we visited in the UK. Visit bbclearningenglish.com. Next time, we'll meet our final musician, Adam, in a town called Ipswich. See you then. Bye.