Michael FurlongerAnne-Marie’s debut EP, released in 2015, was called Karate, but it wasn’t just a clever title. The 27-year-old has practiced the martial art since she was nine years old, and before she was a singer she was a world champion in the sport. In fact, the “Friends” singer says her karate training has had everything to do with her success as a pop star.
“You don’t think that those two would relate so much but they totally do,” she tells ABC Radio. “Literally everything I feel like I learned in karate has helped this career.”
“I had the shortest attention span you could ever imagine before I started karate, I couldn’t really focus on anything,” Anne-Marie explains. “If I lost at something, I’d just give up….that was the kind of attitude that I had before I started karate.”
But her training, she says, “taught me to not give up and keep trying hard.”
“Self-discipline is a massive part of who I am now,” the British star adds.
Unfortunately, thanks to her busy schedule — which includes opening for Ed Sheeran on his current European tour and kicking off her own headlining tour in August — Anne-Marie finds it difficult to fit karate into her day.
“[I don’t have] much [time] at all, which is quite sad for me,” she admits. “But yeah, I don’t think it will ever go away. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop [doing] it.”
Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
