KLOE: "I don't take myself seriously, I kind of just take the piss!"

“I was really uncool. Sorry!”

Glaswegian pop star in waiting, KLOE, is apologising for the confession that she’s about to make. “I loved whatever was in the Top 40: Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, The Jonas Brothers, Avril Lavigne and P!nk,” she says of her music icons as a teenager.

Gradually, though, as she started getting a bit older, The Weeknd, Drake, Passion Pit and The 1975 - “Matthew Healy is just a fucking genius” – helped to form a cooler iPod shuffle [Oi, Avril is super cool - Ed].

Seeing Drake and J. Cole at the 02 Academy in her hometown, however, was “fucking life-changing. It just made me fall in love rap, hip-hop and R&B; I love the honesty,” says the 19-year-old talent, speaking from her father’s house in the Reading countryside. “I love pretty much everything that hits me right in the feels.”

Now, having been described as one of the coolest teenagers on the planet, KLOE is making some of the most honest and addictive pop music around – or ‘Pop AF’ as she describes it.

“I feel like I’ve just blagged my way in so far,” she jokes humbly, adding that on her days off “I literally just stuff my face and watch Netflix all day… I think if I was a serious pop star I’d go insane. I take my music seriously, but I don't take myself seriously. I kind of just take the piss!”

On ‘UDSM’, KLOE sings “heard that you’ve been fucking that girl Emily” - she doesn’t mince her words. “I thought I was being very clever and a la Taylor Swift the day I wrote it. I remember thinking, ‘you're gonna get in so much shit for that’.”

It’s this type of frank and open lyricism that’s enabled her to build such a loyal and trusting fan base; “a girl travelled all the way from Slovakia just to see me in Berlin. I honestly could have cried!” she gushes. “I think because I do put myself out there in a very unapologetic way it's easier for people to understand and bite into.”

‘UDSM’ is about when KLOE got pied by a guy she really fancied in a bar in London. “We're actually friends now and he finds it funny, bless him. He must have been mortified,” she confesses. “Everybody knew it was about him!”

‘Liability’, on the other hand, is “me being, well, a liability - a full blown crazy bitch! It's really upbeat, aggressive and even a little arrogant when you listen to it.” Underneath the energetic beats, however, is one of KLOE’s most personal songs.

“I wrote it at a time where I was well and truly fucked; I honestly don't think people knew how bad it was. I was living up to being that crazy girl who was always the last one standing at parties,” she recalls. “It was me saying, ‘If you want me to be that girl then I'll fucking be her x10000’. It was a weird time.”

It’s those tracks, as well as early much-hyped single ‘Teenage Craze’, that have seen her perform all around the world. “Fucking weird,” is how she describes the experience over the last year… after a long pause. “I’ve become more travelled than my mum and dad put together; it’s so crazy,” she reflects.

In the last twelve months, KLOE has visited LA, New York, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands – easily more places than most people get the chance to see in an entire lifetime. 
The trip that stands out most, though, is Milan Fashion Week. “It was incredible. I played a show for Diesel Black Gold and they gave us all this free shit. I honestly felt like Kim Kardashian the whole time; we had our own driver, got taken for fancy dinners… Then you go back home and you find yourself sitting in your flat not knowing how you're going to afford to eat the next day. Life is mental. I'm very lucky.”

That kind of pop star lifestyle is something that KLOE will have to become familiar with very quickly - especially as she’s already working on her debut record. “My entire album is a love letter to Glasgow,” she gushes of her hometown. “It's the city where I fell in love, and the city where I had my heart broken. I owe everything to Glasgow. If you were to slice me open I'd bleed Glasgow.”

In November, she’ll perform a homecoming show at St Luke’s, and it’s safe to say KLOE is excited. “I cannot fucking wait,” she enthuses, sounding like she’s just woken up on Christmas morning. “I honestly can't. It's one of my fans' 18th birthdays the same night - so he's coming up from Manchester to celebrate it at my gig! I think that's so cool. I want to make it a big party, and, of course, it's a total dream come true to be headlining a show in my favourite city in the whole world.”

But how does KLOE want her music to make people feel? “Like they're out with me on a mental night out in Glasgow,” she enthuses. “Maybe there are a few tears along the way, and maybe one of us is sick onto our shoes - but we had a fucking great night and we'll remember it forever!” [sc name="stopper"]

Taken from the October issue of Dork, out now - order your copy here.