To celebrate Mental Health Awareness Week, we’ve released a video for Emily’s seminal song ‘I’d Rather Be’, written after her diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Originally a Radio 2 single from her third album ‘Believer’, Emily recorded this piano version of ‘I’d Rather Be’ for her latest album ‘A Bit Of Blue’. Read her blog about why she wrote the song.

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week. To celebrate, we’ve made a new video for my song ‘I’d Rather Be’.

I wrote ‘I’d Rather Be’ about a year after my first psychosis when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  I’d gone through all the stages of being at first completely terrified and then chronically depressed, and I was starting to feel a bit stronger.

I was starting to realise that all this energy in my head could be something precious, it could be something I could transform into creativity if I chose to.  And I was thinking when I was writing this song, we all have choices in life, and these are some of mine…

Emily did a live session on Radio 2 on Clare Balding’s show ‘Good Morning Sunday’ today.

With husband Christian Dunham on double-bass, she performed her new single ‘For Free’ plus an old favourite ‘Start Over Again’ from her third album ‘Believer’.

Clare interviewed Emily about her music, her mental health and the story behind her new album ‘A Bit Of Blue’.

Clare chose Emily’s session as her ‘Sunday Best‘ podcast which is available to download over the next 28 days. You can listen again to the whole session here over the next 28 days (scroll to 01:30).