Minutes before she is due to sing on live television, Bo Bruce is found in the corner of a room backstage. It's heaving with chaos. The pre show noise is epic - yet Bo is silent. "It's the same at night" says 22 year old Bo. ...show more

Minutes before she is due to sing on live television, Bo Bruce is found in the corner of a room backstage. It's heaving with chaos. The pre show noise is epic - yet Bo is silent. "It's the same at night" says 22 year old Bo.

"if there are people around and I can't get to sleep, I will go where the sound is - it calms me down." Insomnia and stage fright were always two secrets Bo was able to keep hidden away. Yet surely the more musical exposure she gains , (she's had over 250,000 listens on myspace and a Number One video on youtube), the more emotionally exposed she becomes? Strangely, this seems to comfort rather than intimidate her- "It's about communication" she explains "before doing a gig I know I'm about to be as honest as it gets, and slowly, that's getting easier". Bo's songs speak to people on an intimate and personal level. Her soft, husky voice conveying in every moment the story of a complicated past and of her hopes for the future.

A product of an eccentric and dysfunctional family, Bo had a turbulent upbringing, as unconventional on the inside as it appeared traditional on the outside. She left school early and moved away from home as quickly as she could, in a bid to escape what she saw as a life of convention and tradition, amid a crumbling relationship with her father. "I didn't know at that point where I wanted to be - but I knew I needed to go away for a while." It was around this time that Bo's life nearly gave way to a quickly spiraling mess of drugs and alcohol. A warren of treatment centers and psychiatric hospitals quickly followed, Bo being moved around like a party game in the system, until the call was made to send her to Arizona, the desert, and a residential treatment center dealing with issues holistically rather than individually. ...show less