Ryan Beatty was flying home to LA after a gig when he had an epiphany. “I remember we were about to take off and I just told my manager: ‘I can’t do this any more,’” he says of that life-changing moment in 2013. Aged only 18, he had been primed to be the next Justin Bieber, complete with an EP full of saccharine love songs, a swept auburn fringe and a plethora of purple hoodies, but he could not tally his public persona with who he really was.

Six years later and he is splayed out on a sofa in his major label’s north London offices on the eve of the release of his second album, the densely layered alt-pop opus Dreaming of David. It follows 2018’s soulful, critically lauded Boy in Jeans, an album bookended by collaborations with maverick boyband Brockhampton, genre-bending upstart Tyler, the Creator and the super-producer Benny Blanco.

“For a long time, I didn’t think I’d be able to come out of the other side and be an artist I was proud of,” he says, his head still sore from the previous few days at Paris fashion week. His lack of confidence was not helped by the fact he was locked in bitter legal wrangles with his old label and management, only free to release music again in 2016. That same year, three weeks after the Orlando nightclub massacre, he came out publicly as gay via Instagram.

“I’d already come out to my family and felt secure with the people around me, but it felt like I was hiding,” he explains. “I needed to have a clean slate and allow myself to be loud. After that I just felt bulletproof.” The freedom immediately influenced his songwriting, with Boy in Jeans written and recorded in a burst of creativity, its opening song Haircut built round an emotional mantra: “It starts right now.”

Beatty is acutely aware that he has already packed a lot into his short career. “Sometimes, I feel so weathered,” he laughs, “and then other times I feel like I’ve just started.” For Dreaming of David, he left nothing to chance, fine-tuning its cascading melodies over two years until its watery textures glistened. The title, inspired by Michelangelo’s statue of David, is an ode to patience. “To me, it felt like I was staring at marble and I was constantly chipping away at something,” he says of the album’s creation. “I could see what was inside but it took me a while to shape it into what I wanted it to be.”

In many ways, Beatty’s career so far has been defined by constant reshaping, be it of his music or his entire identity. For a long time, his initial experiences in the industry soured his love of music itself, but he has a whole new mindset now. “I can’t live in fear any more because that’s what I did for too long,” he says. “Sometimes you’ve got to just jump in.”

Dreaming of David is out now