Matt Cardle,York Barbican, March 1; Rebecca Ferguson, York Barbican, March 2

HEAVEN can wait, as the saying goes, and Rebecca Ferguson made the world wait for almost a year for her debut album of that heavenly name.

“I just wanted to get it right,” says the Liverpool singer, songwriter and mother of two, who was catapulted to fame after years of knock-backs when she finished as runner-up in the 2010 final of The X Factor.

“I didn’t want to rush the album. It’s never going to be good if you rush something,” she says.

Superlatives greeted the release of Heaven last December, and the subsequent announcement of her debut headline tour led to the speedy sell-out of next Friday’s show at York Barbican.

That amounts to affirmation that Rebecca’s patient approach to her post X Factor launch was right, especially when putting her album together.

“Everything was completely new on there, completely fresh music,” she says. “I’d go into the studio and someone would come up with a melody for a song.

“I’d be working with Eg White, or Steve Booker, or Fraser T Smith, or Jonny Lattimer, and I hadn’t met them before, so it was funny as at first it wasn’t too easy because you have to open up and tell them really personal stuff.”

Rebecca contributed lyrics and melodies to the song-writing process, working off a pianist as well as her co-writers.

“I’d always written poetry as a child and rhymes from a young age and it all just developed from there in my teens, doing singing – though at the very early stage it was covers.”

In the tradition of so many soul singers, gospel singing in church played its part in her musical progression. “I do have memories of church because I used to go to Sheffield, where my nan and family were from, and sing in church there,” says Rebecca.

“I come from a Jamaican background where their tradition is to sing in church, and there I was, trying to out-sing everyone.”

Rebecca also sang in the school choir, but has a surprising revelation. “I was always the kid who never got picked for the musicals, though I always wanted to get the main part,” she says.

Nevertheless, nature blessed her with a vintage soul voice and a distinctive one to boot.

“You know what, I never thought about my voice like that. I didn’t actually like the sound of my voice until about a year and a half ago,” she says. “I’m such a perfectionist that I can’t listen to it if it’s not perfect, but I always knew I could sing and that it was all I could do.”

The public and critical response to Heaven has delighted her. “It’s brilliant, it’s really good, and I’m happy that everyone is enjoying it because everyone is individual and you shouldn’t be judged as a brand,” says Rebecca.

“I’ve been lucky that people haven’t judged me and have really taken to my life.”

The X Factor was the transformative experience in the life story of the 25-year-old Liverpudlian, who had been brought up in foster homes in her childhood. “It was quite hard being on the show, but I look back now and I feel proud that I’ve done it and went through it. I feel grateful,” she says.

“It was intense and it taught me a lot: to be strong and to make decisions. That’s my personality.

“I never want to get to an age and look back and have regrets and have to blame someone. If I fail, it’s on my head, but that’s not pressure. I won’t be blaming anyone else if I fail.”

Right now, her focus is on her headline tour. “I’m really getting stuck into the tour and the songs I’ll be singing. I want people to walk away after the shows feeling really good,” says Rebecca.

“I’m going to explain each song and people will hopefully connect to that if they’ve been through similar experiences.”

For the tour, she is working with London musical director Stephen Large, who has filled a similar role for Welsh soul singer Duffy.

“He’s put together a really talented band and for the first time I have quite a big band behind me. I wanted violins and a saxophone as well, but I do have piano, drums, bass, guitar and two backing singers, and we might get a string section for certain places,” says Rebecca.

“It’s exciting: just the fact that it’s going to be my fans who’ve come to see me. I’m nervous but really excited.”

The shows will provide a contrast with her club-land days in Liverpool.

“Before The X Factor, I’d do the clubs, probably a night club, which was really nerve-racking. They’re really unforgiving places but those days were fun; I really learnt so much,” she says.

Now Rebecca is on her way to York, bringing back memories of frightening past trips here. “I’ve done the ghost tours and York Dungeons,” she says. “They’re really scary, aren’t they?”

WHAT was Matt Cardle’s immediate reaction the moment he knew he had won The X Factor? “Just a huge relief that, if nothing else, it was over,” says the former painter and decorator from Little Maplestead, Essex.

You might have expected a more ecstatic response, but let Matt explain: “I was so ill, I had ‘itis’ from everything downwards: tonsillitis, laryngitis… and then I went out on the Narnia premiere red carpet and got flu.”

He can laugh at the memory, secure in the knowledge that he has built on his 2010 victory with a number one single, When We Collide, more than 300,000 sales for his debut album, Letters, and 30,000 tickets snapped up for his imminent headline tour.

His York Barbican show on Thursday – night number three out of 21 and his only Yorkshire gig – sold out typically quickly Yet that life-changing December night in 2010, watched by the television millions, is still the one that defines Matt. “There was every kind of emotion going through me, but the instant thoughts were, ‘Thank God it’s over’,” he says.

“On the night, I was just thinking, ‘In half an hour it will all be over and I can be out of here’. That makes me sound like I didn’t care if I was going to win or not, but I just thought I was going to finish second to Rebecca [Ferguson].

“The fact that I was still in this competition was ridiculous in my mind, because you never think that you’ll win when you first enter.

“It’s one of those things where you just have to ride it out and see where it takes you.”

Where it took Matt, after his years of mind-numbing shifts in plastic factories and hard graft on building sites, was the top of the 2010 Christmas chart tree with an unlikely cover of Biffy Clyro’s Many Of Horror – or When We Collide as it was re-named for the Cardle version.

“It was offered to me, and I’d already decided I didn’t want to do a generic kind of X Factor winner’s song,” says Matt. “I wanted to break with tradition and do something a little different, so that song was perfect.”

He did not rush into releasing his debut album, holding back until October last year, by which time he had gone out on the road on The X Factor arena tour. “That was pretty huge, all through March and April last year, 58 shows with all the finalists, everyone coming together to do their thing,” says Matt.

“I think it definitely helped me to build up for my solo shows. It was an absolutely mind-blowing experience to say the least, but then the TV series already prepares you for that – though the big difference is that you can see all these people in the concert audience, whereas in the TV studio, there are only 300 people there.”

After the X Factor tour, he spent four months working on his album.

“The key thing was that I wanted to co-write it so it does take a little time to make it. My A&R team decided who I might work with and then I worked with those I clicked with,” says Matt, who spent hours tucked away in Biff Stannard’s studio in Brighton and sharing late nights and cases of beer with Starsailor’s James Walsh in West London.

The man of Letters can now reflect on the platinum success of last autumn’s release.

“I can’t quite get my head round doing so well with the album,” he says, as his thoughts turn to the solo tour, which begins on Tuesday in Rhyl.

“I’m super-nervous, super-excited and I just want through the shows, giving it my all,” says 28-year-old Matt. “It’s going to be quite an intense show and it’ll be varied; it’ll be a rock show but with an acoustic section as well, as it’s one thing ‘putting it out there’ but it’s another to really strip it back.”

At the time of this interview in early February, Matt was still putting the show together, but he was resolute about one factor.

“I’m just going to be myself,” he says. “You can’t be anyone else and that’s something I vowed never to be. It’s not right to be forced, but when you’re young, you’re more susceptible to that, plus when you’re younger, you’re changing anyway and it’s easy to be influenced.”

This week, Matt has released his latest single, Amazing, backed by The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, the 1957 Ewan MacColl ballad that made such an impression the first time most of us ever heard Matt’s voice.

He sings it with more feeling than any other number in his repertoire, on account of its emotional significance as the favourite song of his mother Jennifer’s best friend, Sharon, who died when Matt was 11, leaving behind four sons Jennifer then nurtured.

“When you’re singing it so often, you have to detach yourself a little from it,” he says. “You can’t cry every night, but there have been a couple of night when I’ve shed tears singing it.”

• Matt Cardle plays York Barbican, March 1; Rebecca Ferguson plays York Barbican, March 2. Both sold out; doors open at 7pm.