A good book can make your day. A great book can make your third full-length studio album.

Birdy, whose Beautiful Lies hits stores tomorrow (March 25), told PopCrush during a recent interview that the album's cover — which features her dressed in a kimono — is no coincidence: The work was inspired by Memoirs of a Geisha. In the video above, she explains how reading Arthur Golden's 1997 novel influenced her latest, from lyrics to looks to production.

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"I was just really inspired by it," she said. "I've never actually been to Japan but I think it's the way the landscapes were described were so beautiful and I think I'm quite affected by place. It just really inspired the melodies."

The name Beautiful Lies, on the other hand, stemmed directly from Birdy's personal life, and one particular recent (and huge) transition.

"It's kind of about change," she says. "At the beginning of making this album, I moved to London for the first time...it's kind of about being free for the first time but also missing your family and kind of wishing the moment could last forever."

And the experience was certainly a formative one, as Birdy's newest LP includes uptempo material that fans have yet to hear from the songwriter. "Keeping Your Head Up," Beautiful Lies' first single, is clear proof of her new direction, she notes.

"It was more of a ballad when it started," she explains. "I had the verse and the pre-chorus and then I wrote it with Steve Mac and Hector, we finished it together and it became something completely different which was so cool."

Check out the interview above for more — including how Birdy's more upbeat tones will shape her next tour — and check out PopCrush's review of Beautiful Lies tomorrow.

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