Pharrell Williams helped picked songs for Nickelodeon star James Maslow's debut album

Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, James revealed: "One cool thing about doing it with Doug (Makuta) is that he's signed to Timberland so we get feedback from Timberland himself. Pharrell listened to the album at one point and gave his feedback. Pharrell listened with Doug and was very complimentary and picked a handful of his favourite songs - I'm not going to say which ones - because I don't want people to think, 'they're my favourite' I want them to be objective."

The 26-year-old actor's debut album took six months to write alongside Doug and was recorded both in Timberland's $30m studios in Virginia Beach as well as James' home studio.

And James has revealed he was "lucky" enough to record on Justin Timberlake's microphone.

She said: "You don't take anything out of the studio but it's pretty dope that I got to use the same mic that Justin Timberlake records on which is a mic track, which is pretty much what I cut a lot of my songs on. There's so much history there, it was pretty amazing."

James is set to embark on his European tour, which kick-starts at London's O2 Islington Academy on March 23, and has been inspired by Ed Sheeran's Grammy performance and plans to do a live cover of his number one hit 'Shape of You'.

He explained: "Similar to how he did it live during the Grammys I'm going to be taking tracks and recreating them with more piano, which I'm much better at and do fun little reconstructions of songs - deconstruct them and reconstruct them live - because that will add an interesting element to the show."

James has just released his debut album 'How I like It' and is set to tour the UK, playing at O2 Academy in London on March 23, O2 Institute in Birmingham on March 24, Manchester's Academy 3 on March 26 and O2 ABC 2 in Glasgow on March 27.

Visit www.jamesmaslow.com