Roisin Murphy

“Being able to express yourself is one of the hardest things in the world.”

“The sound of 'Take Her Up to Monto' and 'Hairless Toys' is the sound of me and the producer in the studio doing whatever we like. There is no reference. It's too easy to be referential now; I'm trying to find something else.”

“You can't get a better education in what it is to write songs until you listen to American soul music.”

“I think I have an instinct of, like, the right record comes knocking at my door and says, 'Want to come out to play?' and I go.”

“I've got crap teeth, crap hair. I never have facials. I still have hairs in the middle of my eyebrows.”

“I really do prioritise humour in people. It's a sign of intelligence. One of the most important things I heard that moulded me was Derek and Clive. That sense of release when I heard them for the first time, crying and laughing, was akin to seeing Sonic Youth for the first time.”

“My da used to sing 'Take Her Up to Monto' to me when we were walking down the street - he still does, actually - because it's got a walking tempo, and I still sing it to myself when I'm walking along.”

“I love Andrew Weatherall; he's so real and uncompromising and a sweetheart.”

“I've always been attracted to weirdos.”

“'Take Her Up to Monto' is a very satirical song. I don't really like people calling it a folk song because it kind of isn't. It's a bit cheeky calling it 'Take Her Up to Monto,' but the whole idea was to be very irreverent.”

“That's the good thing about pop. You can do whatever you like... it's a bendable medium.”

“We were brought up to think we were amazing. Maybe I was too confident, too full of myself. I found school difficult. I'd get followed home by 20 kids throwing stuff at me. The teachers didn't like me, either. We left Ireland for Manchester when I was 12, and I was happy to go.”

“It all started with music for me. Everything still does.”

“If I had gone to art college and everybody was being a conceptual artist, I probably would have wanted to be a portrait or landscape painter.”

“I was surrounded by music in my family, surrounded by people who sang songs - every single person I knew as a child growing up had one, two, three songs they knew from start to finish.”

“My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'”

“I always try to lace my work with just a teensy-weensy bit of humour. It's rather like putting a sprig of feathery stuff in a flower arrangement: I believe humour is a great balancer.”

“I don't think Ireland has really embraced me, but it is not really for me to say. Obviously, people shouldn't embrace me just because I'm Irish, but it is where I'm from. I'm extremely proud to be Irish.”

“I went to bed on the night of Brexit, of that vote for leaving the E.U., and I said to everyone it will be a 70/30: nobody wants to leave the E.U. I woke up on the bus in Glastonbury, and everybody had their heads in their hands. They could not believe it. I could not believe it.”

“I never thought that was even possible, to have your friends working with you. In the music, yes, in the creative side, yes, but in the business side, I need people who take me fully seriously.”