On 'Hairless Toys,' I've tried to create an ambiguous character to go with an ambiguous record. She's anything but rock n' roll - she's so not rock n' roll that, in a twisted way, she's kind of radical. She's like someone from my memory, almost like my mother, and she's lost in some space-time between the 1960s and the late '80s.

Roisin Murphy

Categorized in : Memory Way Character Mother

Unzip my body, take my heart out

Roisin Murphy

my-heart body heart

If you were a child and every time your relatives had a few drinks, they'd be running after you with scary faces and big hands to pull you back to sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina, you wouldn't like singing either.

Roisin Murphy

running children hands

When a friend of mine introduced me to the music of Luca C & Brigante I was stuck with an apocalyptic feeling, as if I were listening to the sound of a party at the end of the world. And with such strong imagery coming to mind I was only too happy to write with them when they asked. Flash of Light is about that last night on earth, a forewarning of the end of an era and a last chance to Love.

Roisin Murphy

party strong writing

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

Roisin Murphy

yourself things being world

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.

Roisin Murphy

great flower work believe

Once I was embraced by gay culture, I finally started to feel I was fitting in. I was understood by those people in a way I had never predicted or courted.

Roisin Murphy

feel gay culture people

When you're a kid, right, and you're surrounded by all these other kids, and let's say they don't have the same interests or the same goals or the same world view as you... It's difficult because a child doesn't know that there's another way. A child doesn't know that there's another place outside of the systems and hierarchies in school.

Roisin Murphy

goals you world school

When I had my first child, I went back to Ireland to live with my mother. So, a typical day there was me being a mother, with my mum showing me how to do things.

Roisin Murphy

day child me mother

That idea of not always being in control of the primitive parts of yourself - the bits that fall in love or the bits that dance or lose the plot or drink too much - and putting that across... that's pop for me. It's playing with all the different colours of the rainbow of life.

Roisin Murphy

me dance love life

My music's like waiting for a bus. You wait a long time for one, then a whole heap of them come along.

Roisin Murphy

you music waiting time

I thought I would be a visual artist when I was growing up, so I'm always up for a bit of experimentation.

Roisin Murphy

thought always growing-up artist

I am very attracted to funny people - I'd go so far as to say I find it hard to trust unfunny people.

Roisin Murphy

i-am trust funny people

I've seen massive changes in Ireland in my lifetime.

Roisin Murphy

seen changes ireland lifetime

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.

Roisin Murphy

child family music people

Lyricism was placed into my head in Ireland.

Roisin Murphy

placed head ireland

On 'Overpowered,' there was a nostalgia for disco and early house music. But I'm a modernist and futurist as well. I do believe - and this is going to sound really pretentious, I know - that humanity will figure it out, so I'm optimistic about the future.

Roisin Murphy

future music humanity believe

You've got to deal with the tools you have in hand. I'm a firm believer in that.

Roisin Murphy

hand got you tools

I have a little antennae, and even when I'm trying not to be, I'm connected with the bloody zeitgeist.

Roisin Murphy

little even connected trying

I'm not someone to sit on her laurels.

Roisin Murphy

her sit someone laurels

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

Roisin Murphy

irish uncle times photographer