Quotes from Roisin Murphy

I don't really know if I am thought of as a style icon. I don't feel like that at all. Music comes first, but I also just enjoy being creative in whatever I'm doing, be it wearing clothes, making images, or performing.

When I was 16 and on a tour of Europe, I fell in love with Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut chapel in Ronchamp, France. I'd quite like to live in it.

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.

If they were siblings, 'Hairless Toys' would be the nice child, and 'Take Her Up to Monto' is more of a problem child.

I'm proud that I've even had a career, but 'proud' isn't the first word I'd use. I feel lucky that I moved to Manchester when I was 12 because I don't think I could have done this in Ireland. And I feel lucky that the government took care of me from the age of 16 to when I signed my first record deal at 19.

It's not nice to be called a nutter, because it dismisses the input I've had into my own destiny over the years.

I like taking different elements - clothes, shoes, lighting - and creating a total transformation. But it's never about hiding: it's about drawing something out from deep inside of me that's really true. I'm always trying really hard to tell you the truth. That's what this is all about for me.

I don't like to work with stylists - I find the relationship too intimidating - but I love fashion.

My family were wheeler-dealer class. They were their own bosses and very glamorous. We lived in a beautiful, big townhouse in Arklow, in Ireland, that we couldn't afford to heat. My father had a business fitting bar furniture, and my mother is an antiques dealer.

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

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 wasn't embraced as an Irish artist back in the Moloko days. Modern electronica isn't what you think of when you think of Irish music.

I work with men a lot, and there's a yin and a yang that goes on when you work one guy and one girl. And there's things that I bring that they don't bring and things they bring and I don't bring.

I work extremely hard, but I love every minute of it. Although I couldn't work as hard if I felt there was a ceiling on anything. I spent £125,000 on four pictures for the sleeves for 'Overpowered,' and I loved spending it! It was like making a little movie.

I don't like permanency. I just like to slip and slide, and in identity, I think that's a very feminine artist's point of view.

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.

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

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

I became a singer and a songwriter by learning on the spot, so think I always need to be slightly out of my comfort zone when I do something. I've never stopped being experimental because that's how I started.

The reason why I'm not a pop star is I would have hated it. I'll stick to being an artist. I'm not trying not to be commercial; I am just doing what I do. I have finely tuned tastes, and that gets prioritized above everything else. That's just how it is.

'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.

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.

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

The day I turned 16, I moved into my own flat. My parents had just broken up, and I didn't want to go back to Ireland with my mother. I was doing my A-levels, and my friends would come over and watch 'Twin Peaks.'