I've only ever had surprises. My whole career's a surprise!
— Roisin Murphy
When I started out, the idea of wearing interesting clothes seemed to contradict the idea of being a serious artist. The first Moloko record, 'Do You Like My Tight Sweater?' was kind of a reaction to all that.
Designers become translators for me. That's why I've gone to people like Gareth Pugh and Viktor and Rolf - they are speaking a nuanced language. Fashion says a lot for me.
Humour is ahead of everything creatively. I think if things aren't humorous, they are just crap.
I've got crap teeth, crap hair. I never have facials. I still have hairs in the middle of my eyebrows.
I'm quite drawn to women artists who use themselves in their work. There is a very feminine point of view, the use of female archetypes. I love artists who play with those kind of things genuinely.
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.
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.
Originally, I thought of being a photographer and nearly went to art school, but I got a record deal instead.
If they were siblings, 'Hairless Toys' would be the nice child, and 'Take Her Up to Monto' is more of a problem child.
My music's like waiting for a bus. You wait a long time for one, then a whole heap of them come along.
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.
Timeless and unclassifiable - that's the goal. My oddness is the pursuit of this above all else.
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 don't have any problems on social media. I have the most wonderful fans. I'm the luckiest girl in the world in that way.
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.
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.
There'll always be a part of me that wants to remain mysterious.
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.
That's the good thing about pop. You can do whatever you like... it's a bendable medium.
I just wouldn't enjoy standing there like a paper doll, having someone else stick paper dresses on me. That would be no fun.
I love Andrew Weatherall; he's so real and uncompromising and a sweetheart.
I couldn't even sing when I started.
I'm a situationist when it comes to anything creative, and that stands with the visual part of anything I do as well. I deal with the concrete things I have in front of me, and I think that's a wise way to be.
I won't let anything destroy me.
I feel more like an artist than a pop star, and I accidentally fell into what I do. Everything was just an experiment.
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.
Music has given me a fantastic lifestyle.
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.
Ireland is a great place to be odd.
I've not got any terrible stories of what I had to do to scrabble my way to the top, obviously, because I didn't scrabble my way to the top. I just scrabbled my way to the middle!
One of my favourite books of all time is 'The Borstal Boy.'
I've always been attracted to weirdos.
With Moloko, we tried to be the opposite of what was out there at the time. I like to be different. In the mid-Nineties, music was quite dour and serious, and everything was dressed down. So we went the other way. Our first record was about not wanting to do four-to-the-floor dance music.
I think my whole career has been marked - or marred - by what people presume about me. But even that's fed back into the creativity. I'm saying that I'm about contradiction, that you can't put me into a box.
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 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.
I use maps in my phone a great deal because I can't tell left from right. Having easy access to maps has given me a completely different life. When I first moved to London, I couldn't get anywhere and spent so much money on cabs because I couldn't figure it out.
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.
There's a great deal of tension between so many kind of distinctive and restrictive female archetypes and images in the world. When you play with the archetypes, you get free.
I don't have a personal stylist, because I don't need one. I just really enjoy meeting designers and picking up clothes.
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.
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.
Ambition can get you freedom.
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.
My father ruined me for men. Not many can live up to him.
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.
When I go home, I go to my house in the countryside. I don't hang out in Dublin. I go home to be with my family and have a rest and so on. I don't know anything about the Irish music scene, and I've never felt part of it.
The Church controlled so much in Ireland for so long. I'm not going to get into whether or not religion per se is a bad thing, but my point is the political aspect in Ireland was way out of kilter, and it wasn't right.
