“I'm a bit multifaceted in the sense that I've got many more than one musical taste. If you think about it, I started out playing in a punk band and ended up doing electro-pop. That was more an accident than a plan.”
“In the early days, myself and my friends were into punk because we had no money, just very basic instruments and skills. It was more about the ethos and the energy.”
“It simply becomes more and more difficult as you move further away from your heyday, music being the only format where you're treasured for your youth - that and acting. If you're a writer or a painter or any other kind of artist, your experience is coveted. If you cover yourself with Botox, you're vilified; if you don't, you're an old hag.”
“It was always important to me that I made a record where I really sang well, and I don't think it's happened yet. There's always a possibility with each album that I might not record again, and I wanted to produce one that I could feel was mine.”
“My strength as a singer is my versatility. I find it really frustrating when I'm only expected to show off. The music industry is awash with female acrobats. What happens to the song, and treating it for its sake and not as an ego example?”
“My style of singing has always been referred to 'soul' singing when it fact it's more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I'm closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.”
“Of all the soul divas, Gladys Knight was the one for me. Knight's always been about tone and heart, none of the big showboating or extraneous doodling. She nailed a melody and only played a little around the edges like Ma Staple.”
“One of the reasons I got really fat when I left home was because I thought rich people ate white bread and Spam. I also thought they could get processed meals, because we never did, so that was exciting.”
“One of the things I wanted to do with 'The Turn' was write a production of songs that could be stripped down to one or two instruments if you chose to do it.”
“People always had something to say about the fact I was odd looking, bigger than other people, that I was awkward. When I discovered punk, I bought into it. That look, combined with being fat, made me even less of what people thought a young woman should be.”