Best known as one half of Moloko, the British trip-hop duo behind 1990s and early 2000s bangers such as “Sing It Back" and “The Time is Now”, Róisín Murphy is a proper disco icon. The band split in 2005, but Irish vocalist Murphy has gone on to have a brilliant solo career (remember 2007's “Primitive”?), peaking this month with new single “Murphy's Law”. Her live shows are the stuff of legend, with Murphy being as at home on stage at London's Roundhouse as she is in Berlin's Berghain, with a slew of festivals set for this summer.
In honour of her new single – and in anticipation of what's already shaping up to be a very busy 2020 – we caught up with Murphy to go back to her very beginnings.
The first time you realised you wanted to be a musician…
Quite late in my career, honestly. Even when I’d made four albums with Moloko... I went through a couple of years wondering if I had made the right decision in taking the chance on this record deal and making music. It had happened to me kind of accidentally, really it was more about falling in love more than anything else. I met this guy Mark Brydon and chatted him up with a silly pick-up line, we recorded that and some other silly little vocals for his music, then we got a record deal. At the time I was 19 and didn’t see myself as a musician. I wanted to be a visual artist. So eight years later, when we started to break up, I wasn’t sure even then that I was a singer or a musician. I thought I should've gone to college to do film, photography or art... So I guess some time into my solo career I realised I’d made the right choice, that this is what I should do.
The first time you ever played in front of a live audience...
I was about nine and I sang “Don't Cry For Me Argentina” for my ma in front of everyone and I never heard the end of it. Literally every time they had a drink, I would run away as fast as I could because they wanted me to sing it again. It was a real memorable moment, when everyone looked at each other and said, “Jesus, she can sing!” That's when I realised I had a voice. Then, I was in a band in Stockport when I was 14 called And Turquoise Car Crash The, when I was more of a punk, really, and we just made white noise. We only had one gig and I screamed throughout. It ended up with everyone from the audience on stage and everyone from stage in the audience. Absolute mash-up, legendary actually.
The first time you got paid for being a musician...
That would be when I signed a deal. We didn’t even know if we were going to do any shows. We hadn’t done any. It was more a conceptual thing rather than songwriting. I think we got a seven grand advance each, which was a tremendous amount of money to me at the time.
The first time a politician made you angry…
I lived through a highly politically disengaged period, I lived through rave culture. I remember going to live in Manchester when I was a young teenager and the place was crawling with politics. You couldn’t walk down the street without a Socialist Worker being shoved in your hand. Everything was coming out of the miner strike, the Thatcher period. I came home one day with a Socialist Worker and my father nearly locked me out of the house. I mean, I could’ve done anything except that really, apart from join a religion. He is very intelligent my dad, but he's a pure individualist.
The first time you met a fan...
I think it took a long time to make fans. There were plenty of people who said, “We really love this album,” when we released our first record, but we didn't feel like we had a fanbase. On the second album we did think about what we needed to do to get that. I remember the first time I realised my fanbase was gay… At the end of Moloko we realised a large part of the fanbase were gay, but it seemed to purify on my first solo tour. I remember going to Paris. When we went there as Moloko the crowd was a bit chin-scratchy. Music journalists, you know? People who were into DJ Shadow and lads with trousers that hung down too low. But when I was walking in on my own it was just wall-to-wall men with their tops off screaming, “The queen, the queen is here.” I thought to myself, “Hell, yes. I’ve come home.”
The first time you fell properly in love...
It was unrequited. I’ve had many unrequited loves, which I'm quite proud of honestly. I’m proud to love and not be loved in return. When I was 14 there was this guy back in Manchester who was the coolest out of all of us. He kissed me once and for a year I just yearned and yearned for him and eventually i just went up to him and said, “I'm in love with you and what are you gonna do about it?” He just said, “Well, nothing because i'm not in love with you,” and then after that I kind of just stopped being in love. So now I'm never afraid of being in love and facing the consequences.
The first time you realised you were any good…
I think those last Moloko tours. We came into it not even really as a band. We were going to be three dolls. But it kind of ran dry because we couldn't really animate them or anything like that at that time. Bit by bit we took on the responsibilities of a normal band – touring, making videos, making imagery, and slowly it just evolved into something. We were an electronic group and the live gigs were extremely awkward for many years. We were fighting to get it right, like getting some sort of animal into a bag. I think we kind of cracked it towards the end, but it was all kind of bittersweet because we knew we were going towards the end. And that's when i felt, “I can do this shit. This is me.”
The first time you ever got properly drunk…
Probably in Manchester, Pernod in the park. I was about 12.
The first time you got into real trouble…
When I was eight I broke a big window in an old house that no one was living in down the road and my friend and I went in. Everyone knew it was us, don’t know how. I started to smoke when I was about nine, so I used to get in trouble for that quite regularly.
The first record you bought…
It’s hard to remember what I bought and what was given to me by my aunt, who had an American diner with a jukebox. When she took the seven inches out the jukebox she would give them to me. "The Tide Is High" by Blondie was one that stood out for me and I remember going to buy Madonna's “Live To Tell”. The first seven inch I was obsessed with was “Ticket To Ride” by The Beatles, I must have been about six years old and I'd listen to it over and over and over again. I'm still like that now.
The first time you got starstruck…
I get very starstruck actually. I know in my own heart I don’t really like people coming up to me, but I do understand it and accept it. If I was famous, I would find it very difficult to have people talk to me just because I’m famous, so it always stops me from speaking to people I really admire. The last person I got that with was Will Self. He was at some festival in Ireland last year and I kept on seeing him in the hotel and at the festival and I’d see him and literally just run away just because i just really like him. My mum got pictures with him and everything and told him all about me, but I couldn’t do it.
The first thing you would do if you became prime minister...
I don't want that power, so I can't answer that question.
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