Róisín Murphy He connects to the call from Ibiza, where he spends long periods of time, especially since the quarantine. There, the Irish singer has been putting the finishing touches on Hit Parade, his new album and one of the most successful of his career. The former singer of Moloko in the 2000s, she always seemed on the verge of massive success, which she never achieved. Too risky for him mainstream, it seemed, although her taste for impossible outfits and extravagance on stage predicted the rise of artists like Lady Gaga. Before her live performance at the Primavera Sound and Alma Occident Madrid festivals, we talked to her about working as a team and she recommended books by a pop diva.
Róisín Murphy: interview and recommended books
Asked by Hit Parade, Murphy explains to us that it was an album forged slowly and without rushing, the result of his union with the German producer DJ Koze. “Nothing was planned. It was a great gift to receive songs from DJ Koze, but we worked on most of them separately,” he says. “We didn’t work in the same room, so everything was very modern in that sense. I did most of it in London and he did it in his house in Hamburg. We did it sporadically, for several years. It was like a hobby, like it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t like with my previous album, Róisín Machine, with which he knew when he had to finish it. From the beginning, DJ Koze told me that he was not going to work like that, that he has to work how he wants. It seemed good to me, because I was very busy in those years releasing things and touring. In fact, fortunately the album was finished at exactly the right time.”
My career is not the fruit of a great plan drawn up on a record company’s desk. Everything I do, in music and even in my life, has come naturally.
This way of working has its risks, of course. At some points, Murphy had to restrain a DJ Koze who threatened to send several of the songs to the trash. “There were a few moments where he got really worried, so I had to intervene and say, ‘don’t worry, it’s going to be okay, don’t throw those files away.’ If he did it, another five years would have passed. All the producers I work with are perfectionists in one way or another. They are all truly unique and work according to their own aspirations, not those of others. Those are the type of producers I prefer, and every time I learn something new. I never know how they work when I start working with them, I figure it out as I go and give them free rein.”
Collaboration, explains Róisín Murphy, has been fundamental in her career. “I am more impatient and more controlling with other aspects of my career and my life, but not with music, because I know that it is the center of everything, and if it is not right, then nothing else is going to be right,” he clarifies. “I always work collaboratively, mostly a 50-50 collaboration with another very smart producer. In Overpowered, an album from a few years ago, I collaborated with many different producers, but in that case I was the boss of the album. With everyone else it’s always been a collaborative process, and I have to sit back, be patient, and let them show me what they do. I can only push them so far.”
That way of trusting is something that has defined the Irish singer’s career. “Sometimes I find myself in a situation that can be a little scary. You think that things can be different from what you have imagined,” she points out. “But I think part of my talent is to stay calm and allow things to take their course. Then I remind myself that I am in that position for a reason, because life has brought me here. My career is not the fruit of a great plan drawn up on a record company’s desk. Everything I do, music and even my life, has come naturally. I don’t know how to do it any other way. I don’t know how to do things in a cynical or very deliberate way. If I do, it seems false, wrong.”
Róisín Murphy: books recommended by a pop diva
American Pastoral
Philip Roth
POCKET-SIZE
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The author I have read the most is Philip Roth, and I think this is my favorite book by him. It’s a very interesting book, especially if you think about the times we live in now. It’s about a daughter who gets lost in a kind of communist terrorist group and goes around blowing things up. It’s a fucking incredible book. I love his writing, I love his way of writing, his stories, the characters. He writes about interesting things, interesting people, characters, ideas and things, and that’s why I love him.
Complete stories
J. G. Ballard
RBA Books
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I love JG Ballard. In a cliché, but while we were in quarantine, I read a compilation of his stories. Many of them are located in this place called StellaVista. I wrote a song called The House on this album that’s based on one of those short stories.
The path of the artist
Julia Cameron
AGUILAR
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An important book I read when I was going to do Overpowered and started to worry about writer’s block. This book broke the block, it really changed me. It gave me the feeling that if I ever need to break a block like that, I can do it now. I wouldn’t say I’m someone who reads self-help books, but in this case it was a great recipe to organize my head and be creative.
History of Jerusalem
Karen Armstrong
Paidós Editions
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I read the History of Jerusalem last year, but it has stuck in my head this year for obvious reasons. It’s brilliant work. As you get older, you start to really like history. If you told me 20 years ago that I would be reading books about history, I would have said no, life is too short. But it relaxes me to know that there have been centuries and centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia, with the same problems. It puts things into perspective.
Empire
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt
Paidós Editions
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I also read Empire about six months ago. It’s also very good. It helps you understand the modern world, and how we got to where we are, what the world is built on, the world of banking and globalization.
