Actually sometimes, when I’m really sad I can’t write anything at all, because you’re just so down on yourself that you just think that everything you write is just shit.
Being heartbroken is really intoxicating… it’s like, you’ve been so hurt that you feel like nothing else can touch you. You feel almost invincable; it’s a kind of terrible freedom.
Bono told me how to dance in high heels.
Everything that I do is about reaching that? sense of like euphoric rush and in all the music it’s about hitting that moment where you think nothing matters and you could never be so happy in your entire life, or you could never be so sad. It’s all about extremes of emotions and it’s about getting yourself ready to go through there… I think.
For someone so conflicted, who am I to give advice to anybody? It’s such a funny, grandiose idea.
For the stage, it’s The Lady of Shalott meets Ophelia… mixed with scary gothic bat lady. But in real life I’m kind of prim.
I did everything backward, but everyone’s been so supportive. I’m not really sure what’s next. There is no plan.
I fall in love daily in different ways, do you know what I mean? You fall for like, a skyline, or you kind of fall in love with a view. You have to kind of keep that. But love between two people, yeah, sure, I do. I hope I do.
I get auditory hallucinations when I’m falling asleep. Something loud, like a word, will be said really loud in my head and wake me up.
I have always been attracted to the glamour of sorrow, I think I have always been interested in the juxtaposition between a beautiful song and a painful subject material.
I like weird people. Like, you know dancing on the street, in the supermarket.I’m weird, cause who normal writes song about coffins? I’m a weird person and I’m OK with it. Being normal it boring.
I love big, American pop music. I’m a total sucker for it.
I never dress to please guys. I would rather look scary than sexy.
I prefer sarcasm and irreverence. Wearing my heart on my sleeve – very frightening.
I remember drawing lots of cannibalistic stick men who’d eat each other in really violent ways.
I spent my 16th birthday high as a kite jumping out of a tree topless in my local park just because it felt amazing hitting the ground.
I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself.
I suffer hallucinations about demons sitting on my chest. When the demons come, sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and go to local skips for old paintings. I hang them in my bedroom.
I try to maintain a healthy dose of daydreaming, to remain sane.
I wanted to be a witch when I was a kid. I was obsessed with witchcraft. At school, me and my friends had these spell books: I always wanted a more magical reality. I had a shrine at home and I did a spell to try and make the boy in the other class fall in love with me.
I was a really chubby kid! Really awkward until the age of 16, then I just got tall, levelled out. I was even skinnier than I am now when I was 17.
I wasn’t one of those girls who was really pretty. I was never pretty. Plus I knew I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I wanted to find something that was better, more exciting… So, at 11, I formed covens and tried to be witch.
If you see me in a T-shirt and jeans, that’s a sign that I’m really depressed.
I’m a choir girl gone horribly, desperately wrong.
I’m attracted to the idea of drowning, or rather the idea of jumping off and being enveloped by something, not bad or good, just enveloping. When I was a kid, I had a moment when I got under the water, lying on the pool floor, and felt I could breathe. I’ve been trying to recreate that feeling ever since.
I’ve always been interested in clothes. I became friends with my best friend at school because we wanted to dress up and go to burlesque nights and places where we could wear the most outrageous clothes ever.
I’ve always had quite a disruptive sleep. I’m a very light sleeper. And I’ve got a super active imagination which isn’t very helpful… A treacherous brain, I’d say.
I’ve got my ideal job. I like to sing, I like to dance, I like to bang drums and dress up, and someone pays me – it’s incredible.
I’ve met lots of crazy people. I’ve danced with Paul McCartney at the Met Ball and I was dressed as David Bowie, with bleached eyebrows so that was sort of a bizarre moment in my life. It was a joy meeting Jay-Z and Beyoncé, which was surreal because they’re sort of the king and queen of music.
Like going to the park and then seeing yourself in the papers two days later – it gives you a bit of a funny feeling… But it’s not really my place to complain. Like Kate Moss said: ‘Never explain, never complain.’
Living is dealing with the everyday and the notion that you’re going to die.
Love is horrible, though, isn’t it? I mean, when you’re in love, it’s like a sickness. Such madness.
Love, death, sex, and violence are never going to be irrelevant and all are themes within the album. Death is inevitable. Since forever. It will never go out of fashion. There will never be a new version of death.
Making music, it’s such a personal thing. You’re always making music; you’re making music that pleases you, and you kind of think, you know, ‘who the fuck else would listen to this?’ And so it’s really amazing to me how many people have taken it so to heart.
The music is so euphoric, as a way of battling the words. It’s like an exorcism, beating it out with drums, shake this demon out, it’s so visceral because the melancholy has to be drummed out. I can’t let it sit inside me.
The sense, that when you’re at the lowest you can possibly go, it’s kind of freeing. Because the very worst thing that could possibly happen has happened, so what is there left to be afraid of? You know, you won’t be happy forever, but you won’t be sad forever. You know, it’s like a tipping point.
There are things I struggle to talk about face-to-face. I’m not a confrontational person. But the great thing about music is that it allows you to do talk about those things to a huge group of people.
When I was a kid I thought I could breathe underwater – I think it was a dream, but when you’re a kid it’s hard to separate dreams from reality. I kept nearly drowning. I’m a really good swimmer now though. I’m a freak, I can hold my breath for so long. We timed me – we did it in the pub the other day – and I held my breath for about two and a half minutes. I’m a freak.
When I was a kid, I was physically afraid of monsters and ghosts, vampires and werewolves… It was a scary couple of years and I don’t know if I am over it yet. I’ve toned it down but I still have to wake up at night and turn the light on. Now I translate it into songs and try to become the werewolf.
Worst nightmares can also appear with your eyes open.
You’ll dance with the devil again at some point, and maybe it will be fun. I’ve heard he does a really good foxtrot.
