I was surrounded by music in my family, surrounded by people who sang songs - every single person I knew as a child growing up had one, two, three songs they knew from start to finish.
Lyricism was placed into my head in Ireland.
When you're a kid, right, and you're surrounded by all these other kids, and let's say they don't have the same interests or the same goals or the same world view as you... It's difficult because a child doesn't know that there's another way. A child doesn't know that there's another place outside of the systems and hierarchies in school.
On 'Overpowered,' there was a nostalgia for disco and early house music. But I'm a modernist and futurist as well. I do believe - and this is going to sound really pretentious, I know - that humanity will figure it out, so I'm optimistic about the future.
You've got to deal with the tools you have in hand. I'm a firm believer in that.
I have a little antennae, and even when I'm trying not to be, I'm connected with the bloody zeitgeist.
I'm not someone to sit on her laurels.
My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'
Me making music happened not even from a desire to make records.
I've worked all my life not to be a simpleton.
It all started with music for me. Everything still does.
Someone said to me a long time ago, 'You're a drag queen,' and at the time I was a little like... hello? But then I realized over the years that I actually am.
I was given this beautiful coffee table book of Soviet architecture for my birthday. It has a lot of holiday camps, swimming pools, theatres, and buildings that were built for leisure activities. Incredible architecture in the most obscure places. It's a little bit sad, because a lot of it has been left to fall apart.
The day I turned 16, I moved into my own flat. My parents had just broken up, and I didn't want to go back to Ireland with my mother. I was doing my A-levels, and my friends would come over and watch 'Twin Peaks.'
I'm brave and fearless when I'm performing, but in real life, I'm actually quite prudish.
My family are all mad. But I got a lot of strength from them.
I do come alive in front of a camera. The first video I ever made was a formative moment for me.
It's a natural disposition for me to become muse-like in a relationship.
My fashion icons change regularly.
I found my style in my aunt's attic. She hoarded all her '60s clothes there, along with the tiaras she'd won as a beauty queen, and I'd steal her wedding dress to wear around town.
