Róisín Murphy: 'It's natural for me to become muse-like in a relationship'
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Version 0 of 1. Róisín Murphy's love affair with Italian music began, as these things often do, with a love affair with an Italian man. She met Sebastiano Properzi, the Milanese producer best known as one half of the electronic duo Luca C & Brigante, three years ago, when she dropped in to sing on their track Flash of Light. "We met in the studio," she tells me with a broad smile over a mug of tea, "and then we met a couple of weeks later, and it was love." The union has so far proved fruitful both personally and professionally: they have a son, Tadhg, and spent the last year recording an EP. Mi Senti, out this month, is a collection of five classic Italian pop songs – from Non Credere, recorded by the groundbreaking performer Mina in 1969, to Ancora Tu by Lucio Battisti, Italy's answer to Bob Dylan – and one original song, In Sintesi. The sound, masterminded by Properzi, may come as a surprise to those who loved Moloko, the trip-hoppy act Murphy co-founded in 1995 with her then boyfriend, Mark Brydon; or her own shiny, widescreen dance anthems, like 2007's Overpowered. For one thing, Murphy is singing in Italian – she learned the lyrics phonetically, giving her delivery a breathy, naive quality reminiscent of Jane Birkin's French. And Properzi's understated production draws on specifically Italian styles, from the stirring canzoni of the 60s to the analogue twiddles of 80s Italo-disco. "Always Italian, always Italian," Murphy says firmly. "Sebby [Properzi] was very strict about that. We transposed the songs to electronic music, to synthesisers, and gradually stepped out of the era they were written in." The songs also gave Murphy a chance to prove that her voice is stronger and more versatile than even she – who fell into making music after approaching Brydon at a party with the immortal chat-up line "Do you like my tight sweater?" – thought it could be. "It was quite a stretch for me vocally," she admits. "But it's like exercise – if you stretch your voice, it does get bigger." It's almost seven years now since Murphy, 40, released her last solo album – a hiatus she explains with the fact that during that time she became a mother of two. But she's definitely back for good: she's written 30 songs (in English this time) with the musician and producer Eddy Stevens, who also worked with Moloko and is now helping her whittle them down them for another full-length solo record. Murphy is a famously extrovert performer, with an idiosyncratic sense of style: the video for Overpowered, for instance, saw her riding a London night bus in an oversized costume bearing a strong resemblance to a packet of mint humbugs. It's intriguing, then, that a woman who seems so strong and independent should so often choose to hitch her professional work to the men in her life. Murphy thinks it must be in her DNA. "It's a natural disposition for me to become muse-like in a relationship," she says. "I don't know any different. But strangely, I was much more bossy when I was with Mark. I'm not as impatient and bratty as I used to be." Mi Senti is out on 28 May |