Musician

One of the main reasons for wanting to perform live again was to have contact with that audience.

I love being with my friends, relaxing and talking.

As we become this one global culture, in some ways it's things like the weather and nature that still hold our culture as unique to where we are.

It's not important to me that people understand me.

My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.

School was a very cruel environment, and I was a loner. But I learnt to get hurt, and I learnt to cope with it.

Obviously I try to make the best music that I can, but after about two years of making an album, you start to worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned out?'

Touring is an incredibly isolated situation. I don't know how people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can't stop touring, and it's because they don't know how to come back into life. It's sort of unreal.

I wasn't an easy, happy-go-lucky girl because I used to think about everything so much, and I think I probably still do.

For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

I suppose I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person, and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world.

When I started music, I think it was responsible for keeping me sane, because training as a dancer really kept me in good spirits amid all the crazy stuff that happened when I first became popular.

There is a figure that is adored, but I'd question very strongly that it's me.

I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.

It's not that I don't like American pop; I'm a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?

My first Top of the Pops I didn't want to do. I was terrified. I'd never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.

People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong.

The freedom you feel when you're actually in control of your own music is fantastic.

I am just trying to be a good, protective mother. I want to give Bertie as normal a childhood as possible while preserving his privacy.