Róisín Murphy

Over the last three decades, Róisín Murphy has established herself as one of electronic pop’s most ingenious and forward-thinking voices, with a fearless sense of exploration and an indomitable artistic spirit that’s proved both influential and utterly singular. From her time growing up in the Irish town of Arklow, being around music and musicians from the very beginning, at a time when everyone had a song they might sing at the drop of a hat, the romance of music and dance seemed to feed her imagination from the start.

Murphy dove headlong into the music scene after her family decamped to Manchester when she was just a teen, and while she was there she discovered her own love of fashion through thrifting trips with her mother, who was an antiques dealer by trade. When her parents divorced and moved back to Ireland when she was 15, she decided to stay behind in Manchester and live alone, to continue her artistic immersion. After a brief flirtation with noise and punk in Manchester’s confines, she hitched over to Sheffield at 19 to immerse herself in the club scene.

A chance meeting with local bassist Mark Brydon led the pair to form the celebrated group Moloko, and the first thing she said to him upon meeting—”Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body!”— became the title of the project’s unforgettable 1995 debut. After four albums and a career that included the indelible hit “Sing It Back,” Moloko split following the release of 2003’s Statues, Murphy moved to London and kickstarted a new era of creativity, huddling with producer Matthew Herbert for the beguiling and glitch-tastic Ruby Blue in 2005. It was an indelible debut record that immediately set one rule in place when it came to her work: Expect the unexpected.

There’s been the lush pop broadstrokes of 2007’s ahead-of-its-time Overpowered, the rubbery electro of 2015’s Hairless Toys, and the hissing-steam exultations of Take Her Up To Monto from 2016 — and, of course, 2020’s utterly massive Róisín Machine, a deeply felt ode to dubby-disco, techno and house and finding her biggest audience yet in the process. With the release of her sixth solo albumHit Parade, a fulllength collaboration with wily Hamburg producer DJ Koze, Murphy continues to surf her own musical waves with utter aplomb, as she’s done throughout her entire career. The album was heralded by critics as the best album Murphy has released across an illustrious and critically acclaimed career, which is high praise indeed, and charted at number 5 in the UK Album Chart, her highest entry to date.

A cultural polymath, Murphy’s wider interests encompass a deep love and an innate understanding of the transformative nature of fashion. Six weeks of a summer in her teens spent touring France, Italy, Spain and Greece helped inform a life-long interest in architecture, both modern and classical. Murphy further expanded her musical palette during a stay in New York in the late 90s, discovering incredible Italian artists such as Mina and Patty Pravo and Lucio Battisti through a friend; she went on to create 2013’s Italian-language EPMi Senti. Murphy is an incomparable live-performer. She was the first singer to play Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and has shared stages at the most prestigious festivals across the world, including headline appearances at Glastonbury West Holts Stage, Homobloc, Coachella and Primavera Sound.

Last summer further cemented Murphy’s live reputation, with a festival calendar including Blue Dot, Melt Festival, Secret Garden Party, Mighty Hoopla, We Out Here and more. Armed with a show stopping wardrobe and an electrifying live-band, she most recently joined the ranks of star-studded performers to perform at London’s historic Royal Albert Hall, with an expanded band and camera’s recording and relaying her electrifying show in real time.