Quotes

[on her favorite singer: Dusty Springfield] "I remember clearly the first time I heard her. Elvis Costello was presenting a radio show, playing a selection of his favourite records, and as was usually the case with anything like that on the radio, I was taping it on to cassette. This was 1980, or maybe 1981. He played I Don't Want to Hear It Any More from Dusty in Memphis, and there was her voice - that smoky, husky, breathy, vulnerable, bruised, resigned, deliberate, sensual voice."

[on her favorite singer: Dusty Springfield] "There were no traces of black in her singing, she's not mimetic... She has a pure silvery stream." Silvery, I like that. I've always thought if Dusty's voice was a colour, it was silver. There is so much air in every note, and although the sound is rich, it has none of the chocolatey-brown of, say, Karen Carpenter's. It seems to exist higher up, almost suspended above our heads, literally transcendent. You look up to Dusty's voice, in every sense. Neil Tennant pointed to the emotional tension in her singing, saying there's "an intensity and desperation to her voice that's fantastically sensual".