KT Tunstall
Basically, my mum and dad bought me a CD player for my 14th birthday. They didn't really listen to music at all, but my dad had a couple of tapes that he'd listen to, like Tom Lehrer. My dad was a physicist and Tom Lehrer was like this really weird Harvard class professor, who was really cool because he was also a satirist and pianist.Collection: Birthday
I'd love to go to Easter Island, Hawaii, Iceland and Antarctica.Collection: Easter
If I can be somewhere with sunshine and have bare feet and a book, I'm happy.
I don't let housekeeping in when I stay in hotels. It cuts down on all the caustic cleaning products and aggressive water usage, and I never use the little plastic bottles of toiletries they set out.
I always thought I had a face like the moon, because I had really chubby cheeks when I was a kid, right up until my mid-20s. My face changed in my later 20s and again in my mid-30s.
I'm a huge fan of The Chemical Brothers and the Ninja Tune label and a lot of the stuff that they put out like DJ Shadow but I think, out of all of them, Leftism really just excited my musical brain in terms of the way that they mixed real instruments with dance tracks.
I like that I have a boyish figure, because I love wearing men's suits.
I grew up thinking, 'You go to university, you get your degree, you get a job, you get married and then you have a family.' But when I got to the point in my life where I had all those things, and was looking to start a family, I was miserable. I realised I didn't want kids.
Life is about embracing the things that make you different, which is often an uncomfortable thing to do.
Despite fashioning myself a very unconventional lifestyle with my music, I had ended up in a really conventional situation. I was also guilty of becoming a people-pleaser, which is absolutely exhausting and not a sustainable way of living. It can be so damaging to fall into that trap, especially in close relationships.
When my divorce came through, it was like being let out of a cage because I hadn't been true to myself before; I was being something that was expected of me.
Well, I was a real late-comer to listen to music, actually, because my parents - first of all, my parents weren't big music fans. They didn't listen to music. We didn't really listen to stuff in the house.
You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.
I was adopted. I was born in Edinburgh, and adopted when I was about two weeks old. And it's a good thing, I think, really, that back then, in '75 when I was born, you were really given a lot more information than you're given now when you're adopted. And you know, you can access that information when you're older.
The way I feel about how I look changes daily, but as I've got older, I feel more confident.
I would be happy to live in a world with no mirrors, but at the same time, it's great to look good on stage because you feel you're offering more than just the music.
I lived in L.A. for a year when I was four - my dad was doing a sabbatical at UCLA - so it always remained quite a familiar place.
The topography of L.A. is fascinating.
Venice Beach is incredibly quiet at night: no streetlights, no traffic, hummingbirds in the garden, palm trees everywhere.
My first memories of life were Californian.
In Scotland, Dad grew courgettes which were the size of my leg. I'd step into the garden and it was like 'The Day of the Triffids.'
I think it was Dad who gave me my nickname 'Katy Custard,' recognising my deep, positive and lasting relationship with it.
When I went to university I survived on jacket potatoes and pasta for three years.
It's very addictive having a hit.
I've always loved the idea of 'Guilty Pleasures.'
British music lovers in general are dreadfully concerned about being cool, but I'm quite happy to grab uncool by the horns at any opportunity.
What I noticed about living by the sea when I moved to London was that it's really bad when you only have lots of other people to compare yourself to. I grew up relating to the land as well as other people.
When you're in the city, all you see is people. It gets more competitive, people become more introverted.
On tour with me, it's like fluffy-bunny land. Everyone loves every-one else.
Don't let your parents telling you that you shouldn't do something stop you from doing it.
I'm not image-obsessed.
There was an obvious display of blatant sexism when I couldn't get signed. They didn't say I was ugly. They didn't say that they didn't like the music. They said I was too old! At 26! So Badly Drawn Boy, Doves, Elbow, James Blunt - you can be a gnarly old beardy bloke with a bit of a paunch and that's all right?
I'm a serial monogamist - I tend to dive in.
I work better under pressure. I was the local badminton champion when I was a kid, and there was another girl who used to thrash me for the five days leading up to the tournament and then I would just nail her to the floor in the competition.
My parents' concern has been one of my greatest assets - I needed something to kick against. If they'd supported me every step of the way I might not have had enough fire in my belly to get where I have. Then I think: was this whole thing reverse psychology, did you really go to those lengths?
My dad's a physicist and had a key to the St Andrew's observatory, and we used to pop down to see Halley's Comet and Saturn and meteor showers.
It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter. You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you're playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.
I've never been a confessional writer.
My experience of being a singer and performer is there is something meditative and very positive about singing, just resonating the inside of your body.
Let's face it - the electric guitar is way sexier than the acoustic.
I really liked writing rhyming poems and plays.
It's unacceptable to tour using non-environmentally friendly fuel when there are alternatives.
What was incredible about the Maldives was that the entire island we were on consisted of sand. There didn't seem to be any dirt. You could walk around for hours barefoot with your white trousers skimming the ground, and they'd still be pristine white.
I always try to travel as light as possible. I feel really embarrassed having loads of luggage.
I've always tried to avoid music being direct therapy, and I've always found there's a power when you write something that can have its own interpretation - although I'm not being intentionally evasive.
I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.
I think there is optimism to what I write.
I've always felt at home in America. Obviously, there's down sides to everywhere - the politics of America can be hard to take but it's not great here either. I really love the country's landscape and I've travelled it many times.
But I'm pretty lucky with my voice. When I first started touring I went to see a woman to give me some coaching on how not to lose my voice. And she was just saying really your voice is a muscle so if you're using it all the time you should actually come back from tour with a stronger voice than you left with. And that's really how I find it.
You know there's this really strange mystique about Simon and Garfunkel, when they use the amazing mandolin and all the percussive stuff. It sometimes sounds very global.