Marc Almond
I think there's always been singers like that and i've done my fair share of cheese as well.
The weird thing was that Soft Cell was supposed to have come and gone before I started the album.
Knowing what I knew about Russia, as much as I loved the music and was fascinated by the songs and the whole idea of it, I knew it would be a very lengthy and frustrating process.
The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.
We just kind saw the images and knew the cliches, so to have the opportunity to go there and learn something about Russian music and about Russian people and to see things apart from being a tourist.
Russians have a new freedom, but as long as they don't express that freedom on a public platform.
As soon as one project is finished I like to go straight on to something else.
That's the way I work and one day I won't have the energy to do it, so I think it's always good to make the most of your life and living as much as possible.
These days i tend to use one project I do as a kind of offshoot to the next.
I think in the past I think I probably was a little too diverse, probably went from one spectrum to the complete opposite and confusing people.
I mean whatever I do it's important that I put my stamp on it and keep it in my world, whether I'm doing a dance track or something like the Russian album for example.
For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.
That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.
I don't enjoy being a celebrity, I don't want any part of that or any part of that fame for fame... i'd actually rather die than be a celebrity slime!!!
I don't really have anything against Will Young or Gareth Gates.
As long as ugly people are not on TV, you should only ever have interesting people on TV.
I thinks it really interesting how they throw the world music samples in there. I often wonder what it would be like to do something like that, but use my lyrics and my kind of style.
It's a shame in a way that people come and go with one album.
My next record I really just want it to be a collection of great songs, classic songs in a way.
I think the older I get the more creative I get, I don't have the distractions that I had when I was younger.
Russia can be quite a dangerous place sometimes, but I never think about it.
I like situations that force me to rethink things.Collection: Force
If you were born by the sea, there's always a magnet that draws you back there.Collection: Sea
I don't care much about success or anything like that. I've only ever wanted life to be an adventure.Collection: Adventure
There's no such thing as 'I can't do it'.Collection: I Can
I was a magnet for people who want to take advantage of people like me, who think they're part of this life but they're not.Collection: Thinking
I'd always wanted to write a song about a leather jacket and how wearing it makes you feel. I love leather jackets, and I've got a big collection of them.Collection: Song
I'm always more interested in trying things that will push me, and I don't care if I fall flat on my face doing it.Collection: Fall
I love this idea of shape-shifting and changing when you put on clothes, and turn into somebody else.Collection: Ideas
The albums I did around that time probably wouldn't have been the same without Ecstacy. The first three Soft Cell albums... were all really albums that were just done around Ecstacy and the whole E feeling.Collection: Cells
I thought, I'm in my late 50s now, am I ever gonna get the chance to do another album again?Collection: Albums
Albums, with me, have never had an easy birth. Especially when all the songs are self-written songs.Collection: Song
I've always loved the rock & roll element to live shows, because whatever else I do, I'm basically a rock/pop performer, and that's what I like.Collection: Rocks
A lot of youth today have become very narrow and conservative in a way, whereas we in the older generation are kind of living it.Collection: Generations
On my Instagram, I'm always keeping a record of things being pulled down in Soho and shutters being closed. Every city - and London more than anywhere - has got to be a vibrant mix of all different things. We can't allow it to become a monoculture.Collection: Cities
Sometimes I ask myself, "Should I be out in a club?" But it's about realising I don't need to be always chasing after being who I was 20 or 30 years ago.Collection: Years
I'm often prone to self-doubt about everything I do.Collection: Self
Soho has got to be at its centre. It's got such a history for rock, pop, poetry, jazz, writers, all those things, and I think it should be valued as such, and protected as this centre for bohemia.Collection: Thinking
I can imagine moving out to the seaside at some point. I like Brighton, my sister lives there. I'm a seaside boy and whenever I go there, I find myself writing songs about it.Collection: Song
I became the magnet for a lot of scary aggression. Cos it's scary Up North!Collection: Up North
When people talk about gender-benders and bracket me with George, I always think I'm not like that. I had more of a rock edge, mixed with the 80s electro.Collection: Thinking
People come from all over the world to see this little place they've seen in movies and read about in history books: Soho.Collection: Book
I have a long history with Soho: even when I was at art college, I came down to Soho to work in the summer.Collection: Summer
I was quite naïve, a boy from Southport. When I went to art college in Leeds, I lived in a basement flat, and I heard clunking on the stairs all night, and I thought it was just nurses going to work on the night shift at the local hospital! Then I found out it was all working girls upstairs. I suppose I came from a protected background and had my eyes opened wide by that side of city life.Collection: Girl
I've always been the sort of person who immerses myself in things, and eventually you become part of that life.Collection: Persons
A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.Collection: Song
I'm not one of these people who thinks everything in the past is great and everything modern is terrible. But I do think cities should be a mix of old things and new things.Collection: Past
People always go on about sleaze, but I think it's only a small part of what I write about.Collection: Writing
I made a creativity out of that messiness.Collection: Creativity
I was very much a mess, as a person. I'd come from a very turbulent teenage life, with parents who had broken up in a very bad way, and a lot of illness at school.Collection: Teenage