KT Tunstall
Grammy nominated, BRIT Award-winning singer-songwriter from St Andrews, Scotland.
Over the sea and far away
She's waiting like an iceberg
Waiting to change...
When you're on your own
I'll send you a sign
Just so you know
I am me, the universe and you.
Well my heart knows me better than i know myself
So I'm gonna let it do all the talking.
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see (Suddenly I see)
Why the hell it means so much to me.
I managed to win Battle Of The Bands with one mandolin player! It was me and eleven goth bands and I won.
I had that Paul McKenna come up to me once and he said, 'I love that song of yours about bicycles.' So I said to McKenna, 'And I loved the stunt you did in that glass box above the Thames.'
It's lovely to get to say hello to people you've always admired from afar, but the fun really starts out front with people going commando whilst wearing daring mud suits.
I'm not exactly sure what has driven me so hard... I've never questioned it. I've never had a back-up plan. I was never going to do anything else.
Can you help me
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore?
Many good things come from the left! [at the House of Blues on August 12th, 2008, while instructing the crowd to do a 'side-wave.']
I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band — individuals, not session musicians.
I was traveling in Greece as a teenager, and for those who haven't been to Greece, it's absolutely covered in olive groves — stunted, gnarly little bonsai-type trees. And I was driving on a moped and a huge black stallion had pulled away from its stake and was just going nuts in this tiny, tiny, hobbit-like forest. It was just such a powerful image, this enormous beast let loose and going wild in a fairy-tale wood of tiny trees... The song itself is really about going through the process of making the first album. It was a very strange experience and a very steep learning curve. For the previous 10 or 15 years, I'd been completely my own boss — when you play a gig, you just play your new song, the new song is always your favorite. And here I was having to make an album of stuff that's never gonna go away. I was being asked to make these huge decisions, so really the song is just about learning to listen to your guts again. There's actually very few times in our lives now when we have to do that.
I was really into sci-fi books as a kid. My dad is a physicist and he used to take my brothers and I into his lab when we were little. We played games with liquid nitrogen and Van de Graaff generators. He had the keys to the observatory at St Andrew's University and he'd get us up in the middle of the night to show us Halley's Comet. That's partly why the album is called Eye To The Telescope.
Her face is a map of the world
Is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl
She's a beautiful girl.
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it —
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm.
On the whole, I'm a positive, skippity-la-la person but I love the dark side of music and I will always want to explore that. It's a positive-sounding album but there's stuff underneath for sure.
Growing up in such a stunning landscape is inevitably going to have an effect on you, whether you rebel or whether you embrace, because it's so striking. I lived on this rugged, rugged coastline with the North Sea hammering at the cliffs, and the weather changes literally every half hour. My parents met as rock climbers, so they're absolute outdoors fiends, and we were constantly up hills and under canvas and camping and tramping around. They're very fond memories and something I still love to do.
I can feel everything you do
Hear everything you say
Even when you're miles away
Coz I am me, the universe and you.
It was blazing sunshine and I went on in a turquoise neck muff, glamorous dress and muddy boots and just had the best gig, really emotional. I've had emails from people saying that they cried. They promised it wasn't the drugs.
"Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" is inspired by old blues, Nashville psycho hillbillies & hazy memories. It tells the story of finding yourself lost on your path, and a choice has to be made. It's about gambling, fate, listening to your heart, and having the strength to fight the darkness that's always willing to carry you off.
My songs examine and explore little specific emotions or situations or stories... They're kitchen table songs, like a conversation between me and one other person. It's almost like an alien has been sent to get emotional samples from human beings and put it all together on a record.