I’m not the first to wonder this but hopefully I may be among the last. Last week I was among a few hundred (thousand? what’s the Olympia’s capacity?) worshipping at the altar of Róisín Murphy, her of Moloko fame and solo success. The girl is amazing. She is a walking ode to showmanship, everything most artists – especially those specialising in pop - should strain to be. Thing is, they probably wouldn’t succeed.
Murphy storms the stage wearing a massive feathered coat. Regardless of how ridiculously fabulous her clothing is, it never wears her. Her performance is mesmerizing, her dedication to her cause unquestionable. She is a female Brian Ferry during ‘Slave to Love’, she is a blend of all that made Madonna, Kate Bush, Michael Jackson, Prince and a handful of others so famous, all the while remaining Roisin Murphy, part Irish girl, part girl next door.
It could be her lack of a Lily Allen-style need to overshare. Allen was her usual confessional self in the Observer Music Monthly at the weekend; “I’ve had a couple of times,’ she says, ‘when I’ve got to know someone over a few weeks and we’ve had a really great time here, just watching TV and shagging.” Murphy doesn’t share like this, ever. It doesn’t seem to be in her nature to. And while this is not a judgement cast on Allen it is an indicator of what a person must do to become part of the super-famous.
Murphy plays the fame game to an extent. ‘Slave to Love’ features on an ad for Gucci pour homme featuring James Franco. (ad here, song here) She is pictured at fashion week in New York and London, she goes to parties with fabulous folk and is photographed for Vogue. For all intensive purposes she is a celebrity par excellence. Excepting her disregard for the rite of passage also known as a public meltdown: Britney, Lily, Amy..the list goes on.
It is a sad state of affairs when someone as talented as Murphy is confined to Dolans in Limerick and, to an extent, the Olympia. Here’s to hoping her star is in the ascendant, not just to the level of the other stars but far, far beyond that they have achieved. It would be a triumph of talent over all that is dreary and dull in the pop world.
