Roisin Murphy - Unputdownable

"You are my favourite book and I like to spend my time. I'm fully occupied reading between the lines"

Album: Hairless Toys [3rd solo album]
Recorded: London, England
Genre: House, Deep House, Art Pop
Album Release: May 8th 2015
Single Release: December 11th 2015 [3rd single]
Length: 5.14
Producer: Eddie Stevens
Vocalist: Roisin Murphy [age 41]
Label: Play It Again Sam (PIAS Recordings)

Music Video


Recorded live for the BBC in 2015

Charts, Streams & Sales

Belgium (albums): #12
UK (albums): #19
Spotify: 886,000 +
YouTube Music: 698,000 +
2015 Choice Music Prize Nominee (losing to SOAK)
2015 Mercury Prize Nominee (losing to Benjamin Clementine)

Credits

Backing vocals, drums, guitar, keys, percussion

Details

• The music video was directed by Roisin Murphy.
  
• The song compares a relationship with someone to reading a good book. There are several allusions to death throughout the song that suggests that the person the song the person is about may be someone from Roisin's past. "Well I'm left in confusion by your epilogue. Where is the conclusion?"
  
  The songs feels like it is looking back on something which is fitting as it is the last song on the album.
  
  
• "Unputdownable is a love song. Just a sweet love song. That, again, was written in that sort of old-fashioned way where we allowed a stream of consciousness to happen and, it was a song that sort of wrote itself, it’s one idea, one metaphor of the one you love is as interesting as a very, very, very good book. And it’s not meant to be very complicated, it’s about just love." (Roisin Murphy from Hairless Toys: Track by Track)
  
  
  
• "The way I started in this business was all tied up in sex and sexuality, because of meeting Mark who became my boyfriend as well as my collaborator. That frisson was there in the work relationship all the time. And since we’ve broken up, I’ve taken a little bit of that with me. I’m not saying I flirt with producers, but for me there is always some kind of male-female chemistry in the way that I work." (speaking to MailOnline in 2009)
  
  
• Murphy worked with the same producer for all of Hairless Toys: Eddie Stevens. This is her preferred way of working, a female singer with a male producer and a bit of sexual tension. On her previous album, the ill-fated major label release 'Overpowered' she had worked with an array of different producers, largely at the behest of the label. The results were mixed. EMI tried to market Murphy as Kylie Minogue and when things didn't go to plan they dropped her. Murphy's album prior to Overpowered, 2005's Ruby Blue, had also resulted in her label dropping her.
  
  Things would be different this time, without the commercial expectations that come with signing to a major. Murphy was now with the independent Play it Again Sam and she had taken an 8 year gap since 'Overpowered', which gave her plenty of time to think about her music. She enlisted the help of her former Moloko collaborator Eddie Stevens, who can be seen pictured below (furthest to the right) on the back cover of Moloko's 2003 release 'Statues'.
  
  He was someone she knew well and they would spend long hours, just him and her together, writing and recording songs. It's no surprise then that the album feels more personal than previous releases. It has an intimacy to it which can be felt in the, at times, almost whispered vocal delivery. It was very well received critically. Commercially she did okay, the album sold over 20,000 in Europe alone.
  
  The album sales weren't really important though. Murphy had found her groove again. She had released a record that didn't see her get dropped from her label. In fact, she made another album with Play It Again Sam the very next year and she would continue making house music well into her fifties.
  
  

  

  Eddie Stevens is the person furthest to the right. Moloko - Statues (2002) back cover
  

  
  

Artwork