We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.
The irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually.
I suppose the biggest change to me is this kind of very oversexualizing of everything. Not that anyone wants to take the sex out of rock 'n' roll, you know - that would be ludicrous - but it seems that everything now, it's like the sexuality is the only voice; everything else is gone.
Irish artists have a tradition of being very heavily engaged in what is happening in their own society. So it was important that they had a voice.
There's a weighing kind of overemphasis on sexuality, which disempowers music generally, because it silences all the other voices; it makes music a very powerless force for changing the world.
I had developed manic depression [bipolar disorder] ... and the main symptoms the constant voice in the head telling you to kill yourself.