Culture That Made Me: Cork-born singer Flo McSweeney selects her touchstones
Flo McSweeney is teaming up with Leslie Dowdall to perform the hits of Linda Ronstadt and Carole King.
Flo McSweeney was born in Cork in 1962. Aged three, she moved to Dublin, growing up in Cabinteely. In the 1980s, she sang vocals with several bands, including Moving Hearts. She’s presented several TV programmes on RTÉ, including and
In 2019, she released her debut solo album, She’s married to comedian and star Barry Murphy. She will perform with Leslie Dowdall the hits of Linda Ronstadt and Carole King, Sunday, September 28, at Dublin’s Vicar Street. See: www.vicarstreet.ie
At 13, Carole King's was the first album I bought. I learned every single song inside out. She was an amazing songwriter. Even now when I listen back to it, the songs aren’t dated. They're great standalone songs. For me, who’s mad into singing, it was lovely to learn the songs and the harmonies.
My uncle Liam McSweeney owned the Lee Bookstore in Cork. He adored books. His shop was musty – the real old book-shoppy thing with the ladder running along the shelves at the top. His house was full of books, gathered in special, handmade narrow bookcases. He fed us books – we had beautiful collections of hardback novels and series as kids – giving us a love for reading.
is my favourite movie. I associate it with my parents, our family and Christmas. James Stewart’s character is living in Normalville, working in a bank. There’s a scene where he's falling in love with Donna Reed’s character and fighting against it. She’s on the phone to a guy whom she's not interested in, agreeing to go on a date.
Jimmy Stewart is standing in the background. He’s told her he's not staying; he's going to discover a life elsewhere. He's standing behind her, breathing in her hair. It’s the moment he knows he's not going anywhere. He's going to stay and marry her. For Christmas one year, my husband got the still from the movie and framed it for me.
I loved David Bowie’s – the visuals, the colour and the album’s cover. I loved David Bowie’s whole performance, that theatrical thing he did. With those lyrics, “Time, he's waiting in the wings / He speaks of senseless things / His script is you and me, boy / Time, he flexes like a whore / Falls wanking to the floor…”
I used to turn the volume down on my little record-player in case my father heard them because they were very staunch, Catholic people in those days.
My mother grew with the times as she got older. I remember I'd be in the kitchen singing Julie Covington's and my mother thought that was an outrageous thing to be singing about! She took it literally. It was about bleeding from the heart, but my mother thought it was something else.
I always knew when she was cross because she would call me “Florence”: “Florence, don’t you dare sing that song in this house.”
I love songs with a strong narrative. I love Elbow’s album The big hit from that album was but it's my least-favourite song on the album. Guy Garvey is a poet – his lyrics are pure poetry. He’s amazing, and Elbow are an amazing live band.
Tom Waits
I saw Tom Waits in London’s Hammersmith Odeon in 1987. At one point, the band disappeared, and the stage went black. Then we heard these boots sounding, reverberating through the theatre. Then the light came up on his shoes coming across the stage.
Then a tiny light came up on an American-style refrigerator and Tom Waits kicked the door of the fridge, and it swung open, the light on the stage went down and the light on the fridge came on, a bottle of beer inside. He walked to the microphone and started telling stories, backlit from the light of the refrigerator.
It was the most theatrical, most visually beautiful concert I've ever seen. He was so engaging, funny and charismatic.
My husband and I went to see KD Lang. I dragged him along to the National Concert Hall in 2019 to see her. It was her last tour, and the last gig of the tour. She has a voice made of chocolate. She doesn't do the vocal acrobats so many singers do now.
She sings a song that has a story. It was beautiful and joyous to watch. Her band was made-up of older guys in their late sixties. She had Tom Waits’ bass player in it. Her voice was as pure and beautiful as it was in her twenties. Music for me is emotional. I was in tears at the end of the concert, as was my husband.
I discovered jazz in my twenties. The first song that grabbed me was a moment where I thought this is the music I should be singing. I've always been drawn to tragedy and melancholy in music. Black Coffee is about a woman.
I visualise her in her apartment madly in love with a guy who's treating her like crap. She's smoking fags, drinking black coffee, waiting for her baby to maybe come around. There's a line: “Now a man is born to go a lovin’ / A woman's born to weep and fret,” but to modernise it, I sing, “Is a woman born to weep and fret?” There’s a darkness to the song I love.
My favourite 20th-century jazz singer is Sarah Vaughan. I love her interpretation of songs like I've seen a lot of jazz singers who are technically great, but they don't give anything of themselves. To be a great performer and singer, you’ve to be vulnerable. You must let your audience in. I can't bear singers that patronise audiences. Sarah Vaughan left her heart on the stage’s floor.
When I was maybe 16 or 17, I read It's a book that stays with me. As a younger person, I read it because I loved the story told through Atticus Finch's daughter, Scout’s eyes. It has wonderful humour in it. As I got older, reading it again, it became something completely different – I saw it's about integrity, written at a time when there was a lot of civil unrest and racism in America’s Deep South.
I remember seeing Sam Shepard’s play, on Broadway. It’s about Middle America, poverty and family dynamics. I often think that Martin McDonagh is like the Irish Sam Shepherd. It’s a wonderful play.
The musical – where American singer Dee Dee Bridgewater plays Billie Holiday – is an extraordinary piece of theatre. Billie Holiday is in London doing a concert. Her musicians are on stage with her. She comes in for rehearsal and she's out of it; she badly sings a couple of songs with them. Then the band takes a break. She peels off her coat, the lights change, she becomes a little girl, and we’re told Billie Holiday’s story. It’s amazing.
