100 Voices: Shirley Manson - On not hiding emotions: #NowWereTalking

“There are times when I see you talking to other girls/ I feel insecure/ and every time I see you walking out/ I wonder if you’re coming back to me” – ‘If I Lost You’

I think human beings are complex and we’re not just one thing at one time. There’s always concurrent drivers in a human being of any substance. There are moments in my life where I feel insecure and certainly that sudden realisation that when you love somebody… just how vulnerable that makes you. I guess ‘If I Lost You’ is a study of that realisation that when you fall in love, and you are committed to that person and are serious, you’re putting yourself at peril in a way. Your happiness is in their hands. That’s a weird, wonderful, horrific realisation – for me at least.

I don’t compartmentalise my feelings a lot. Everything sort of swims around in the dark murky waters of my psyche, so I don’t find it difficult to tune into my emotions. When I’m in concert and I’m singing a song like that I can tap right into where I was when I was writing it.

100 Voices was published in the Hot Press Mental Health Special in conjunction with Lyons Tea and Pieta House as part of the Now We're Talking Campaign. For more please visit hotpress.com/now-were-talking/