Merchant - "I'm a wreck!"

About 50 songs were written for the project, 35 were recorded and 26 chosen, all based on poetry from composers old and new, from e e cummings to Mother Goose. The recording features 130 musicians.

With Irish blood on her mother’s side, the 46-year-old insisted she debut the project in Ireland. “Everyone was saying we have to focus on England, but I said, ‘No, we have to go to Ireland!’’, she tells Hot Press.

Read the full interview with Natalie Merchant in the issue of Hot Press published today (Paul Weller cover)