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Oh, I'll tell you about 'Anyone Can Whistle' - the lesson I learned with doing that record is that the simplest songs are the hardest to do.

The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that.

I was taught to whistle as a little girl by an undertaker. I used to sit in his workshop, watching him planing wood for the coffins, and he used to whistle all the time - and eventually I started whistling, too. I can whistle anything, particularly trumpet tunes from Classic FM.

I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

If you can whistle the melody, then the song will stick. But if you need a bunch of machines to make it sound good, you're probably not writing anything that's going to last a long time.

I think dissonance in music makes you think. It isn't, 'Oh, that's a pretty melody I can whistle.' You have to sit down and listen to tell it apart from other things.

I find I'm not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that's, you know, 'Oh, a melody.' It's more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.

They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.

Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, 'Yeah, songwritin' man,' looking wistful. That wasn't me - those kinds of people put me off. In the early days, I'd write a bunch of lyrics and almost look at them as a sort of joke, to make the rest of the boys laugh.