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CMAT, pop’s gobbiest, gaudiest star: ‘Everyone else in music needs a kick up the hole!’
Playing stadiums and causing dance crazes, the Irish singer-songwriter is going supernova – and whether opining on trans rights, body shaming or capitalism, she’s more forthright than ever
It pushes at the boundaries of her previous work’s sound: into synth-heavy territory on the title track, pop soul on Running/Planning and distorted alt-rock on The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station, a song during which the constant sight of the TV chef’s face in Britain’s motorway services seems to bring about an existential collapse in the mid-tour CMAT. Ireland’s recent history suffuses Euro-Country, which features vocals in Irish, songs called Billy Byrne from Ballybrack, the Leader of the Pigeon Convoy and Tree Six Foive and a title track that she describes as “a collage, a mood board” about the financial crisis that engulfed the country in 2008. She laughed it off at the time, suggesting she should be imprisoned for the crime of “having a big fat ass”, but returns to the subject on her current single, Take a Sexy Picture of Me (it has turned into that rarest of things: a song about body shaming that has provoked a TikTok dance trend, with it-girl Julia Fox and Chicken Shop Date host Amelia Dimoldenberg participating).
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