I have never relied on my sexuality and I don't really have an image at all. If you look at film footage of me 20 years ago, I don't look much different to the way I do now. I used to say that I would never wear anything on stage that I couldn't wear out to dinner with my grandmother. It just felt more respectable. I always assumed that being a musician was a vocation and that it was something I would do throughout my life and I wanted to do it with dignity. This current pop culture is full of perversity. I've been called the Emily Dickinson of pop and the thinking man's Madonna. You sort that one out. Natalie Merchant