Diamanda: I was just [bad word] and I did "Gloomy Sunday", I mentioned that to you. It was the last song on my
set and they went [bad word] crazy. Bulgaria has the greatest singers in the world. Dimitrova... unbelievable. She's a
monster singer.
What influenced me to do the song, was to tell you the [bad word]  it was played to me by my friend Howard. He
played me the Paul Robeson version of "Gloomy Sunday", the orchestration was by Paul Robeson and the
arrangement was so different from anything I had heard earlier. I'd never thought of singing it before. I heard the
Billie Holiday version once, I respected it, but it didn't move me to sing it. The way Robeson sang it and the
orchestration (it was with an orchestra) was so full-voiced and so sad, not in a kinda introverted way, but in a
real prevailing, powerful way. It was just like... well, he had this voice in any case that was gigantic. It was
resonated from the toes to the skull, just like Bulgarians and his sound was of course, spiritual. I'd never heard a
singer sing a song like that before, of any race. The closest to it would probably be those Bulgarian timbres...
those big, big voices. I was very moved by it. I was knocked on my [bad word] and I just had to sing it. It's so beautiful.