Edinburgh, UK · folk-pop

KT Tunstall

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'Black Horse and the Cherry Tree' looped live — Scottish folk-pop firecracker who builds the whole band from one pedal, then plays the hits.

KT Tunstall is a Scottish singer, guitarist and songwriter, born in Edinburgh in 1975 and raised in St Andrews, where her adoptive father worked as a physics lecturer at the university, a connection she has said inspired the title of her debut album, Eye to the Telescope. Released in 2004, the record sold more than five million copies internationally and became one of the best-selling albums of the decade in the UK.

That album produced "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" and "Suddenly I See," both of which became lasting radio staples. "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" won a Q Award for Best Track, while "Suddenly I See" took the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song and turned up on the soundtrack to The Devil Wears Prada as well as in Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

Tunstall is closely associated with solo live looping: building drum patterns, guitar parts and vocal harmonies in real time from a loop pedal, a technique that first drew wide attention during a 2004 solo performance of "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later... with Jools Holland. The songs themselves sit between folk, blues-inflected rock and straightforward pop, usually built around her voice and an acoustic or electric guitar.

She has released steadily since: Drastic Fantastic in 2007, Tiger Suit in 2010, and Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon in 2013. Between 2016 and 2022 she completed a trilogy of albums, Kin, Wax and Nut, and in 2023 she recorded Face to Face, a collaborative album with American singer and bassist Suzi Quatro.

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folk-pop