Diamanda: I was just in Russia and I did \"Gloomy Sunday\", I mentioned that to you. It was the last song on my set and they went fucking 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 truth, 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 arse and I just had to sing it. It's so beautiful.