KT Tunstall says seeing her dead father in the funeral home was like waking up from The Matrix.
The ‘Suddenly I See’ hitmaker’s adoptive father David died in August 2012, and she admitted the tragic news also motivated her to regain control of her life, as she compared it to characters in the sci-fi classic waking up from the simulated world they lived in.
Speaking on her ‘Wake Up Break Up’ episode of the ‘Hear Her Voice’ podcast, she said: “It was somewhat of a gift for me because I just felt like I woke up. Honestly, it was like The Matrix. It was like I just woke up in the slime and unplugged the tube and just went, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got this all wrong.’
“I think losing my dad…you’re just like, right, you’ve got one go at this and it’s going to end. I’ve got to get this right.
“Literally 48 hours after my dad’s funeral. I was like, ‘I’m in the wrong relationship, this is not where I’m spending my life’. I split up with my ex. I went through a pretty horrible divorce and sold everything I owned and moved continents.”
KT felt like she had “followed the wrong path”, and losing her father was a huge part of her growth.
She explained: “At the end of the day I married the wrong person and I had followed the wrong path. My wish to be a musician and have that life was one of real unconventionality. I wanted a bohemian life. I wanted a creative, unexpected life, and somehow I managed to end up in what felt like a nine to five where I was just doing the same thing all the time.
“I was just on tour and it was really repetitive and my dad passed away. He had Parkinson’s, but he ended up passing away a bit unexpectedly. It was just a total epiphany.
“I just had never seen a dead body. I went to visit him in the funeral home. It was the most positive experience I can imagine of losing a parent because we’d said all we need to [say]. There was a lot of love. He was sick and it was his time.”