Cerys Matthews
Singer-songwriter and broadcaster
Cerys Elizabeth Matthews was born on 11 April 1969 in Cardiff, Wales, and moved with her family to Swansea at the age of seven, later attending St Michael's School in Llanelli. It was in Swansea and Cardiff during the early 1990s that she co-founded Catatonia, the band that would carry her voice to the top of the UK charts and make her one of the defining figures of the "Cool Cymru" music movement.
Catatonia's breakthrough came with the 1998 album International Velvet, featuring the single "Mulder and Scully", which became an anthem not just for Cool Cymru but for the wider "Cool Britannia" scene of the late 1990s. The album's title track, sung partly in Welsh, carried the line "every day when I wake up, I thank the Lord I'm Welsh" and became something of an unofficial anthem of national pride, cementing Matthews's status as one of Wales's most recognisable musical voices.
Since Catatonia's split in 2001, Matthews has built a wide-ranging career as a solo artist, broadcaster and author, presenting programmes for BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the Sixties, and publishing books celebrating Welsh culture and cookery. She was appointed MBE for services to music, and continues to champion the Welsh language and Welsh music on national platforms.