"The first song that I think put me in a musical direction was probably Just Like a Woman by Bob Dylan, which I realise is not a very PC song now. I actually just had a think about how unacceptable that song would be in today’s day and age. But I think if you say something like that without any malice or highbrow nature then you could reverse it and say ‘just like a man’ as well. I definitely had a moment with it recently though where I was like, ‘I would not write that song today.’ But it was a revelation at the time: it was just a guy with a guitar and some lyrics and not even a good voice. That kind of hit me and I said, ‘I could do that.’ “This was probably during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and I was listening to stuff like Guns N’ Roses and Nirvana, but I wasn’t ever able to play like that, and growing up in suburban New Jersey I had no idea what Mr. Brownstone was. I was just pissed because I was in the suburbs and there was nothing to do. I was dealing with this whole lower middle-class frustration thing. Right after that, I heard the first Clash record and I made the connection between the harmonica that Joe Strummer was using with the harmonica that Bob Dylan was using."

"Groundhog Day. I can watch that movie just a million times and never get sick of it. There was a whole spate of movies around that time in the ’80s and ’90s where something magical would happen, and sort of screw over a protagonist in some way, and some of those devices were very corny and kitschy and didn’t work as well. Some of them just worked magnificently, and this one is one of those. It’s just these sort of inexplicable moments where the universe is teaching this one guy a lesson, and they never explain how or why, but you don’t care, because it just kind of makes sense. And the way it unfolds, it’s sort of like it’s one of those things that, I think, if you tasked somebody with writing a story with that premise, where a guy wakes up every day in the same day and he has to relive it over and over again until he learns to be a good person, you’d be sort of overwhelmed, like how can I do that? Then you see this version of it, and you’re like, that’s the perfect way to do it. It’s like, “Oh, it’s so simple.” That’s a brilliant script, when it looks like there was no other way to do it, if that makes any sense. And the performances, everyone from Chris Elliott to Andie MacDowell to Punxsutawney Phil. I mean, they all nail it."

"This is extremely gloomy music, but an absolutely brilliant album. I first heard it in the 80s. It was the kind of thing I always listened to at the end of the day, when you're a bit pissed and in bed and have probably smoked a bit more weed than you should have done. It's such a powerful record. It's got so many different moods in it and it takes you from melancholy to sheer triumph, in a way. The journey along the way, and the performance of Mark Hollis, is so moving, and I think the other musicians on board have great empathy for that and it all fits into place. It really does sound like they were all sat in the studio and said okay, we're all really good at this, let's do something that makes that obvious. And I think it does. I knew Ed Hollis, Mark Hollis's brother, because he came in and produced 'Love Song' for The Damned. And of course we knew him because he was the manager of Eddie & The Hot Rods, so we were already in the loop. But I didn't really bother with Talk Talk until this record came out and someone said have you heard this? And it just immediately resonated. I thought oh, I like this; I want more of it. Now I find I have to be in the right mood to listen to it; reflective, you might say."