"I was a student at N.Y.U. in the ’90s. It was the first semester of a musical theater class, and one of the students got up and sang “Every Day a Little Death.” It was dark outside and snowing, and I remember hearing the song and thinking, “What is this?” It’s such a simple series of tiny moments that make up a day, that seem to be completely pragmatic descriptions of everyday life, played against the unbelievable torrent of sweeping emotion underneath in the music. And that is such a classic skill of Steve’s, where lyric plays against music, and the two things together, in the ear of the listener, tell you the whole story."

"Most people know Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson album, but what's interesting is that in the early '90s, he actually went into a dark, weird phase that French people don't really like. They consider his music from that time weak. But for me, it's the best. It's porn, it's queer, it's rap before that was a thing in France. It's just him mumbling obscene things on drum-and-guitar heavy production, really raw and tough. At the same time, it's poetic. The contrast is interesting: it's beautiful but dirty. On this album, Gainsbourg is hiding behind nothing. You get everything: the obsessions, the lust, the weaknesses, the scars. You see everything ugly and everything beautiful."