"I got into Badfinger when I was in my early 20s. They wrote some real grandstand songs like Baby Blue and Day After Day, which were big in America, and obviously they wrote Without You [covered by Harry Nilsson] as well. But if you delve into their back catalogue there are songs that are masterclasses in empathy and full of the most beautiful, human, plaintive tones, and this is one of them. I think it is about a female friend [songwriter] Pete Ham had who worked as a prostitute. It’s always a challenge: can you write a song from somebody else’s perspective and show empathy and show understanding, and also not make it condescending? Can you understand the fabric of somebody else’s despair and write from their point of view? It’s something that is very rarely pulled off, but Pete Ham does it with this song. This song succeeds in looking through somebody else’s eyes and actually tapping into their anguish."

"I watched Serenity before Firefly [the TV series it was based on]. In 2000, binge-viewing wasn’t something that we did; we didn’t have access to that. If you missed a TV series, you just missed it. Or you’d record it on your VHS, right? It was a chore. In 2002 I was more of a country boy; I was always outside. But I like the whole idea of Serenity, the whole world, that outer rim world that we imagine that one day we will be [part of]. I actually felt this wasn’t too far out of our limits. You look at that ship, and it’s a junky old beat up ship. You would think after a thousand years, we will have things like that — that will fly and that will do things like that. We do. We have shuttles and they don’t look too far off [from those]. [That world is] only going to get closer into our grasp."

"Every single song on here is incredible and all their imagery really captured my imagination. I just loved that everything was black: they were in black leathers, the album cover was black and it was just so stylistically arresting for me. 

 I just loved how it sounded really smart too. He sounded to me both dangerous and educated, a [combination] I found really intriguing. I didn't always understand what the lyrics were about, but I got the sort of gist. I was a young teenage girl in Scotland and I'd grown up in a very conventional family and this just felt dangerous and exciting to me. It was the sort of life that I wanted to pursue – whatever is on that record, the sound of that record, that's what I wanted to pursue in my life. I wanted smart boys [laughs] dressed in black leather sounding dangerous. That's what I wanted, and that's what I went after [laughs]. "

"Not lovely at all is the music of the Edwardses, who are always at least slightly off. Cynics say the pair are really actual jazz superstars Jo Stafford and Paul Weston, but I choose to believe there is really a woman who was born to sing 'You're Blasé; as if she were hanging upside down and swinging back and forth like a drunken pendulum, and a man who plays the piano as though he were also juggling. Hailing from Trenton, NJ, the couple tripped onto the world stage in 1957 – twelve years before the Shaggs – and off again in 1982 after five albums and five singles, some of which are pretty hard to find, so the two volumes of Greatest Hits are a good start. (Misleadingly, the Complete Original Albums compilation contains only the first two albums.) Now that I have publicly come out as a fan, I guess I have to buy all the albums. Excuse me for a moment. Okay, I'm back. "