"Whitney Houston, what a phenomenon! Now that she’s gone even more so, I think maybe the world just didn’t recognise what we had. Maybe in the 80s and 90s people understood, ‘cause she was just this shining star. When I watch her performances – there’s one in particular, where she’s singing to the sailors that’ve come back – and she sings “All The Man That I Need”, I just think it’s the most perfect performance I’ve ever seen! I can’t believe it’s live! “'My Love Is Your Love' is probably one of my favourite songs ever. I heard it once on the radio – I must have been 12 when it came out – and I fell in love with it instantly: the voice, the track, the production. My parents and I went camping in the Lake District, and I went to Woolies and found the CD. I was so excited, but we didn’t have a CD player! ""For a whole week of camping, I remember staring at this CD with the memory of how incredible it was on the radio from one listen, and the excitement of ‘I can’t wait to get back! We have to drive nine hours to get back! We have to finish the camping trip!’ Getting home, I just ran to the CD player to listen to it! ""I love the accessibility of music through streaming, and now everyone everywhere can listen, which I think is a wonderful thing. The one thing I do miss is the anticipation of music, and the listener having to make more of an effort to hear it. For me, the appreciation was more. When you’re a kid, you don’t really have money to spend on anything, so you were investing everything you had on this feeling. I always think back to that every time someone asks me about streaming. I want that feeling back, of really having to make a physical effort to listen. I just remember cherishing music in such a different way. ""It’s a hard one to balance. It is great that we can all hear everything we want all the time, but for me as an avid music lover, I feel a difference. If there’s something I really love, or an artist I really appreciate, I will always make sure I go and buy the vinyl. I’m really excited about my next album – I’ve been told they’re going to make cassettes of it! Just for nostalgia’s sake, I think that’s so exciting! Beyond the physical aspect to listen to it is the maintenance of it. You have to keep your CDs safe; you can’t scratch them! You have to be careful when you rewind the tape! That care is all part of the experience. ""Every artist that I’ve fallen in love with has been because I’ve been able to see all sides of them, and some sides of artists aren’t going to be as popular or as streamable as others! I think it’s important to have a full sense of who someone is. For the artist, to have the anchor of an album is quite stabilising: if you’re thinking in singles that can get quite confusing and go in so many different directions"

"She's one of my all-time favourite artists, all-time favourite spirits and one of my all-time favourite voices. I think she's incredibly fragile and I continue to worry for her because I don't think she's being very well taken care of as an artist. There's certain artists need everybody's help to continue to be creative and she's one of them. 

 I'm a tank – I can take care of myself and I don't need anybody's help, but Sinéad O'Connor is a jewel and has a voice like no other – one of the great voices of this century. I worry that we're going to lose her. She has mental health problems and has spoken very openly about them and is really brave and courageous for doing so. She's a great rebellious spirit who was punished for being a rebel in ways that we can barely imagine or conceive of. I have nothing but great admiration for her. 

 She has this extraordinary voice that just does things to my insides. She's a complete iconic gem and touches me in ways that so few can; she's made so many beautiful records. I wish I could sort of throw myself at her feet, because I feel like she finds love, I think, difficult to absorb, and yet she's so deserving of it. This voice comes, again, from a different universe. Its spectacular ability to both emote and communicate. I'm so grateful to her for this record; I just love it and I love hearing her sing so much. She's one of my touchstones, someone I always can rely on to bring magic. 
 When greats die, like when David Bowie died, there's this great outpouring of grief as I know there will be if and when, god forbid, we lose, finally, an artist like Sinéad O'Connor. Yet she's alive now and is capable of producing these spectacular pieces of work, and yet she's treated so brutally by the music industry – an industry who would rather laude in applause an uncreative, stage-schooled kid who's got a great voice but no soul. They'll get more excited about that than they will the possibility of signing a great like Sinéad O'Connor. And therein lies the ludicrousness of the modern music business."