"Laurie Anderson I discovered in college along with a whole other collection of artists, like Philip Glass, John Cage and Pauline Oliveros. I took an experimental music class when I was 18, which opened up this entire world of music I'd been missing. In high school I listened to Einsteurzende Neubauten and I'd pick up weird-looking found sound records from the used record bin at my local record store, but this was the first time I'd really studied it. Looking back at the vast majority of music that influenced me as a teenager, 99% of it was by boys. Before, my female influences had been Cyndi Lauper and Madonna and Alison Moyet. But Laurie Anderson was just playing an entirely different game. She was just making the bizarre music that she wanted to. She didn't need to glam up. I just remember looking at the fucking album cover of Big Science and thinking 'This is the coolest fucking woman in the world.' She looks like she gives no shit about what anyone thinks of her, in a way that surpassed Riot Grrrl or anything like that. And the fact that she had a powerhouse intellect and was a storyteller... she set a new bar in my head. She was a performance artist, which was what I wanted to be when I was 18. I imagined that I'd do something with theatre and music, probably both. I never thought as myself as any great shakes as a musician – and I still don't – but I thought of myself as a great creative performer. What Laurie Anderson and Pauline Oliveros were doing was taking the instruments they'd been taught and transmuting them into this beautiful, strange world of art. They were taking that stuff and fucking it up, and that gave me a lot of hope."

"It's a brilliant album. What's not to like? It's universally loved and accepted as an album, as a collection of music. When you're a kid you listen to Beastie Boys because you like to sing '(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)' because it's silly and fun but Paul's Boutique is sophisticated and mature, as well as being really musical, which I really like about it. And long before I had any awareness of what sampling was, all the different bits that they use I was always curious about what they were. I always knew they were from other songs, because some of them I recognised. But it was super fascinating to me. I was already in love with New York and the idea of moving to New York. And in my adolescent fantasy I thought: ""I'm going to graduate high school, I'm going to move out of the house, I'm going to move straight to New York, and then maybe, one day, I'll get to meet one of the Beastie Boys."" And now I've met all of them! James [Murphy] is really good friends with Ad-Rock and he'd be at the studio with us and I'd go there and be with Adam, and eat pizza with Adam. It was so bizarre because 15-year-old me was losing her mind but I had to be cool. But also it was totally normal because he's just a normal guy and he's hanging out with my friend who's just a normal guy and they're doing normal stuff. But no matter how many times I meet them or see them I've never stopped being star-struck. I have to stop myself falling apart."