"Even just thinking about this song, I can feel the beginning of tears in the backs of my eyes. It's such an astonishing piece of lyric writing. It's like that Linton Kwesi Johnson track - the narrator of the song, and their emotions, are so believable. Both songs are about letters, funnily enough. “The imagery is so gentle but it's still significant and it's recognisable of a different world; just the idea of a typing pool now is absurd - it's something that belongs to a different decade. And then the imagery of the paper and the ink drying and there's a confession, but we don't know what the truth is. She's talking about telling the truth in this letter she's written, but we don't know whether she's confessing to something she's done or to the way she truly feels. “Either way, it's definitely a story about the end. 99.999% of people who've loved in their lives will know how that feels, what it's like when love ends and this is one of those songs that just gently captures the hugeness of that kind of situation. It's sung and worded very softly, but what it's describing is incomprehensibly massive. It's communicated with that image of the page being wiped clean, while the landscape remains unchanged. Absolutely astonishing. “Trish Keenan’s death is a story of tragedy in itself, because she was so unique. I know you shouldn't try to relate the personal story of the performer to the piece of music, or the writing, or the play, but you can't help but do it in this case because so many Broadcast songs are in that vein. When you communicate emotion in a song the reason it works is because, as a listener, you recognise something you've experienced before, and so Trish's writing doesn't just remind you of loss - it reminds you of the loss of her.”"

"Now to get as far away from punk as you can get… Wynton Marsalis is a trumpet player, and Kathleen Battle is a soprano. “There’s a really good video of them performing this song and it kind of tells you everything you need to know about them as people. The combined ego of these two people is insane, you can see it on their faces. Again, it goes back to the idea that you don’t need to feel like you like the people singing to like the song, you can get positive emotions from egotistical people. “This song was played to me by Rachel from Cat’s Eyes. I got into classical music through her and it took me ages to a find soprano that I actually liked. I find listening to sopranos difficult sometimes, sometimes it feels so intrusive with that theatrical, over the top warble. But when the tone is pure I love it and Kathleen Battle is one of those sopranos. “The song is a baroque piece, but I find it quite hard to categorise. It’s so visual and so evocative; it’s almost psychedelic, because their music affects your perception of things. And it puts so many opulent and indulgent pictures in my head while I’m listening to it. Of all the soprano pieces and classical pieces that Rachel played me, this one is my favourite. I listen to it all the time, it’s probably one of my most listened to songs. “These two performers are so completely dedicated to their craft. They’ve been doing this their whole life and they’ve reached a level of control that most people will never get near. That’s why I love watching the video of it so much, despite their monumental egos you can’t help but admire and be inspired by the performance. The level of dedication and the level of musicality is unreal"

"One of my Mum’s favourite bands is Bread, who I can’t stand, I just don’t like them at all, but as a redeeming feature their singer David Gates wrote and produced ‘My One and Only Jimmy Boy.’ “One of the main types of records I collect are 60s’ girl groups. It’s far from a group of kids in a parent’s garage starting a band, these are more manufactured studio projects, but they do give me a similar feeling. The expression in these songs have influenced me artistically. That romantic sentiment has always interested me, even in the way of how unrealistic it is. That appeals to me in music. “I’ve always connected to girl groups. When I was about eight years old, I found a cassette called Sounds of the 60s Volume 2 under my parents’ stereo. I heard The Ronettes ‘Be My Baby’ for the first time and I almost felt guilty for liking it because I felt like it was ‘girl music’, but there was something about it that I really loved. That sound, it always has such power to me, it really made me feel strong emotions. There’s something about the naivety and the longing and the emotion expressed that I love. “So I got this cassette and at eight years old, at the end of term, we all had to bring in a song that we liked. I brought ‘Be My Baby’ in and I remember this girl laughing at me and saying ‘Faris has brought in a girls’ song!’ “But I still started collecting girl group music. For a genre that only existed for about seven years, from about 1958 to 1965, there were so many records released and so many weird ones – it was a time in the pop charts of total freedom, expression and experimentation. There’s a clash of the pure, almost sickly sweet melodies with some really weird production ideas thrown in. That’s why I loved it."