"The thing about The Beatles, whether or not you think they’re good, as an introduction into like pop music, experimental music and avant garde music, it’s literally like every album is one of those text books you had at school, Beatles 1, then Beatles 2, then you’re ready to more on to Beatles 3. There’s some of their records that with hindsight weren’t particularly interesting, but The White Album is kind of mad. Often you remember it as better than it is, but as a product of what’s possible in terms of releasing music as a hugely popular band, what you can do if you want to do it, I think it’s a really brilliant thing. Without them having done that, someone else would have had to make that idea a reality for the world of music. And it’s got some really good tracks on it! I do think it’s becoming more and more acceptable to dislike the Beatles and that’s what I’m saying – you can totally not like them, but you’ll struggle to find another band that will teach you about music in such a beautiful way. The curious thing about The Beatles, speaking as a musician, is that everything you thought was magic, isn’t magic. They had press and radio people, people to create this event when they arrived in America, it wasn’t this spontaneous thing. I remember watching the Beatles anthology when it came out and finding it incredible, then I watched it recently and it feels really horrible. And you know that they themselves weren’t necessarily nice people, I feel duped!"

"I wanted to include something current and with Savages you can hear all these influences of Joy Division, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Wire, etc; this distillation of all my favourite bands from my adolescence. I like being able to hear all of those influences, but although it sounds like their influences it doesn't sound at all derivative. It still sounds new and fresh and fierce. It's four ladies playing this really tough music. I bought the record and I thought it was pretty good, it sounded like it was made for me. And then I went to see them live and I was blown away. It was so tough. It's hard to pinpoint what made it so tough. It's these four women on stage, taking up every corner of the stage, all dressed in black and giving no eye contact to the crowd. They had such presence, you could feel their energy. It was really moving. My boyfriend turned to me during the show and said: ""I'm really enjoying this because it's really good but also because I know 15-year-old you is totally freaking out right now."" And I said: ""She is! She is! I think I might cry!"" In fact the last time I saw them I actually did cry. They did a cover of Suicide's 'Dream Baby Dream' and it was just all too much for me. So after seeing that first show I went back and re-listened to the record and it took on a whole new sound to me. I can now hear all of that energy coming out of the record."