"Heard these guys for the first time when I was over in L.A .last year. It definitely soundtracked my travels. Love their attitude, in terms of being wonderfully throwaway when needed but also very musical and elegant. Anyone who channels Harry Nilsson is all right by me."

"This is one of the first songs I can remember listening to over and over again as a little kid. I had ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ and ‘Without You’ and they were my two favourite songs. I remember I would sit on the living room floor with my dad’s big headphones on, we had a massive CD player set and I would put it on and I’d just be… [gasps] I’d listen to it on repeat. “That was my first love of a pop ballad and I think those feelings were my first feelings of love in a way. I would just play it over and over and I think that was my first longing for wanting to create, but maybe not knowing that yet. Just being like ‘Oh my god, this is what I love.’ “It’s quite cool that it was Harry Nilsson, because I was just listening to what my parents were listening to at that time. I fucking love Harry Nilsson, he’s one of my favourite artists. Mariah Carey is a diva and she kills it, but it’s a different experience with the Mariah version. I love a diva and I love a good belt and an intense dramatic thing, but I like the more understated, simpler versions of things sometimes too. It’s like the Dolly Parton version of ‘I Will Always Love You’, there’s something so fucking beautiful and understated about that.”"

"The ultimate road movie, set along the stretch of 42nd Street known as “the Deuce.” I first saw this film way earlier than I should have and probably never recovered. New York City and Times Square in all their glorious (and now extinct) sleaze and seediness. As a time capsule and historical document it is fascinating, and as a story of exiles and outcasts finding love and friendship amid the rubble and rabble it is touching and powerful. Hoffman and Voight are as good as they will ever be, and Sylvia Miles, John McGiver, and Barnard Hughes add eccentricity and authenticity to John Schlesinger’s bold and brash filmmaking. Harry Nilsson sings the theme song and you will remember it forever."

"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."