"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 As a time capsule and historical document it is fascinating, and as a story of exiles and outcasts finding love and friendship amid the rubble and rabble it is touching and powerful.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."

"That moment I had when I was young, listening to White Light/White Heat by The Velvet Underground… I mentioned there's a song called 'The Gift', and John Cale narrates it. It's about a man who mails himself to his girlfriend as a present. She opens it, and she fucking kills him. I remember… I didn't realise John Cale was Welsh when I was 15. I remember listening to that song and I was like, "Fuck me! That sounds like a Welsh voice!". My mind exploded: one of the pivotal members of The Velvet Underground was a Taff! Anything is possible baby… I really got into John Cale from that moment onwards. I think if you get into John Cale you go to Paris 1919, which is an amazing album and some would say his best, but Slow Dazzle really pushes it for top spot. Number one, it has one of the best covers of all time: he does a cover of 'Heartbreak Hotel' which is a brilliant, brilliant cover. And he goes from that to 'Ski Patrol', and there's another song called 'I'm Not The Loving Kind', which is almost like a Harry Nilsson, beautifully orchestrated, melancholic plea to a lover. So he goes from serrated acuteness of 'Heartbreak Hotel' to the lushness of 'I'm Not The Loving Kind', which is just one of the great motivational songs of all time. In a strange way it just motivates you so much. This is where John Cale got his game together: he realised he was an experimental musician who could also write amazing tunes. And this is where you actually hear him not scared of his voice anymore. This was the start of his true greatness. As a solo artist he's nearly unsurpassable to me."

"For me, this is very much a hallmark of where I was able fit in musically in my career. When I started out I was in Montreal, but went to New York periodically and failed miserably with what I was trying to do. It was right at the time that Jeff Buckley was on the rise, and grunge, and that whole movement was incredibly heterosexual, incredibly nihilistic, incredibly guitar-based and very, very dark. I admired it, I'm not against that, but when I was dropped into that equation I was this gay piano-playing opera queen who wanted to be romantic and harken back to other more refined eras. What I was trying to do just didn't make any sense in New York. People would often try to categorise me and say I was cabaret or that I should be doing Broadway. It was very complicated and I never figured it out. Then I was signed to Dreamworks, by Lenny Waronker – whom I believe helped make Pet Sounds. I went to Los Angeles and suddenly realised that I was definitely more part of the Brian Wilson tradition. Whether it was him or Randy Newman or Van Dyke Parks or Harry Nilsson, there was a kind of spot that I could fit into. So I listened a lot to Pet Sounds. You can hear it somewhat on my new album, songs like the last track 'Alone Time', but all through my career there's been a real concentration on harmonies and interesting chord changes and a dreamlike quality. I was able to find my niche through that tradition, as opposed to the East Coast. I have a lot to thank Brian Wilson for, he allowed me to inhabit my world comfortably, as opposed to when I was in New York and I was a total anathema to what was happening there. I can't say that I listened to the album obsessively or that I'm obsessed with him and know all his work, but I definitely feel I am a Wilsonite."