"With some of the other songs here I said ‘I wish I’d written that song’, but I did write this one. I figured I had to at least put in one song I wrote, so if nothing else it’s a guilty pleasure. “‘Even Though Our Love Is Doomed’ had a long birth on Strange Little Birds and it’s an important song to me. I came up with the title when I was driving. I called Shirley and said ‘I have this title’ and she loved it. I said I’d work on it but all I had was the idea for the chorus and for the longest time it just sat around. I made all these different demos of it, an alternative-rock one, a clubby techno one, another sounded kind of hip-hop and a folk version and I hated all of them. Shirley asked what happened to it and I told her I hadn’t found anything that fitted what I’d heard in my head, so she said I should just bring in a simple demo to hear. I got home that night and panicked, because all I had was the chorus, I figured I had to put an arrangement together, even if it was just a temporary holding pattern. I picked up a bass and played the riff at the start and for some reason I wrote all the lyrics, they just came out in five minutes. The lyrics work on a bunch of levels. It refers to our band, the things that we have to work through, trying to survive and understand what’s going on, and it works for me in terms of my personal relationships with people where there’s been difficult times. That’s really what the song is about, trying to realise that it’s worth fighting through difficult times if something’s worth holding on to. It’s a really personal song to me. I liked the sonic template of it and that was a big inspiration for Strange Little Birds. We wanted to make more of a cinematic, atmospheric sounding record and less of a rock record. I liked the way the sound of the music and Shirley’s voice worked together. The song is important to me in that sense and the lyrics mean a lot to me, they’re about people I know, our band and myself."

"Stevie Wonder has been one of my biggest influences as a songwriter. His ability to tell a story and still move you, and still entertain you, and still make you want to dance, I just think is complete genius – and then watching his concerts and watching him switch between different instruments! ""At the same time, what I have the most admiration for is that he managed to put a socio-political message into his music. 'Big Brother' is a beautiful song to listen to, but he’s also saying very important things and speaking to his people. I just think, what an amazing man, and what an amazing song. He’s speaking about government and politicians, and these bureaucratic arguments that are happening – the reality of life and what impact these decisions people are making in an office are having on real people; how many people are dying, and the conditions people are living in. I think he’s really shining a light on the reality of the ordinary person, and particularly on the black community – how flippantly some decisions may be made, and the gravity of what that means for the ordinary person. ""With Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone, the commitment to being the spokesperson for the community is so admirable. The point of music, in many senses for me, is that you speak for people who may not necessarily have a voice. If you have this platform, you have this amazing ability to express yourself through music – which has so many colours to express in. ""I love how eloquently he made his points, with this simple, memorable melody. I love hip-hop so much, and there’s different ways to have a message and to express different emotions, but to do it in such a melodic way that you could sing along to? I just thought that was so clever: to express frustration and anger, but to find beauty in it at the same time. ""His reference to Big Brother also speaks of now so much more than then, in the sense of technology. He prophesied it. And he says “I live in the ghetto / You just come to visit me 'round election time” – that manipulation speaks of the times we’re in now. It inspires me – there could always be more reflection on the very unique times we’re in"

"Blank Frank’ is a song that manages to be super-modern and futuristic even though it’s about forty years old now. It’s from Here Come The Warm Jets, which is one of my favourite records of all time and I got into it when I was about fourteen or fifteen. It was very challenging, it was quite arty and some of it’s abrasive, but because I loved Roxy Music I was into investing some time in it and forty odd years later it’s definitely a Desert Island Disc for me. It’s partly because it’s so full of ideas, but also because it could only have come out of the UK. “I think all great art represents its environment; Jasper Johns is an obvious one because he used a flag, but if you look at the Pop Art movement it feels like Manhattan in the 60s’, the LA 60s’ art scene doesn’t look anything like the East Coast art scene. You could say exactly the same thing for Hip Hop, I think anything that’s informed by its environment is interesting and is usually pretty good. “Here Come The Warm Jets would be really quite an interesting record if it came out now, the vocals are very, very British. You know the word ‘arch’? I think arch is something that Americans don’t really do and I’m not saying that with any sense of nationalism, I think that for good and bad arch is a particularly British trait, it’s kind of intellectual, it’s remote and it’s not earnest. People often think that’s a bad thing and that music - and singing in particular - has got to be from the heart, or else it’s not authentic. “The X-Factor and talent shows have done so much damage to singing and the art of songwriting, because the basic premise is the more emotive a thing is the more quality it’s got and that’s complete nonsense. Siouxsie Sioux isn’t about that and ‘Blank Frank’ totally exemplifies it, it’s still a great rocking track but its arch and arty, it’s quite intellectual but it’s still engaging. “One of the reasons I picked a lot of these songs is because they were part of my formative years and a theme running through this is the UK in the 70s’. The idea of it being this sea of beige and brown with terrible haircuts and power cuts was a little part of it, but when you put all these records together, particularly Brian Eno and Roxy Music, it tells a completely different story."

"I think I was about 12 or 13 when I first heard Miseducation. A sense of identity was such a big thing I was looking for growing up, because of being the only black girl in my year, my family being this mixed-race family in the middle of Scotland. I did really love growing up there – it gave me a lot of peace growing up in the countryside – but at the same time, part of my identity as a black woman was realised when I heard that album. ""I learnt so much about being a black woman from Lauryn Hill and through her music: who I was, why my hair was like this, how to deal with it. I’ve grown with the album, and even now, when I listen to it – I think I’m older than she was when she wrote it – I feel like there’s all those lessons to be learnt. ""The biggest lesson I learnt from Lauryn Hill as a musician is that you don’t always have to be going extra with your voice! Prior to her I’d listened to all the divas: Aretha, and Whitney, and Mariah. I thought the whole goal of being a singer was to go as high and as loud as possible! Listening to Lauryn, I really learnt about how the tone of your voice can be just as powerful as any tricks you can do with it. ""When I heard 'Tell Him', the track was so stripped. It’s just a live drum loop and her voice on topic, with maybe two backing vocals. They’re doing such beautiful harmonies – I think it was a really big lesson in simplicity and bringing out the soul of who you are through your voice without having to do anything fancy. ""The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was just so raw. I love how she mixed in spirituality with her cultural perceptions and with romance. She showed that you don’t have to take one topic – it was a really full-bodied expression from a woman. I just love that album, and that song is my favourite. ""As a singer and a musician growing up, there’ve been a lot of powerful women that have really led my journey. I also really love hip-hop, I love lyric, so anywhere I can find intelligent lyricism I love. There’s something about a woman’s voice telling an honest story that can really catch my ears. I think I’ve inherited that from my Dad, because he was so in love with the divas and these voices and passed his love down on to me. Strong, independent, and quite outspoken through their music – those are the type of women that would inspire me"