"I had that record for a long time and didn't pay much attention to it. I turned Jesse onto it. He's since tried to get it, and it's like $20, but I found it in a bin for like $4, $6. I didn't pay much attention to it, but then once I got deep into him - it's an incredible performance around the same time. The first song on there, 'Healing Song', does that very similar thing where it's just a couple of chords, but on this one they have two bass players. So they have one guy that's just playing the basic chords, the other one's really walking around it in this spiritual way, and the piano player's incredible, and people are even singing along. It sounds like late '80s or early '90s pop, like I think about this Janet Jackson song, it's a prototype for African-American pop, where it's all these songs, like... It's not like, "Ah man, I love me some Janet Jackson" - that stuff just gets embedded just 'cause you hear it on the radio 24/7, [but] you know that song, 'Escapade'? There's a riff in that song that I play on my guitar as a joke, but it's actually the best riff ever, it's sort of like that: this simple hook, but obviously they take it beyond, because they're all such good players. It's just pop that you can't deny mixed with free spiritualism."

"I think I’m going to go with Singles, and it’s because of a very specific time in my life. Soundtrack is really important to me, and I’m a child of ’90s grunge. That movie was Seattle, Nirvana, Pearl Jam — it’s the greatest soundtrack. My favorite band was Smashing Pumpkins and my favorite song by Smashing Pumpkins is “Drown,” and that’s on there. Plus, I loved all the different storylines being woven together. I love Cameron Crowe, and the idea of these people living in Seattle and looking for love. I was a senior in high school when it came out. I mean, I saw it in the theater like three times. I was like, “Oh my God, this is gonna be my life. I’m gonna move out of my parents’ house, and I’m gonna go and try to make it in the city somewhere, and it’s gonna be like this.” And, you know, Bridget Fonda as Janet was just the greatest character. I was like, “I’m gonna be like her. I am kind of like her. But not the pathetic parts of her, the great parts of her.” But everyone was just was trying to find themselves, find love, find a career, find a path, find their life. It was really aspirational for me at the time that it came out, so it really scratches that itch that I had then, and it will always be that meaningful to me. I recently made my husband watch it. I can’t remember if he had seen it or if he just didn’t remember it, but I just could tell, even though he loved it and appreciated it, like, it didn’t kill him the way it killed me. And you know, he was like, “Yeah, no, it’s good. I like it.” But he is obsessed with Almost Famous, and I love Almost Famous, but that was more meaningful for him. Singles is just… the movie, the music, the time, the look, the actors, the wardrobe, the backdrop of Seattle. Just all of it."

"I’m on the Wikipedia page of this song? There you go, at least I’m consistent! I’ve obviously talked about it before, but I’ve not really talked about it very much. I can’t really divorce ‘Coconut Grove’ from early 1984, when The Smiths were just getting going. I loved the song then and I still love it now, it’s very evocative, but the reason I brought it up is actually to talk more about what it meant in my life, rather than the actual song. “We’d put out our first album at the start of 1983 and it took off, ‘This Charming Man’ was a hit and my life was really blooming into something kind of incredible for an 18 year old. Without getting too immodest, we seemed to be on everybody’s lips, certainly with young people and their parents were talking about us as well. We were ticking the boxes we wanted to tick; some parents were confused and little bit threatened by us and other people thought we were the bee’s knees. It wasn’t just about getting fame, it was the kind of fame that we really wanted, from kids and fans of what was going to be called indie music and it felt really intoxicating. “I’d been living at our manager Joe Moss’s house and because we were doing these gigs and coming back so late, Janet, who was Joe’s wife - and they had a little toddler - was probably getting so tired of these teenagers her husband had started to look after. He’d never managed a band before, so it wasn’t like he was this big shot manager, he ran a clothes shop and suddenly I was living in their house and giving Coca-Cola to their toddler Ivan, who I still know really well. With this back and forward of bringing the gear in at two in the morning she very kindly said “Look, I’ve got this cottage out in the hills in Manchester…” I would never have gone there in a million years, but essentially she was booting me out of the house! She said “You go and move, I’ll drive you there.” And I thought “Great, I’ve got these digs of my own, this little cottage.” “So all of this stuff was happening. Me and my band were getting in a van and coming down to London, playing at Dingwalls, opening for The Sisters of Mercy, we were the talk of the town and we were getting on Top of The Pops, it was a really heady time. I’d never been reviewed before but because I was playing a Rickenbacker and the sound of my guitar playing everyone was saying ‘He sounds like The Byrds.’ I didn’t know The Byrds very well but through them I got into The Lovin' Spoonful and the whole New York, East Coast folk-rock vibe. “We’d go and do these gigs, drive back and then in this cottage I’d moved into with my mate Andrew Berry I’d eat loads of acid and listen to ‘Coconut Grove’ over and over again, probably two hundred times. The neighbours must have thought I’d died and left the record on. “So that’s what it means to me, it was an idyllic time in my life and I had this really strong love for my mates, who were the band, I think we all felt the same way about each other. Because we got fame, our roles were being defined by ourselves to keep it going and by outside forces and I was very protective of them. We were all pretty streetwise, but I was kind of the chatty, resourceful one who was making things happen and who looked after everybody. I was growing into that role and I was only eighteen. “I called this period ‘The Heatwave’ in my book and you know what a heatwave feels like? Well it felt like that for about a year, I was in a heatwave and that’s ‘Coconut Grove.’ It sounds great on a very hot day, on acid."