"I think there is an argument to be made for Wire being one of the greatest ever bands to come out of the UK. They have become a band to namedrop over the last 20 years and rightly so. In 1977 or 1978, me and my mates were wagging school and listening to whatever new records were out at the time, and that would be invariably punk records. A couple of my friends were into The Stranglers, which never really did it for me. I was listening to The Only Ones and Generation X and things like that. When [punk compilation] The Roxy London WC2 came out you had to have it and spend your hard-earned pocket money on it, but it was a disappointing, shouty affair. It was badly recorded with a number of bands who didn't do much for me. However, it had 'Lowdown' by Wire on it and the song stood out by a million miles. There was brains and originality behind the song. When 154 came out it was so startling as it was so ahead of its time. Well, it was of the time but broke away from the norm, which was very much still rooted in an aggressive rock & roll heartland. Wire really stretched sounds and included keyboards on their records, which at the time was a very brave move. I am trying my hardest not to use the word 'arty' but in this case, they owned that word. I had left school at that time and moved away from my parents and was living on my own. That period was key for me as a person and Wire's approach to guitar was just something I couldn't ignore. It was a real pointer away from the blues-based guitar playing which dominated pop music - including punk - since rock music had started. As a young guitar player, discovering 154 showed me a world that was an alternative way of looking at the instrument. It has stuck with me all the way through my career."

"Now to get as far away from punk as you can get… Wynton Marsalis is a trumpet player, and Kathleen Battle is a soprano. “There’s a really good video of them performing this song and it kind of tells you everything you need to know about them as people. The combined ego of these two people is insane, you can see it on their faces. Again, it goes back to the idea that you don’t need to feel like you like the people singing to like the song, you can get positive emotions from egotistical people. “This song was played to me by Rachel from Cat’s Eyes. I got into classical music through her and it took me ages to a find soprano that I actually liked. I find listening to sopranos difficult sometimes, sometimes it feels so intrusive with that theatrical, over the top warble. But when the tone is pure I love it and Kathleen Battle is one of those sopranos. “The song is a baroque piece, but I find it quite hard to categorise. It’s so visual and so evocative; it’s almost psychedelic, because their music affects your perception of things. And it puts so many opulent and indulgent pictures in my head while I’m listening to it. Of all the soprano pieces and classical pieces that Rachel played me, this one is my favourite. I listen to it all the time, it’s probably one of my most listened to songs. “These two performers are so completely dedicated to their craft. They’ve been doing this their whole life and they’ve reached a level of control that most people will never get near. That’s why I love watching the video of it so much, despite their monumental egos you can’t help but admire and be inspired by the performance. The level of dedication and the level of musicality is unreal"

"It's one of the classic records of all time, but I remember when this came out I wasn't particularly a Stevie Wonder fan. He'd done the singles and he was a Tamla pop artist really, wearing a suit, and I thought I'd got him labelled. But then this record came out and it was like his coming of age almost. It's like a small journey, listening to this album. It has a very positive beginning and ending, from side one right through to the last track. And that whole thing of here I am in New York, that wonderful idea of bringing in sound effects of street sounds that gave a different atmosphere and set the scene for what you're about to hear. I think most bands wanted to do that kind of thing but it was very easy for it to take over, so it was mostly left to the Pink Floyds of this world. But for somebody to do it just on the one track worked really well. And he played drums on this album, too. That was the weird thing, because when you listen to the drums it doesn't sound like a drummer. The things he plays aren't instinctive, so there's a different kind of musicality to what he's doing, and where it goes and where he puts things and where he hits the toms and where he does crashes and stuff like that. In some ways it was very brave of him, because let's face it he could've got any drummer to do it. But it gives it what I suppose these days you'd call an artisan quality, but I think of it as an earthy feel. Otherwise everything would be too perfect on this record. You have to have imperfection to give it character and personality. I think there's something about imperfection that puts you more in touch with what you're listening to, because you're not alienated by something that's unachievable. This record has that by the sack full"

"When I heard Girl Talk I was already in Bikini Kill, towards starting my solo Julie Ruin thing and I clicked with everything with a female performer on it. I was always aware of Lesley Gore and her songs and Joan Jett had covered some of them and I was like, "Oh, these are actually kind of feminist." The things that I learned from her from that album in particular was that there was a certain quality to her voice that told a different story than some of the lyrics. The lyrics could be about one thing but the way she sang; her singing had such an amazing tone that you really can't duplicate. I was just listening to the tones of her voice, thinking about the voice as an instrument and thinking – this is when I was doing my solo record — "It's not just the lyrics you're singing, it's how you're singing them." And so much can come across in the way you're singing that can either underline or scratch out the lyrics or amplify them. So I started to realise there were all these nuances there and her voice just viscerally affected me. I started playing with that idea a lot on the solo record. Some things didn't really have lyrics, I was just singing made-up nonsense stuff, it was just the way I was singing that was getting across, I was just going for a feeling. I was really focused on the lyrics in Bikini Kill and getting across these certain ideas and then listening to Lesley Gore I started realising it's not just the lyrics but the tone. That you can make the song sound like a sunny day and you're driving in your car having a great time and you can make the song sound like it's been raining for the past year; that was a new thing I found in my tool box."