"I adore this song, my wife and I played it at our wedding and it’s a ringtone on my phone. Every now and then you hear something and think ‘I wish I could write a song like that, something that gets to the essence of what it means to be alive.’ I remember the first time I heard ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ on the radio and I was like ‘Damn, I wish I’d written that song.’ The strings work so well with Richard Ashcroft’s singing and lyrics, which sum up a lot of the complicated feelings you have as an individual trying to get through each day. It’s a perfect wedding of the two of them. It’s wrapped around this glorious production and the sound of the band is really minimal, it’s mainly the string arrangement, which of course was from The Rolling Stones. If they’d just cleared it ahead of time they probably would have done a 50/50 deal on the publishing, but they didn’t, it was too late and they didn’t have any control. The Rolling Stones didn’t need the royalties as badly! I also admire ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ from a producer’s standpoint because I love its simplicity. The drums are the same pattern over and over, I think it’s a drum-loop, for the bass it sounds like they got a two or four bar loop, because the chords don’t change, and the guitar overdubs are all textural, it’s just these blips, bleeps and little echoes flowing through the mix. It’s a brilliant soundscape, it doesn’t really sound like a rock song, where you have blazing, loud distorted guitar amps, it’s got this atmospheric vibe to it and I think that fits the lyrics and the singing perfectly."

"The record came out in October and Roc Marciano is like a national treasure, basically [laughs]. The record KAOS that we did together is just fucking ridiculous and I couldn't wait for it to drop. I wanted to include it because when I heard what Roc had done, I felt the same kind of excitement I felt with some of those early records which is rare for me. He's created a whole different style of subcultural, subversive music right now and he's undoubtedly one of my favourite MC's. His work is mad, original and extremely lyrical like GZA. Like every line he writes, you could make a fucking movie out of each one. To work with somebody, I've got to click with them and I've got to meet them and if it's cool, we do some music together. It has to be like that for me. I've worked with everybody I ever wanted to work with growing up and now, I really like picking artists and working with artists that aren't really well known but who do something extraordinary. This project was all just about getting up, creating art and having fun and just enjoying myself. I've been producing people's music my whole life and I've turned down working with a lot of big pop stars for a lot of money because I just like doing my own thing and it has to be right. I don't like making a beat for someone and just giving it away – it has to be something I love and something I enjoy, which is what this project was all about."

"I listened to that record non-stop, it was a record that was in my house when I was really small and I knew the whole thing back and forward by the time I was six years old, as that's one of the many times we moved. I remember listening to the song 'So Far Away' in our station wagon as it pulled away from my neighbourhood and waving goodbye to my best friend. Throughout my life I've had a different favourite song on that record for a different reason and it sort of stayed with me. When I was a karaoke host, one of the first songs I did was 'I Feel The Earth Move'. I think her story is so interesting, too, of starting out as a songwriter and not feeling confident and then deciding to put out her own songs with her own voice. That was a really empowering story when I finally learnt it. I just thought she was this cool, powerful '70s woman with her curly hair and swirly skirts. I found her fascinating as a person as well, like a role model. She played piano, sang and wrote the songs, and everyone knew that, it was really implicit at the time, that it was her album. A lot of singers, male and female, were singing songs written by other people and Carole King had been writing songs for those people, then this album was like, "I'm writing it for myself." I didn't know she wrote 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow?' until I heard her sing it and her version was so different than the popular version that I'd heard and I was like, "Wow!" It was a great album in the vein of Thriller – every song on that record could be a hit. And it was like she made it; I knew a woman made it from start to finish and I knew I could write songs. It was something that everybody had that was very popular that actually still holds water and it's really good."

"I was reading Dorian Lynskey’s amazing 33 Revolutions Per Minute book, and I went and investigated this song because he’d written about it. I like it when writing affects the ability to understand music, because I grew up reading NME and Melody Maker, Record Mirror, all telling me why some record was amazing. And then I’d give it a listen and I might not like it at first. But then because the writing about the record was so amazing I would believe that there was something there and I’d often grow to love it. After reading the book, suddenly the lyrics are really flying out at you. “I’ve even stopped believing in prayer”: sometimes one line conveys the utter lack of hope in a situation."

"This is the kind of film I love most—the kind I’m never really comfortable recommending to anyone. I can totally picture someone saying, “It’s awful,” and I’d be like, “Yeah. I see that.” Like, why is it so funny? And why, despite the constant silliness—an effete, vegetarian, sulky Dracula; Joe Dallesandro as a he-man socialist Brooklyn peasant; the jokes about finding young “wirgins”—is the overall effect so mournful and lonely? I think the answer has to do with the way the film never telegraphs its intentions. It modulates between horror, satire, spoof, porn, and tragedy, but imperceptibly. To catch the changes, you have to be in the flow of the movie, enthralled by it—and then everything works."

"I would say Pulp Fiction, for sure. When you are a teenager, I would say, “What the hell is going on? If making movies looks like this, OK, I want to be a director.” Everything was kind of perfect; there was the humor. That’s why I was not just honored and happy to work with [Quentin Tarantino], but crazy happy. [laughs] When he told me he was doing the movie, I was dancing in the streets in Paris for hours. I had a sense of joy, for sure. So I would say Pulp Fiction, for everything we just love in that movie, like the dialogue, the shots, the lights, the actors, the craziness, the freedom of making something so freeing."