"This one is kind of a rare bird - it’s one that I think rock lovers from the ‘70s and ‘80s will know. It was my Dad’s favourite song and it was his karaoke song. I think I have a video somewhere of him wailing it in a car when I was growing up. He could hit all the notes and I was always in awe of him. My Dad had such a beautiful voice and a big range, and he still does to this day. We’d sing along to it and all do air guitar to the crazy guitar solos. “It brings back childhood memories, but it’s also just a badass rock ‘n’ roll song, and it was my introduction to rock music. I love southern rock and it definitely has an influence on the music I make with DNCE now."

"As obtuse as this whole list may be, what drew me to Chromeo was their name. Being a hot-rod head and a car fanatic, I loved the name. It could have been a terrible record and I would have loved it, because you ain't got nothing unless you got a lot of chrome. 

My taste doesn't run too far into dance or disco but in the grand scheme of things, and for those who are attempting to perceive what ZZ Top is, it's good on occasion to find an unexpected surprise. On occasion we'd be lumped in with southern rock bands, but we're really not – it's Texas. Which is quite a bit different. Texas is down south, but it's certainly a far cry from South Carolina or Alabama or Georgia."

"As a teenager in the late 70s I wasn't really interested in contemporary pop music or punk-rock, I was listening to stuff from 10 years earlier. This was a big record for me. Sometimes when I'm singing – it occurred to me last night in Istanbul – I realise there's a certain kind of vocalising I do that takes its cue from Leon Russell. He sang in a southern accent but it was very blown-out and exaggerated, very free and loose. I got this record as a gift for playing in the baseball team at junior high – I loathed sports but there weren't enough people to complete the team. So the coach said, have as many records as you want, just please be on the baseball team. I was like, all right I'll do it."

"I saw him on the Jay Leno show, and I thought 'wow, this is a good band'. It was like the Kings of Leon, southern rock, and he came on with that thing and I thought 'I wonder where this kid's from, he must be from the South somewhere'. And then when Jay Leno says 'that was great', Paolo says [adopts Scottish accent] 'thank you very much', and I thought 'he's fucking Scottish!' So it's great, but the album he did as well, that's great. I play that - there's so many great things on there. Again, it's fresh, it's different from other things, so I hope he can come up with more, because he writes as well. And Ethan John [Jones's producer for Spirit In The Room] produced the album, which I didn't know, when I heard the album. There's a jazz band thing, a traditional jazz band thing. 'Simple Things In Life', I like that, about going round to his mother's for tea, it's great. He paints a picture, you can see him do it."

"I've been listening a lot to that record lately. My desire to be a musician started with my love with his band. My first exposure to him was probably Caribou, because my friends had it. My dad got me Elton John's Greatest Hits, then I think I discovered Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Madman Across the Water, Captain Fantastic... And later on, I started to dig back, that's when I really got into Tumbleweed Connection. It's got a real kind of Americana into it. I think, it’s my impression, that Elton has a kind of a love affair with America. Maybe some kind of country music elements in that, as well as pop and rock & roll. And it just has a southern feel to me. ‘Country Comfort’ and ‘Amoreena’ are two of my favourite songs in that record, they're just so fucking well done. I'd met Elton a handful of times and he's always been a very knowledgeable guy, very interested in the band. He's asking you about certain tracks, and this and that like he's actually listening to our stuff, the kind of shit an assistant's not telling him before he walks in. I kind of learned this around the time he ended up recording for our song [‘Black Gives Way To Blue’]. He's a big fan of Alice In Chains. He keeps up on what comes out in all sorts of music as a fan himself, very fucking knowledgeable. You know, to ask a guy who's your number one musical inspiration to play in one of your songs... that means the world to you. We never expected him to say yes, but you don't know unless you ask. So I wrote him a little e-mail, explaining the significance of that song, especially through what we were moving out of, that we wanted to honour Layne, that we wrote that song as a making peace and saying ""goodbye my best friend"", and moving on with the band, to live a new chapter of the same book. That itself was huge, and then for Elton to listen to that song, and get that, like: ""I wanna be a part of that, I think it's a beautiful song. The emotion is very genuine, and I want to play piano on it."" Pretty mind-bungling stuff. One of the coolest things that has ever happened to me and to the band."