"When I went on my first non parent holiday to Skegness with my mates, this was the soundtrack. We were in a nightclub and 'Go Buddy Go' came on and we were bouncing off the walls. I mean, the Stranglers sounded like the Doors; they were about as punk rock as Genesis, they jumped on the bandwagon. I saw pictures of them from six months before and they were wearing flares, for gods sake! But they were a great band, it didn't matter. They outlived punk. They were making outrageously different music - sometimes limitations create great music. 'Down In The Sewer' - it was great, the bass sound was insane. It did the same thing to my heart as Ian Drury 'New Boots and Panties'; it was just bloody brilliant. I loved it all. That Stranglers record is dark and exciting and weird. A lot of my choices here are a bit off kilter, actually. Indie movies as opposed to Hollywood blockbusters."

"My Mum played me Janis Joplin for the first time one night when I was 14 or 15 and I was just ‘This is a woman?! Oh my god! What?! I didn’t know that a woman could sound like this!’ That was quite life changing and it totally changed my perception of what you had to be as a female singer. It was such a breath of fresh air, because I’d listened to so much pop and this was my first experience of a woman singing in a completely different way. It broke boundaries for me and it opened different doors, because I was suddenly ‘Oh, you don’t have to just be this one thing.’ “I guess that ‘Mercedes Benz’ was more of a ditty and it wasn’t the perfectly constructed song. I think it’s just really playful; music is really playful and singing can just be funny and downplayed, but this song is also raw, it’s so fucking raw and gritty."