"The thing about Beck was that he felt like a well-kept secret for a while. I can’t actually remember how I stumbled upon him, but it was way back around the time of his second album Stereopathetic Soulmanure, that was before he had his big breakout, crossover albums. This track is from Mellow Gold, which was his third album and had ‘Loser’ on it, so other people were starting to pick up on him, finally. I couldn’t believe that nobody else had heard of this amazing talent; he was completely doing his own thing and you could tell he had real soul. The fact that this was around the time of Britpop just made him stand out all the more to me, I couldn’t stop listening to his early stuff. ’Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs (Yellow Sweat)’ sums up what I loved about him in those days and why I still do now. It crystallised the appeal of those records, it’s got such an amazing narrative and it was obvious that it was a true story, that he really had lived above or below that truck driver who was on weird speed or angel dust. He just encapsulates that sort of nightmarishness of having problems with the neighbours and the pitched-down vocals make it sound totally ominous. There’s such an experimental flavour to it musically and lyrically and you can hear how he would cut and paste ideas. That’s how those early albums were - every track different to the last. I love everything he’s done really and that experimental flavour has never really left him, all the way up to making a pop record with Colors. I absolutely battered his first few albums though and for a while I felt like I was the only one. The guy’s a real one-off."

"I was only ten when it came out, but I knew there and then that this was the best music ever, that album. Obviously, child of the seventies, I had grown up on quite luridly sentimental and cheesy music [laughs]! Because you didn't really see punk on the television or hear it on the radio, I never really noticed it, but I did hear how it affected pop music, which is new wave, synth-pop, Elvis Costello and Blondie and stuff like that. In amongst all that, you had Gary Numan and The Human League. It was a breath of fresh air, definitely. I can see myself in my dressing gown watching Top Of The Pops. Obviously, 'Don't You Want Me', which they casually put at the end of the record, is one of the ultimate pop hits of that era and it seemed to be number one for just ages, which was fine by me, because I loved the video as well. Also one of my favourite records, I couldn't put it in this list because it's just a single, is 'Pop Music' by M, which kind of sums up that era for me completely. That's a great record, but he never made a decent album! Dare is, of all the albums on the list, it's probably the most complete - there's not a bad tune on it. They're just at the absolute pinnacle of their powers. It's not just about great pop music, because they were quite experimental still. It's not so much crazy experimental sounds, but it's really, really hard-edged and it doesn't let you off the hook. Nothing has really got a lot of reverb or delay on it, it's very, very clean. Some of the sounds go right through your head, piercing."