"As an artist, Nina Simone has inspired me so much. I think she was my introduction to artistry. Especially coming from a woman, it really changed the way I viewed music and gave me an incentive to learn piano. I was probably about nine or 10 when I first heard her music – it was my Dad that played me a live rendition of a song that she’d done two days after Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. It was called “Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)”. I remember waiting for my Mum outside work, he used to play that song. As soon as I heard her voice I was just hooked on it. ""'I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl' is one of my favourite songs of hers to sing. I have been thinking about [covering it]! It has so much room in it melodically to freestyle, maybe improvising some of the lyrics to make it more relevant to my life. I’d probably do it just on piano instead of with the full band. There’s times when I’ve seen Nina combine classical music with jazz, so I’d probably attempt some of that. It’s such an open song – I think that’s what I love about it. I just love the space in in it. Even the title’s quite metaphoric: sexy, but quite poetic at the same time. ""Nina Simone showed me that there are really no rules with music. The more you learn in any direction, it can only empower what you’re doing. Reading about her history, at first her dream was to be a classical pianist! It’s so effortless – she’s not even looking at the keys, she’s not even thinking! And then she’s singing a pop song on top of a classical jazz fusion! She definitely inspired me to become accomplished where I can, just to add more freedom to express myself more deeply."

"The first half is just an astonishing rundown, it's almost like a greatest hits. This record, and Kate Bush in general, has a lot to do with me making music at all. It was her complete inability to do what everybody else was doing, she just was a law unto herself. I found that incredibly awe-inspiring, in most ways. I also loved her use of strings, in a sort of choppy choppy way, rather than a sentimental way. In pop music, you tend to have strings just colouring in the chords at the back or doing a syrupy high note, and I always thought they could do more than that, and she proved it in a kind of [mimics heavy staccato strings] kind of baroque style, which I have shamelessly pilfered basically. The second half she goes off on one, and some of it's a bit silly, but, you know, who cares? Even when it's silly it's great. Now I'm pretty sure I just took one listen to 'Running Up That Hill', which would've been the first single, and thought, ""I'm having that"". I would've bought it on cassette because that was the era, and I probably wore out the cassette until it warbled and I had to buy a new one!"

"I used to work at HMV in Brighton and until that point I was still doggedly into electronica. This is a very specific memory but I remember reading something in The Guardian Guide about N.E.R.D., and I realised that these were the guys who’d been producing all the music on the radio that I thought was incredible. At HMV I had to order the album in myself, we weren’t stocking it, and it was kind of another moment for me, that realisation that you do not have to compromise, that production and good songs are not mutually exclusive. At the time I was listening to such complex music where every track had a different snare drum or a different sound, to listen to the N.E.R.D. record where every snare drum and keyboard sound is the same, there’s something insanely clever about that. It was a real moment for me in terms of realising that what interests me isn’t just the niche stuff. My production isn’t as advanced as theirs, but if you’re doing something that sounds interesting it’s pointless doing that if you can’t back it up with a song. That’s what I try and do, but I’m not as committed to the pop side of it as I could be."