"Haha, I was thinking, there are millions of bleedin’ classic albums I could have chosen, but that album came out when I was on holiday with my kids, and I bought it because I’d seen her on The X Factor. She came on singing ‘If I Was A Boy’, and I thought, fucking hell man, if there was ever an example of what real talent is… you know what I mean? You’ve got some quite talented kids on that show, but then she comes on and it’s like all the lights on the planet have been turned on. And I really loved that song, I don’t know why, it just got me somehow: girls imagining what boys do, and so on. Unfortunately I didn’t see her at Glastonbury 'cos I had to leave, but my kids stuck around and saw it, and I watched it on the telly, and I loved how she put a lot of effort in and embraced the whole thing. Somehow she doesn’t seem as fake as a lot of those other pop-soul artists."

"I've always loved Angès Varda and been obsessed with Cleo from 5 to 7. I kept thinking of that specific movie when I was singing "Chance" because I was like, "I wonder, cinematically, does this song belong in my version of Cleo from 5 to 7?" [The film is] about a singer — she's obsessed with herself but she's also so sad, alone, and isolated. She only has the woman who works with her and is taking care of her. And then she goes to see a fortune teller and the fortune teller tells her she has cancer. She's having a rough temperamental day after the fortune teller. The day goes [on] and you don't really have empathy for the character at first, but then over time you get to know her. I really like that. [Agnès] features this character in this way because it shows you that even when you imagine that someone's life is super easy and they're obsessed with themselves, that's not really the full story"

"""That's when he did all talking songs. He had this pseudonym, Luke the Drifter, but I remember it for 'Beyond The Sunset' and every track was where he sang a little bit, but he talked a lot. The earlier ones that I heard Hank Williams doing were the classic hits that he had, 'Cold Cold Heart' and 'Your Cheating Heart'. This one I came to later. I heard Hank Williams as Luke the Drifter first in America. When I first went to the States in 1965, I was finding albums in the Colony record shop, right in Manhattan. It was the honesty of the songs - they were very well written, the lyrics, which were tremendous. That's what I liked about it and what I still do. The ones were he talks, that's another thing again. He went a step up there: it was great to hear him talk as well as sing. 'I Dreamed About Mama Last Night', that's a great song, just about life, talking and singing."""

"I love that whole album, Coney Island Baby, I like the whole way that album was done. It’s got a cooler, very studio thing going on with all these ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ahh’s’ on the vocals all over the place. “With ‘Crazy Feeling’, I can’t be sure, but I think I heard it on the radio when it first came out. I think I was going to kindergarten somewhere; that was the ‘60s for me! I heard that ‘bum, bum, bum’, that sort of that chiming thing that goes on, and I really liked it and the sound of the guy’s voice singing. “At this point, it could’ve been a vivid dream that I’m remembering, but I think it actually was that song that I heard that on the radio and mixed in with everything else it caught my ear, at whatever age I was, whenever that song might’ve gotten a couple plays on a radio station. We would’ve been listening to a New York station at that time, living in Connecticut, or a Connecticut station"

"Why this one over Here Comes The Warm Jets? Well, the obvious thing would be to go with stuff like that. Everything Eno does is great, but I like this one because it's a poppy record. It's a bit of a progression from Here Come The Warm Jets, which is a bit tied to glam - it's a bit of a hangover from Roxy Music. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) moves away from that a little bit, and it's just completely bonkers. I think his singing and his lyrics are brilliant. It's also where A Certain Ratio got their name from - and that made me think, 'Ah, A Certain Ratio, they must be alright'. It's just lovely. It's sinister glam rock; there's nothing terribly glamorous about it. It's more like glam rock in Korea or China - I just like the idea of him using little Communist party references in there. Glam rock was basically seedy anyway, there's no getting away from that, but this was putting it in an interesting context."

"It has to be a tie. Laurel and Hardy simply because they are two of the funniest people who have ever been on film. I’m leaping over the entire Marx brothers collection to say this, which I also love, but I recently went back and saw both of these films, and just the combination of really brilliant physical humor and absolute charm when these guys are just standing there, and they’re so good together. Nothing beats weirdness for the sake of weirdness, like the Marx brothers were prone to lapse into. But just to see the scene where they’re in a bar where they’re way out west, and a cowboy starts singing “Trail of a Lonesome Pine” and Stan and Ollie just join in and do a dance and harmonize and Stan gets hit in the head with a hammer, it’s sublime. Sons of the Desert for the same reason. I don’t think there’s ever been a comedy team as good at what they do as these guys."

"""When I started Sleaford Mods I started to explore my childhood influences, like The Meteors. I was 13 in 1983, but it was a good period of music. Socially it was not very good, but creatively it was great. I tried to dress up, I was a bit of a scooter boy. Pilot jacket, American lightweight camouflage trousers, leather jacket, crows nest haircut that didn't look very good, but you know, that kind of thing. It made a big impression on me, but I didn't experiment with these ideas until Sleaford Mods really, when I found my natural voice. I can sing, but singing is a really difficult thing. I can sing very well and I did that for so many years but it's not my real voice. When I started Sleaford it was my own voice and I married perfectly to that kind of thing. People these days are like, ""Oh you sound like John Lydon,"" well, I don't mean to sound like John Lydon, if there's echoes of that, it's just the way I speak, you know."""

"’She’s Always a Woman’ is a good complement to ‘Something’ I think and lyrically they compare to each other. For me, Billy Joel is hands-down one of the best lyricists of all time. He came up singing in bars and he’s about to have his 100th sold-out show in Madison Square Garden, which I hope to go to! “When I listen to this song I obviously think about the closest women in my life, the people that I respect the most, but especially my Mother. Me and my mom would listen to this song together when I was growing up. It’s one of those songs that I can remember the exact place I was when I first heard it, and it was in the kitchen with her. “Thinking about my mom when I was a kid, she would go through all the different contrasts described in the lyrics - she’d be hot and cold and angry, but then soft. For me, the title lyric reflects how she’ll always be amazing in my eyes. It’s a really respectful but playful song."

"Their songs have these great back-and-forth male-female vocals and really introspective lyrics that I love. We toured with them in the UK with Bikini Kill so I met them and was like, "Jesus Christ, bands here are just so much better than in the US" and, "Oh my god, they're so fucking good!" They made me feel like they were a band that was happening in the now. They reminded me that even when you're not in your twenties or whatever, it still has to be about now and not about yesterday. You can write a song about yesterday but the reason you're doing it is so that you can get to now. Your work has to be about now and not about yesterday: "This is something I'm thinking about today." All the beautiful, humble moments on their album, the musicality of it is just amazing. I've seen them live like a thousand times and they've never disappointed me – Rachel [Evans] and Ben [Phillipson] singing together is just an absolute dream."