"Prince is just one of my absolute, all-time favourite artists. He was a genius. I remember the first time I heard ‘Kiss’ and it's so special, because it's so minimal. It's so intimate and it just grabs you. He's singing so quietly and he's got so much space in between all of his little phrases. It's just so good! “It's a style all of his own and he made that sound his. It's one of those songs where it's become so iconic, and that style has been so distinct; so many people have been inspired by it and you can hear it in their music! I think it's just a great touchstone. For me as an artist, and as a singer, and as a music lover, just hearing that song for the first time, it's such a fundamental song."

"An utter masterpiece from the great Akira Kurosawa. Curiously, a Dashiell Hammet novel provided the inspiration for this film. I love that an American pulp novel from the 1920s was the spark for a staggering work of genius from Japan over three decades later. It demonstrates how art can transcend barriers across time, space, and culture and speak to us in a meaningful way. Yojimbo was remade as Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western classic A Fistful of Dollars, which I saw and loved long before I knew the original even existed. But when I discovered Yojimbo, it was like a gift from the universe. Everything else paled in comparison. Yojimbo is part western, part gangster noir, part samurai story, all awesome. It’s so good. Plus, if Kubo’s dad looks a wee bit like Kurosawa’s resplendent muse Toshiro Mifune, that’s not necessarily a coincidence."