That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.

I've always been the sort of person who immerses myself in things, and eventually you become part of that life.

A lot of the early songs I wrote were about the experience of going to London and meeting rent boys and transvestites and drag queens. A lot of my early material is that: the wide-eyed adventures of a middle-class boy.

Knowing what I knew about Russia, as much as I loved the music and was fascinated by the songs and the whole idea of it, I knew it would be a very lengthy and frustrating process.

There's no such thing as 'I can't do it'.

So often, the singer is the sound of the record. People think they can cover anything, but the whole voice is the thing that's unrepeatable.