Thank you for the music, Sleater-Kinney. This gang of three was the best American punk rock band ever. Ever.

You know the Prince song where the girl's phone rings but she tells him, "whoever's calling couldn't be as cute as you?" I long to live out this moment in real life.

In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cure, but you can hear the reason why - these guys are too sad.

Like any teenager who reads The Great Gatsby, probably, I was madly in love with the teacher who had opened it up for me.

Every American wants a clean slate, but nobody wants to lose what they've got.

She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free.

The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic 'Baker Street' has to be the 'Ulysses' of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft's sax solo, creating one of the Seventies' most enduringly creepy sounds.