Speech Debelle
You Can Call Me Al, Paul Simon
I first heard this when I was about six. My mum still teases me about it: as soon as I'd hear it on a radio, I'd get up and dance. I still like it because of the way Paul Simon sings. To me, he's singing like a rapper. I love the way he gets his tongue around the long words: "There were incidents and accidents/There were hints and allegations." Who uses words like that in pop music? Listen to his flow – he sounds like Snoop Dogg! It's a really happy song, too, a chirpy song. Even if you're writing a song about the most depressing thing in the world, it's good to get some hope in.
VV Brown
Endless Flight, Ryuichi Sakamoto
I heard this one night driving home down the M1, and it made me cry floods of tears. I knew about Ryuichi Sakamoto already, from his days in the Yellow Magic Orchestra, but I didn't know his soundtracks. A little later, I found out this was the closing music for the film Babel; it shows he has a great understanding of the power of space and simplicity. I studied music at A-level, and since then I've been a bit obsessed with composers like La Monte Young and John Cage; but Sakamoto's take on those minimalist ideas is very melodic. I love him in the way that I love Stravinsky: I get all excited about his weird chords and strange quirks. More than anything, I like the idea that he's taking something that's part of the tradition and giving it his own twist.
Nicky Wire, Manic Street Preachers
This is not an ironic choice. It's the greatest comeback single in history. If Neil Young had written it, people would be calling it a masterpiece. I've always liked Take That, too. They looked so brilliant back in the day and did everything right, but this is something else. It's got such a dark lyric: "My heart is numb, has no feeling/ So while I'm healing/ Just try and have a little patience". There's also a maturity about it that suits the boys all grown-up. Gary Barlow is a genius; I won't have anyone argue against him. When Alex Turner slagged off Take That at the 2006 Q awards for getting an award, I nearly lost it. James [Dean Bradfield from the Manics] was grabbing me by the arm, saying: "Don't lose it, Nicky." You get so many alternative bands banging on about how to make perfect pop, and this kicks all their arses.
Elly Jackson, La Roux
Right Down the Line, Gerry Rafferty
I've always liked classic singer-songwriters. Joni Mitchell's California is one of my favourite songs: every single line is so well-drawn. But Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line is probably a more honest choice, and a less cool one. My mum used to play it in our 2CV on summer holidays when I was young, and it would make her cry. It does that to me now. Rafferty's voice is like velvet, and although I have never been in love, it makes my heart feel like it has. Men write about women in a far more interesting way, and I try and take things from that. Women always cuss men in song; men write in a way that's more fragile, urgent and desperate. With this song, if you'd never known what a woman was beforehand, you'd be able to construct her from the feel of it.
James Morrison
Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
My mum used to play this when I was a kid, and I used to hate it. She'd play it while she was tidying up the house, shaking her hair around, and I'd be all embarrassed. Now I realise it's a pop song with a perfect guitar riff, sung by a guy with a great voice. Also, there's so much in those weird lyrics about albinos and mosquitoes: you can read into them deeply, or you can just dance to them. I know that Nirvana's stuff is so different from what I do, and Cobain's life was so different from mine, but it's inspiring to hear someone sound so completely real. Our band play this live, to try and push ourselves to extremes: songs like this make you believe you should do that.
Felix Buxton, Basement Jaxx
Confutatis, from Mozart's Requiem
I'm a bit obsessed with requiems, especially those by Verdi and Mozart. Eight years ago, Simon [Radcliffe, his partner in Basement Jaxx] and I used to walk on stage to the Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem, but a bit of me always worried that we were disrespecting the dead. Music that gives a glory to death is fantastic. It makes you beat your chest and go: oh, for a proud death! What's great about the Confutatis is that it's music that moves the simple man as well as the critic. It's like showing a great painting to a coal miner as well as an art expert: they'll both think it's wonderful. You can find the joy of life in it, and the madness of love; it can make you go nuts, or it can calm you down. But most of all, there's a positivity to it, especially in the pain. It's easy to wallow in misery, but to make it wonderful is hard to pull off. Radiohead do that in modern music, and it's what we aim for, too; but obviously no one can do it like Mozart.
Emmy the Great
Party With Me Punker, Minutemen
People think I make gentle music, but my lyrics definitely aren't gentle. I love hardcore bands because they write lyrics that are brilliant slogans. The Minutemen stand out because their music is so sparse, and every phrase just sounds perfect. "Party with me, punker . . . in a condo, in a phone booth, in an air-raid shelter!" It just makes you want to move! I write songs about relationships, but I want to have that curtness, that sharpness; I don't want to descend into slush. Bands like the Minutemen are why few of my songs have choruses. I want to articulate strong emotions instead, and make them hit home.
Jónsi Birgisson, Sigur Rós
This is something I always have to hand at home. If I'm upset, I have the vinyl, and it's on straightaway. I started playing guitar when I was 13, 14. I had long hair and a T-shirt, and heavy metal meant everything to me. You get a raw energy from the metal of the 80s that you don't get from any other kind of music. It's very melodic, also, which people forget. I still get things from this record because of that tunefulness, and not just because I first loved it at an age when you're looking for music that makes you feel powerful. I don't like heavier metal or black metal, though. That's too much for me. But I find this quite moving, really.
Mica Levi, Micachu
It won't surprise people that I like hip-hop, but I like brutal stuff, too – Chris Brown, T-Pain, Big L. Some of it is pretty sexist, and it's weird coming to terms with that. Still, I like the honesty of an artist showing you their ugly side as well as their good side. I think it's good to hear about cultural differences that don't fit into our aspirations, as well; it reminds you that there are other worlds out there. Put It On is all about girls sleeping with Big L and guns going poom-poom; it wouldn't surprise anyone to know that Big L died getting shot in Harlem. Still, his flow is amazing, and the beats and rhythms are incredible. They really influence my music.
Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrol
Isis are a band from Los Angeles who mix up post-metal and post-rock. This track is from Panopticon, their album from 2004. I love it so much: it rises and falls like empires. Its opening bars are very serene, but its second act moves into this impossibly big, visceral explosion of noise. Then it sinks back down again, blissfully exhausted, before rallying again to smash your face in with sound. I find it angry, terrifying and beautiful in equal measure and there are very few songs that can boast that. It's the most thrilling and unusual music I've ever heard.
James Chapman, Maps
I first heard this song at about 6am after a particularly messy time at the Homelands festival in 2004. I'd been up for three nights without sleeping, my girlfriend had just finished with me, and I was wallowing in my own personal sorrow, staring at MTV. When this track came on I started crying, and I didn't stop crying for a long time. At first I thought: "Come on James, you're crying at a Britney Spears song". But when I heard the song sober, it got me into that sad place again. Lines like "I guess I need you, baby" really get me. She could have said: "I really need you, baby", which would be normal for a poppy break-up song; the fact that she says "I guess I need you" makes it possible to read so much more into the situation. Music that connects with people so readily is very precious.
Neil Hannon
People always say: Well, I like the early work of so-and-so. Me, I like the later work of All Saints. The William Orbit stuff. It's ultra-produced, but for once this adds to the sound of it, rather than taking anything away. Black Coffee is particularly good. It's got all these weird, whooshy keyboards, these sinister verses which are slightly dislocated from each other, and then eerie harmonies taking you up to the chorus. Girls Aloud do pop like that now: songs like Biology are a bit weird, and they flout the general rules, and I admire that. But Black Coffee is better. I got into it when I'd got over – what should we call it? – my first flush of fame. My "tricky period". When I'm down in the dumps, I get cheered up by plastic pop. It's clear as crystal; it's hardly there. If you want it intellectual and soulful, you can look to the Pet Shop Boys. But if you just want it to buoy you up, you've got songs like this.
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