Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!!
That was my first album, I was six. Kate, my sister, imposed her music on me because we lived in the same room. She always got to pick the albums. She was very disco-oriented, Blondie was always on and I loved it, but that was her choice to go really full on disco. I don't know how I picked this album - I remember the cover of him with his son so vividly but it was my choice. It was like a statement I made. I think it was also the provocation I loved; the fact that he was swearing amused me at my age. The sound of it makes me smile. It's an album that I've treasured since I was six years old. 

Was writing about Kate a cathartic process?

No, I don't think it helped, and I don't think I did it to help me. It's just that I had started the record, and she died during the process. We were still trying to figure out how to work together, Sebastian and myself. Six months after Kate died I knew that I had to move away from Paris, to take my family and try to make a new life happen. And so we chose New York. It was only then that the record took a different slant, and of course at the time I was obsessed by her. And even with the business of New York I only wanted to talk about her, I only wanted to sing about her and to write about her, so she became the centre point of the whole work. It wasn't intended that way of course, and it wasn't intended as a psychological move to sooth... not really.