1. Jorge BenJorge Ben
This is a perfect record, It’s heart on sleeve music, which is absolutely what I wanted to try to make on my album. Brazil is a very important place for me in terms of its music and culture; it’s the first place I lived in where I felt I got pulled out of a bubble, and had to stand on my feet in a different culture to mine, and Jorge Ben is one of its greatest figures. He was so important in the bossa nova era, and a pivotal person in tropicalia – Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil looked up to him like a brother, as he was older. There’s so much in that country’s art that’s about richness and magic, like the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well. In many parts of England, you have to pretend to down nine pints to get into that frame of mind. That’s probably why other cultures appeal to me.
