11. Talking HeadsNaked
Talking Heads are obviously a big band and you have those conversations about them around a table somewhere. What’s your favourite Talking Heads album? Whenever I say Naked, people laugh and think I’m just trying to be quirky. I’m not! It’s my favourite Talking Heads album. It’s also my producer Ben Hillier’s favourite as well. I love that about mine and Ben’s working relationship. I’ve made four albums with him and for the second, third and fourth I had reservations and it’s not because I don’t love him, and it’s not because I don’t think he’s brilliant, it’s because I think I should do something different. But we’re so in tune with our musical tastes.
I go in with my favourite influences and say Naked by Talking Heads. ‘You’re joking? That’s my favourite!’ I don’t drive, so Ben always gives me a ride to the station after we leave the studio, and we have Naked on and it makes us laugh and it makes us smile. It’s a really fun album and it’s bloody good. Ben has two very young kids, they’re like my niece and nephew, and it’s an album we can put on and they just go mad. It’s just a gloriously uplifting album. I’ve been playing it a lot during lockdown. Luckily we’ve had this beautiful, sunny weather, where the light beams into the sitting room and I put that on and it really lifts my spirits when I hear it. We were certainly inspired by that on the new album. We were listening to it loads during the process of writing it.
