12. Robyn HitchcockGlobe of Frogs

Robyn Hitchcock is another one of my songwriting heroes. He gets a special fucking prize for following his songwriting impulses better than anyone on the planet. He’s so wonderfully unapologetic in his songwriting style that I think he really influenced me to remove filters. His songs often follow a kind of inner logic unto themselves.

I probably got Globe of Frogs when I was 15 or 16. I look back at the music I was listening to then when I was fermenting as a songwriter, and I was obviously really influenced by the things I was listening to. Robyn Hitchcock’s songwriting sort of gave me blanket permission to write about anything I wanted to – because he did. While I had my sad, emotional, poetic music off to this side, with the Cure and Leonard Cohen, Robyn Hitchcock opened up a whole world, off to the left – ‘You can write about anything!’ And also, like a lot of these people, he’s just a fantastic songcrafter with a hooky sense of melody. I could go on and on about Robyn Hitchcock, but as far as full albums go, Globe of Frogs holds up the most, with every song being genius.