4. Fiona Apple

I heard more original music in the first five or six songs of this extraordinary record than I had in the last five or six years. I’ve been fortunate enough to once stand next to Fiona and witness what she can do to a song – in that case, it was my tune, ‘I Want You’, which she rendered with the intensity of the most desperate Shakespearean soliloquy.

There is such imagination, humour and passion in songs like, ‘I Want You To Love Me’, ‘Shameika’ and ‘Under The Table’, so if I suggest these qualities are "in balance" it is the kind of fearless, improvised seesaw of art and craft, like a raw plank dropped on a log on a woodland clearing. The constant surprise of the arrangements and the proximity of the singer to feeling means that I have absolutely no idea how this all came into being and I like it better that way.