“This is the most powerful song I've heard in a really long time and it's probably the song I heard latest out of this whole list. Robert’s Dad - who is a big inspiration for this newest record of ours - would just find incredible songs and he knew what kind of songs I really loved. He loved the art of songwriting and would go to songwriter retreats and encourage me by sending me cool songs that he thought I might never have heard of.

“We were at a wedding shower or something at my parents’ house and we were just sitting there and he had his phone out - he was also totally a dude who would do that. So, we're sitting around talking and he's like “Come here into this room” and pulls out his phone and says, “You gotta hear this song.” And of course, I'm hesitant at first. We were at a party, it was sorta insane, then I'm like “OK, let me listen to it,” and the opening line totally gets me.

“I was about to have my first child and the song is basically about a father admitting that he spanked his daughter too hard when she was a child. The moment where he realises and he says, “I knew right away it was too hard and I'd never make it right,” it was like he'd completely destroyed the potential future of their relationship. And there is this heart-breaking line at the end where he goes “These days things are awful between me and you / All we do is argue like two people who are through / I blame you, your friends, your school, your mother and MTV / Last night I almost hit you, that blame belongs to me.” What a crushing leveller.

“I started crying at this party. This guy is still admitting that even with his grown child he can't control his anger and his temperament with his kids, and it was a terrifying song to hear, almost like ‘I never want to write that song.’ It's insane to admit something like that and the music of the song is pretty cheery. It's a very dark layered song that also really, really affects me in an interesting way.

“There is such a tragic, but very interesting, through line with that family and how they write songs about each other. If you and I were sitting out on my back deck with a portable speaker and a couple of beers I'd take you down the eight to nine song voyage of how they respond to each other. But she (Martha Wainwright) ends up writing that song “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole” about him and there are some songs that their mother wrote about Loudon’s infidelities. It's really this unbelievable example of a family who still see each other as far as everyone knows but they write these vicious and honest open letters to each other in music. What a fascinating way to communicate, it's bizarre.”

“This was a tough one for me to try and pick which song of his is my favourite, because it would have been wrong not to include a song from him. He’s obviously a very polarising dude, there's a lot of people who think a lot of different things about him. He certainly heavily influenced me in the art of how you create albums. Reading and seeing how he's made things and put things together has been a big influence on me since I heard his first record in 2004.

“This song in particular I love. The music of it is pretty unbelievable, and it sort of sums up what I love about his music too. It takes ideas, repurposes them and turns them into completely new and radical ideas. When I was trying to pick one of his songs it was between this and the song “Gorgeous” on the same record, that’s probably the best lyrical song that he has ever written. It's just really truly unbelievable poetry.

“Every time I’ve seen that guy interviewed or talked about it's always very awkward. It feels like a boiling point, like something is just about to go incredibly wrong. And I love this song because it actually boils down to one particular line, where he goes "I ordered the jerk, she said ‘You are what you eat’ / You see, I always loved that sense of humour / But tonight, you should have seen how quiet the room was" and I love that lyric.

"He takes you into a room of what it probably feels like for him when it's awkward in a place, and he makes a joke, and no one laughs. And any time you can crack into that area where he talks about stuff honestly instead of using bravado and intentionally shocking lyrics, I think that's one of the more special places in writing when he goes there.

“I think that he was way more open in the beginning, and then he sort of developed into this other person. So when those little lines come out it always feels like "Oh man, he's hurting in there.” He's not gonna really admit it, but there's some stuff going on.”

“This song is unbelievable. If you go and read the lyrics, he has done more short stories in this song than all of the other songs I'll talk about today combined. Truly a guy at his peak of storytelling and songwriting.

“This song is essentially about two guys sticking up a drug dealer, and it starts with him in a cab eating food in "the back seat with my leg all stiff, smokin baseball spliffs.” And then they create this plan that he's basically gonna go up to the door and one of them is gonna act like they're mugging the other one.

“Sorry, I’m totally nerding out on this right now. He goes "Yo who goes there? Tony, Tony one second homie / No matter rain, sleet or snow you know you supposed to phone me / Off came the latch, Frank pushed me into the door / The door flew open, dude had his mouth open / Frozen, stood still with his heat bulgin' / Told him, "Freeze!" lay the fuck down and enjoy the moment." And he's rapping this stuff so fast and so perfectly that you're in a twenty-five-minute-long movie scene and this song is like three minutes and forty seconds. It just blows my mind.

“He's been a big writer for me and he influences me a tonne, that record in particular. If you can be wordy and get away with it then try it. So with a song like “The Wolf” on our last album I was like ‘I don't think I’ve ever used this many words before, but if Ghostface can do it, I can at least give it a shot.’”

“This was the first Wilco song that I connected to, I was a junior in high school, so I was probably sixteen. It’s just two chords and it’s another song where I don't know at all what he's talking about. I love speculating, but it's essentially the idea of coming back to your hometown and the tongue in cheek ‘you're so misunderstood’ feeling that I could relate to at that early age of angst. I probably felt like I was really misunderstood at sixteen and then as I've gotten older, I realise that there's total tongue in cheek in the phrasing.

“It's got a Midwest of America kind of feel to it, which is an interesting part of the country. My friends in the band Foxing always talk about this Midwest characteristic, and it's not hopeless at all, it's just a little bit more realist. It's like this working-class kind of tune. And at the end him screaming “I'd like to thank you all for nothin' at all” is classic Jeff Tweedy.

“They're probably one of my favourite bands of all time and have definitely released some of my favourite albums. Being There one and two were stuck in my CD player for a long time. It’s maybe the last double album I can think of from a rock band, other than Biffy Clyro, where I genuinely loved both records.”