"I came very late to jazz and standards. We didn't listen to it growing up, but we did have a pianola that had some old show tunes. It wasn't until I decided that I wanted to study music and did this contemporary music course that I realised the best way to earn money was to be able to play standards. I crammed hard, learning these jazzy chords so I could go and sing in a piano bar.

“It was the beginning of a huge love of that music, and for some reason, I find this song absolutely beautiful. I don't actually know who wrote "At Last" before Etta sang it, a lot of these classic jazz and blues songs were written for shows, so they have this structure and form that I've inherited.

"There's a song on the new record called "Lonely Tonight" and it's very much born of that. It's a 6/8 ballad and it gets epic, you can play it in a 4/4 swing, but it works like this. I have to acknowledge my debt to all these sort of show tunes that came from jazz, they usually had a prologue that took you through the journey, and kind of like a haiku, the end refers back to the beginning.

"It was my only ex-girlfriend who introduced the song to me actually. I have sort of famously been with the same girl since I was 17, but that's not quite true. We went out for two and a half years and then broke up for two years. That was around the time I was studying music and I kind of fell in love with this other girl for a year. She was such a huge part of why I got into jazz and she introduced me to Randy Newman and lounge music. I was actually singing in a Burt Bacharach cover band at the time. It was two amazing jazz vocalists and then me smashing out the Bacharach tunes. She was the one who introduced me to Etta's version of "At Last".

"Also, Beyoncé sang it at the Obama inauguration for his second term and my God, you just want that world back. You want a world where Beyoncé is singing "At Last" at the inauguration of a black president.

“My niece is a very complex and intelligent girl who also happens to play drums. She goes to this all-girls school and I've seen footage of her standing up in her uniform at a concert and singing that song. I didn't even know she could sing, but she's got this belter of a voice. I was like, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ She's so much less white and square than her uncle is."

"I think if someone asked ‘Who's a contemporary genius?’, you might say Miles Davis, and it's hard not to talk about Lennon and McCartney too, but Hendrix seemed like a genuine genius. And much like Lennon and McCartney, how was he writing those lyrics at 23 or 25 or even 26? There's so much wisdom in these songs.

"A slightly less cool thing is that I fell in love with "Little Wing" because of Sting's version. You know what? I'm fucking unashamed of that. Sting does a version that I really got into. [Starts playing Sting's version of "Little Wing" on the piano behind him].

"After getting into the original version, the Sting version feels so clean, but it became a song I loved because I can do a passable version of it on piano without it sucking. The thing about the way I play is that it really suits it. I feel passionate about the song and I definitely feel like I can pull it off on an instrument it probably shouldn't be played on.

"It's one of Jimi Hendrix's shortest songs but it really feels like it could go on forever. "Take anything you want from me, anything at all", what a lyric that is. It's all pretty trippy, but again, what I love about music in general is what it means to you, I guess that's what we're talking about here. The sort of hallucinogenic tones in all of his work is all myth anyway. The guy just worked his guts out on his craft. 10,000 hours in five years."

"I probably should have chosen "Ruby Tuesday", but it's often the songs that I taught myself that I connect with most. All musos have their little backpack of songs they can rip out at a wedding or a party, and believe me, I've played a lot of weddings and parties.

“Obviously you're more likely to play something like "Brown Sugar" at a party but "Sympathy For The Devil" is just monstrous. It's everything that's exciting about music. It's got this roar and this mix of sounds. It's even got bongos. Somehow, it's got all that plus Mick going, "Woo! Woo!" It’s fucking hilarious rock and roll.

"It's not easy to write a song playing a character. I think that shows how great some writers are. they're putting out great albums for 30 years, so they have to mix it up. He can't just write about what it's like to be a posh middle-class Mick Jagger forever. He had to pretend he was more rock and roll than that, so he wrote from the perspective of the devil. Even the name of the song is so fantastic.

"You can connect that to Jesus Christ Superstar too - a show about what the resurrection of Jesus Christ was like from the perspective of Judas. For hundreds of years, scholars have been saying, ‘Well, if it's all part of God's ineffable plan, then Satan and all those guys are just victims of his meddling.’ It's got good academic bones behind it."

"I want to talk about my brother and his influence on my music. I wouldn't have gotten into music without him, because I gave up piano at grade 3. I was always compelled by the piano, but him constantly pointing out the chords to songs and writing his own really pulled me along.

“His bedroom was always covered in Rolling Stone Australia centrefolds and the Hoodoo Gurus album that "1000 Miles" is on, Electric Soup I believe, it was just huge. I think "What's My Scene?" and Kinky were what made them famous. That sound was so massive for us.

“Dave Faulkner's voice and that lyric are just perfect together. [Sings "1000 Miles"]. "Spend half my time in airports doing crosswords and attempting to sleep". I think I hear that lyric as often as any other in my life. Every time I'm on tour or trying to write about the feeling of disassociation and being away from my family, it comes back to me. I always want to write about this experience of my incredibly lucky, but slightly complicated life, so I always think, ‘If I could write a lyric like that one day, that'd be good.’ It's a cracking line.

“Australia loves using their songs as anthems for various things like the navy or sports. They're like ABBA. Them and a bunch of other Australian bands like Powderfinger are so incredible. INXS too, wow. Those Farriss brothers wrote amazing songs, and what an absolute genuine rock star Hutchence was."

"I felt like I had to put something from this century into this list. There's loads of modern songs I love, like Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and Hozier's "Take Me To Church". I've also listened to a lot of hip hop over the years because I live in L.A., but actually I think "Chandelier" is one of the great pop tunes of our time. She's got one of the best blues-pop voices and I think the music video is beautiful.

"It also just so happens that this song was co-written and produced by a friend of mine called Jesse Shatkin. He's this Californian Jewish boy who grew up to be this amazing record producer. We actually met him because we were looking for a babysitter and someone gave us a number. This girl called Anna answers the phone and she goes, ‘Hi’, and immediately we're like, ‘Are you Australian?’ And she's like, ‘Yeah.’

"As she's talking, we realise it's a Perth accent and it turns out she went to the same school as my wife Sarah, but 15 years later. So her boyfriend was this upcoming producer and six months into our babysitter relationship, her future husband drops "Chandelier."

"I got to meet Sia at Jesse and Anna's wedding and I spilled wine on her shoes. I've met her a couple times since, so it's all good. And then when we got back to Australia and we were missing L.A., we took the kids for a drive through Sydney over the Harbour Bridge. We opened the sunroof, turned the radio on and the chorus hit right when we reached the bridge.

"It was one of those perfect moments. This song really connects us to L.A. You're allowed to be proud of your contemporary Australians."

"The Absence Of You" is out now. Tim Minchin’s debut album Apart Together is out 20 November via BMG.