No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

I know that I'm with the best people I can be, and my arsenal of sounds and songs and tracks is as good as it could possibly be. Don't be in a band unless you feel that.

I love Land Rover Defenders. I love 'em. I love the old 90 Defender; it's my favorite car. I just see one - even the 110 - but if I just see one of those things parked, I just stop in my tracks every time.

I have seen hard times in my life. I lost my foot and was badly injured after a gang of thieves threw me out of the running train. I laid down on the tracks for hours and later was hospitalised. I could have failed and died.

I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that more instruments, or more vocal tracks, harmony, or double tracking the voice, is a good thing. People do their early albums very stripped down, then each album becomes bloated.

I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.

I love Bob Dylan. 'Blood on the Tracks' is one of my top five records.

Provence off the beaten track offers silence, stillness, sweet scents, eagles, chestnuts, endless avenues shaded by plane trees, fabulous walking, cycle tracks and beaches to die for.

I don't tend to have a favorite album; I tend to have favorite tracks. There are flaws in every album that spoil it for me.

I used to do all my programming on a BBC computer. It was limited to 16 tracks, and you used the keyboard, not a mouse, to input, but I was using it so long, I got quite fast at it.

I'm always on tour, so I'm always trying new tracks out live before they're released. That's more necessity than anything, because I don't get a proper chance to sit in a studio and work on tracks like other producers do.

Nowadays, who actually listens to the tracks on an album, anyway?

I love the way Pharell is laying down great drum tracks. He is a great drummer.

More people are asking me to come and sing for them, so obviously I am getting more work. But apart from singing, I have been parallely programming and producing music tracks and assisting music directors. That is my bread and butter, which is how I survived in Mumbai. Now I can't leave it.

We know a way now to make use of democracy, and we know how to change the attitude of people towards government, but yet the majority of people are without vision. We who have prevision must lead them and guide them into the right way if we want to escape the confusions of Western democracy and not follow in the tracks of the West.

Puffy produced four of the tracks on the album. Those are the four songs that are collaborations between Puffy and me. And he gives me my space to work even when we work together, like with my producer and my vocal coach.

The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology.

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.

When I listen to Radio 1 and hear five different tracks in a row using old disco samples, well that's plagiarism, that's taking other people's music.

I'm a secret interior decorator. There's a mural on my dining room wall of the railroad tracks at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I love having my hometown with me out here in California.