My yellow brick road to rock started with ska-flavoured bands like The Specials, The Beat and The Selecter. Ska was familiar music to me – Prince Buster was the soundtrack to my nappy changes – but those 2 Tone bands from Birmingham and Coventry sped it up to sound punkier and a bit nutty. They all had something strange going on: The Specials were darker and political, The Beat had that driving eighth-note bassline, and The Selecter had Pauline Black in a suit. But what really caught my interest were the guitar riffs, with an edge that was different from sounds I was used to. They had a prominent, stabbing melody, and they weren’t just about showing off chops and musical virtuosity.

Sylvia was so much fun to record with. She loved anything unconventional, and no idea was too crazy. Skunk Anansie worked by two mottos: ‘leave your ego at the door’ and ‘you never know until you try’. That way, everyone was free to criticise anyone else’s contribution, and no one was allowed to kill an idea without trying it first. Some things sound awful in your head, but when they hit the air magic flies into them. We always worked hard on the groove so our music wouldn’t sound disparate. Cass used to say that we weren’t about being ‘clever bollocks’, until Robbie (the drum virtuoso) proved him wrong when he wrote ‘Fuck you jazz cts’ out in Morse code and then played it for fun. I call that very clever bollocks!

It turned out that atypical songs were more successful. A country song about girls and cars, for example, tended to do pretty well, but one that was about more atypical themes like dance moves or street cred was even more likely to be a hit. The more differentiated a song’s lyrics were from its genre, the more popular it tended to be.

When considering new music, however, people like stimulation, so difference is better. Atypical movies are also more successful, and the same may be true for other cultural products, like musicals. One reason Hamilton was such a big hit was that its style diverged from what theatergoers were used to.

Sameness,” Morrison chided, was “not quite the same thing as a distinctive style.” Achieving subtlety and discovery in traditional or semi-traditional modes was harder to do. “But when it works,” she added, “it does magnificent.