Tina Weymouth once said "If you think his records are experimental now, he's been holding himself back". Do you still have experimental albums in you fighting to get out, or are you conscious enough of an increasingly homogenised market to restrain your more extreme musical impulses?
Robert Palmer: I always restrain them. My experiments are pictures on the wall at home. My idea is to communicate and entertain with music and audio and some things will just be execises for me to find out how to do something. And then I use what I learn from it in a more accessible way, not to dilute what I've learned but to interpret it and make it my own. Such as singing clusters of seconds like the Ukrainian singers and their strange harmony values. So I experiment with it and then I'll come to a bridge in a song and use what I've learned and it explodes. So it's in the context of something rather than it being my learning how to do it. Because otherwise it's just the same old same old...

Three verses with a chorus, in and out with a hook...
Robert Palmer: And that can be marvellous too. With the right melody juxtaposed there's always something in there. But in order to give something a particular personality then you look for some fresh way to apporoach every bar in order to give it a uniqueness, not to go the normal route. For example I'm on a big campaign to ban thirds. The third note in a chord is what depicts whether it's major or minor. Rhythm and Blues hardly ever uses it because it means that the melody is free to move between major and minor because you're not clashing with the third being depicted one way or the other.

Of THAT video you said "I had very little to do with it, I just showed up and mouthed the words for 15 minutes".
Robert Palmer: That's right.

Now, that's an iconic video, and it was recently imitated by Shania Twain. I wonder if it's a milestone or a millstone?
Robert Palmer: Neither. I think that it's glamorous and funny - funny ha ha, not funny peculiar. It obviously has a sensibility from the photographer who filmed it, who was a stills photographer for Vogue. But on the other hand I'm not going to attach inappropriate significance to it because at the time it meant nothing. It's just happened to become an iconic look. There's hardly anything I've ever done that's made me cringe, I've got pretty good pitch for a start so I'm not known for hitting bum notes. I think things only go wrong when you don't care enough and you let things get out of control and end up in a situation where you get egg on your face if you don't go through with it, but it's nothing to do with you. So you've got to be constantly wary of what's going on. But then I think you get to a certain point where people get where you're coming from and don't lay stupid stuff on you, or if they do it goes straight by and you just go 'Next!'

Find out more about Robert's new hits collection here.

We've got five copies to be won here.