this contemporary music and mixed it with pop punk's characteristic fast, three-chord, guitar-based, catchy tunes to produce a sound uniquely their own; "we were just the three of us in my bedroom or someone's house, just making ... we played really hard and just made loads of noise. Most of our early songs were just three chord grooves and stuff that was fun to play. So that's why the first album sounded so 'punky', I think ... it's just 'cause we were all used to playing in this small room and it being really loud, so we just made the album sound like that." Songs for Beginners by Graham Nash was another possible influence on I Should Coco. Gaz Coombes told The Guardian in 2003, "We used to listen to it a lot when we lived in Cowley Road in Oxford in 1994, just when the band were getting big." The musical styles and their particular inspirations for the songs on this album were extremely diverse. For example, there is the cheerful, fast, keyboard-augmented "I'd Like to Know", the guitar-driven punk narrative "Caught by the Fuzz", the mainly piano-based rhythm of the teen anthem "Alright", and the country music-influenced acoustic guitar in "Time to Go". Even in the varied genre of Britpop, I Should Coco was seen as eclectic. Overall, the album has been described as Britpop, influenced in equal parts by Buzzcocks and The Kinks, with strong hints of Supertramp in "She's So Loose", "Lose It" and the intro of "Strange Ones". In a 1995 interview with Metro, Mick Quinn said, "We listen to a lot of different kinds of music. We're not a '60s-revival band! We like things from the '70s and beyond as well; everything from Sly and the Family Stone and Motown to Frank Black and Tricky." "Strange Ones" and "I'd Like to Know" are both songs about the strange people on Cowley Road, Oxford. Mick Quinn tried to describe the concept: "There's a few people who are just really out there. There's a lot of people around Oxford who are real spliffheads and that, who go and lie down in Port Meadow, but I'm not really sure about them. I'm not really sure that they're individuals: they're part of a much larger thing." Danny Goffey added, "They're the sort of people who don't fit in anywhere, who don't link up with everyday life at all."