Your Custom Text Here
Eartha Kitt in Las Vegas in the 1950s
Song of the Day: One flower-based song, three great voices doing their versions, all intense, intimate and intoxicating. Let's drink all of them in, interpreting this song written by James Shelton in 1950
Read more
The Foundations
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Les Fleur by Minnie Riperton, we turned to another uplifting flower song by the great British ethnic-mix Motown-style band who were active between 1967 and 1971
Read more
Minnie Riperton in 1971
Song of the Day: After our previous Manchester late-80s dance tracks, when flower power returned with a new chemical twist, we hark back to another petal-infused and influential song by the vocalist linked to our previous Rotary Connection selection
Read more
From the cover of The Future Sound of London's debut album Accelerator
Song of the Day: After yesterday's 808 State track, we move to another influential number also forged in Manchester, this time in 1991 by Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, pushing dance into further innovative and ambient territory
Read more
808 State's Pacific State
Song of the Day: After our last song, Voodoo Ray, it had to be another 1989 dance classic written alongside Gerald's former Manchester bandmates, Graham Massey and Martin Price, featuring that distinctive bird call sample
Read more
Manchester's Hacienda in 1988
Song of the Day: After yesterday's classic Orb track, another club classic, this time from 1988 and synonymous with the acid rave scene of Manchester's Hacienda, but also the offbeat sample Derek and Clive aka Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
Read more
The 1990 cassette single
Song of the Day: A nimbus-rich 1990 song much loved by anyone of a certain age who went out during a particular era - the dance and club scene of the late 80s and onwards, but who are the voices and samples within it?
Read more
I Am Kloot, featuring frontman John Bramwell (centre)
Song of the Day: A sublimely reflective and beautiful song that finds clarity and beauty beyond the foggy nebula of dark cloud cover, written and sung by John Bramwell for the 2010 album Sky At Night
Read more
Ann Peebles - Memphis soul legend
Song of the Day: Another weather-related number for a wet Easter holiday Monday, here written by Peebles, her partner Don Bryant and Bernie Miller in 1973 when stepping out during a downpour in Memphis
Read more
Welcome to paradise
Song of the Day: Perhaps the ultimate number for an absurdly cold, cloudy British Easter Sunday, also this year falling on April Fool's Day, therefore so ironically and self-destructively bleak it's almost uplifting
Read more
Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding on the inside cover of Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2).
Song of the Day: To brighten up a grey Easter weekend, two upbeat, romantic and typically eccentric numbers written by Andy Partridge from t 2000 album Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2)
Read more
Bill Withers
Song of the Day: Moving on to a sublime black-hole-where-the-sun-was song by the American artist from 1971's Just As I Am, and written when making toilet seats for 747 aeroplanes, but given a gold when when it was a hit
Read more
Rotary Connection, featuring Minnie Riperton and Charles Stepney (right).
Song of the Day: How to move from bluesy road tunes to this elaborate jazz-soul number at the peak of the psychedelic movement? Partly because this band also backed Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters
Read more
Canned Heat
Song of the Day: Leaping back out of Springsteen's Pink Cadillac, we continue our road journey with two 1968 hits by the Los Angeles blues band – a cover of a cover a cover – and also go back down the dusty track to see where it all came from
Read more
Going all the way? Pink Cadillac
Song of the Day: After yesterday's heart-racing number by Cake, let's pull in to a classic car song by The Boss that puts aside a certain amount of religious guilt and, with a little innuendo, gets straight down to backseat action
Read more
The Distance comes from Cake's second album, Fashion Nugget (1996)
Song of the Day: Following Kraftwerk and Yello, we return to the road. Or do we? Is this classic by the Sacramento rock band about an obsessive racing driver, or something else entirely?
Read more
Racing Yello? Dieter Meier and Boris Blank
Song of the Day: After the perfect pace and beautiful simplicity of Kraftwerk's Autobahn, here's a contrast race forward from handcraft in Germany to flashy millionaire Switzerland, snorting that white line of road into an 80s concoction of speed-and-coke-crazy synth sampling
Read more
Kraftwerk in more recent performance of that timeless classic
Song of the Day: Our previous two selections have been big synth pop hits, but here is where that all really came from – down an unclogged motorway all the way to Düsseldorf, and the timelessly influential work of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider
Read more
The Human League, featuring Phil Oakey, third from left.
Song of the Day: More love song action, and groundbreaking synth pop, following yesterday's Eurythmics, with Phil Oakley and the Sheffield crew pumping out a classic from the 1981 album Dare
Read more
The odd couple. Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart.
Song of the Day: The 'love is' mini-theme today moves onto to a different genre – early 80s electronica pop, served up by the enigmatic Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart
Read more