Ezra Collective became the first British jazz band to make a splash at the Brits in 2025, winning Best Group and making headlines with their plea to save the nation’s youth clubs.

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Hackney girls Mel & Kim followed Britain’s first house single with the global chart-topper Respectable in 1987.

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Air came to fame with Sexy Boy in 1998 but made their debut three years earlier with this inventive piece of electronica on a compilation album for Source.

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Ebba Åsman’s smoky late-night jazz is adorned with crackles of electronica on this brief taster from the Swedish trombonist’s new album.

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Miles Davis’s quartet of albums recorded with his quintet in 1956 is regarded among the highlights of his stellar career. This comes from the final one, Steamin’.

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Retro soul duo Charles & Eddie followed up their chart-topping hit Would I Lie To You with this story of how they first met on the New York subway.

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Listening to this doo wop oldie by The Plants, it’s easy to be transported to a street corner in The Bronx in the early 1950s.

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The thing about soul – soul in the musical sense – is that you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You only have to listen for a moment to know that Jerry Butler, who died this week, had soul.

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Abbey Lincoln was an actor, a civil rights activist and a jazz singer in the mould of her idol Billie Holiday.

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Tori Amos was such a unique voice when she came into our musical lives with Cornflake Girl, arguably the progenitor of the confessional female singer-songwriter genre.

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