Sylvia Robinson is one of the most important figures in music history. She’s been called the Mother of Hip-Hop for her key role in the birth of rap, founding Sugar Hill Records in the late Seventies. But before that she was a one-hit wonder with this saucy disco hit. (more…)

What was the first disco hit? The Trammps would define the genre with Disco Inferno. But before that came this old Broadway tune in 1972. (more…)

Barry White’s only chart-topping single started life as a country-and-western tune before he gave it a disco makeover. (more…)

From the last album Biggie Smalls released in his lifetime, a user guide to making money in the way he used to earn his. (more…)

Break-up songs don’t come much more devastating than The End Of The World, which gave country legend Skeeter Davis her only UK hit in 1963. (more…)

With his big hat and catchy tunes, George Strait was my gateway drug into what the old joke calls my two of my favourite types of music – country and western. (more…)

Filmed in a downpour against leaden skies and the synthesised diesel roar of a motorway, this rave anthem – another list song – lives up to its title. (more…)

Joni Mitchell’s extraordinary gift for images and phrases first caught my ear, as much as her voice, with the jazz-textured 1975 album The Hissing Of Summer Lawns. (more…)

Hello were strictly second-division Glam. They had the second – and last – of their hits when they got back together with Russ Ballard of Argent, who had first discovered them when they were a covers band. (more…)

This was the 14th single by The Sweet – or ‘Sweet’ as they had just become – and the first to be written by the band themselves. (more…)