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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Fontaines D.C. reach a new high with their latest single, a euphoric hymn to youth and a plea for hope in an uncertain world – It’s Amazing To Be Young.

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Counting Crows came from San Francisco and immediately struck gold with their debut single, Mr Jones, in early 1994.

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Hothouse Flowers enjoyed their solitary big hit Don’t Go thanks to their exposure in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1988.

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Here is a sultry slice of funk, driven by a killer bassline, with the sweet sibling vocals of The Pointer Sisters from their third album Steppin’ back in 1975.

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The Jones Girls may have come from Detroit but their sweet harmonies made them synonymous with the Philly Sound. And their big breakthrough came after almost a decade when they teamed up with Philly Soul titans Gamble and Huff.

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Sade’s smooth song is given a glorious makeover by New York producer Danny Krivit with Boyd Jarvis’s organ solo to the fore.

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