Soft Cell’s biggest hit was the inevitable play-out song at the funeral of Dave Ball. It was never going to be anything else.

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Jimmy Cliff was one of the first reggae singers to enjoy a hit single in the UK. And one of the outliers who turned Jamaica’s national music into a global sound.

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Sandie Shaw followed up her first chart topper in 1964 with Girl Don’t Come – originally released as the B-side of her next single.

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Ray Charles had a hit single in 1963 with his version of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman’s classic song, No One. (more…)

I have to confess I didn’t know the singer of this Northern Soul favourite, Bobby Garrett, was the same ‘Bob’ in Bob & Earl, who sang the mega-hit Harlem Shuffle.

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Samana are a psychedelic-folk duo from rural Wales whose cinematic soundscapes bear comparison to Irish experimentalists Lankum.

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If you’d asked me what I thought about Demis Roussos, this would not spring to mind. I would not have answered with a king of disco. 

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Sex Mask are a young post-punk trio from Melbourne and this song, Blisters, finds them collaborating with another local band, Radio Free Alice.

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There was a time in the mid-Nineties when The Auteurs and their main man Luke Haines seemed like becoming the next big thing.

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