This nine-minute extravaganza is essentially an extended guitar solo, much like Funkadelic’s extraordinary Maggot Brain. And just as good.

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Jazz-funk was never my thing, conjuring nightmarish visions of George Benson and Level 42, but it did provide a moment of Pleasure in 1979.

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Everything about this song screams “1979” – a transitional year when the first wave of punk was evolving into the New Wave and its various sub-genres: post-punk, power-pop, synth-pop.

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Up The Junction did not just give Squeeze a hit single: it cemented Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook as one of the greatest songwriting partnerships of all time.

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Pop quiz trivia question: what was the real name of ‘M’, the one-hit wonder behind the novelty hit single Pop Muzik? Answer: Robin Scott.

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Excuse the sentimentality but Patti Smith wrote this song as an elegy for a previous Pope, so it seems a suitable epitaph for Francis, who died today.

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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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Holly Beth Vincent combined a feisty punk attitude with a smouldering sexuality and pop tunes you would remember in her short-lived band Holly & The Italians. None more so than this.

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I fell in love with Ellen Foley’s album Night Out the moment I heard this bombastic and blissful opening track – We Belong To The Night. With its piano runs, crunchy guitars, loud drums and epic Wall of Sound production, it could have come from a female-fronted remake of Born To Run.

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Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark came up with their eco-anthem Electricity, the foundation stone of synthpop, in the summer of 1979.

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