When I first heard Roy Orbison I dismissed him as an old crooner singing overwrought ballads of no relevance to me with my cool musical tastes.

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This is, and always has been since I first heard it, my favourite song of all time. It’s just perfect in its simplicity: wistful, dreamy, mournful and melancholic.

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This sweaty, soulful, stripped-back take on one of Jimi’s biggest tunes is by his first group – a few years after he left.

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Not sure how I’ve missed seeing or hearing this remarkable piece of pop history before – a ten-year-old Michael Jackson singing the blues.

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I always thought I Can’t Explain was the first single by The Who, and it is. But before that, in July 1964, they released this song under the band name The High Numbers.

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There are two equally spellbinding versions of this haunting lament to lost love and innocence, by two different singers, and ever since I first heard them I’ve been unable to decide which is the best. The problem is that they’re not all that different, and of course there’s no need to pick one over the other.

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RIP Melanie Safka (1947-2024)

I remember Melanie – just “Melanie” – as a hippie chick with long hair, black eyeliner and a warbling vibrato. I first heard her singing a song called Ruby Tuesday. I was a child and she sounded like one too.

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This song is so perfect, like a four-minute movie. A miniature kitchen sink drama. Shot in black-and-white, of course, with the principal characaters played by Albert Finney and Rita Tushingham.

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This dirty, primitive, fuzzed-up slice of vintage RnB from comes from four smooth-looking black fellows called The Dyna-Sores.

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Just as punk began to take over my musical life in 1976 this slice of smooth soul hit the UK charts. But this isn’t them… well, one of them is but the other one isn’t.

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