M. Ward takes Bowie’s banger Let’s Dance and wrings every ounce of emotion out of it in this intense acoustic interpretation.

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The Last Town Chorus cover David Bowie’s upbeat single Modern Love and improve it by turning it into a melancholy country ballad.

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Fifty years ago this week Gram Parsons died in Room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn in California, filled with morphine, barbiturates and alcohol, at the age of only 26.

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This is very far from being my favourite Springsteen song; I don’t have much time for that Eighties period at all. But Nashville duo The Harmaleighs breathe new life into it.

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Hank Williams would have been 100 years old on Sunday. Instead he died, on New Year’s Day 1953, at the age of 29.

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You’ve got to feel sorry for Fred Neil. The obscure Canadian folkie recorded definitive versions of three great songs that went on to become standards – and all three were made famous in better versions by three other artists.

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Last night I went to see these guys, Dead Writers, at a goth-filled Camden pub with the apt name The Black Heart, on my way back from cricket at Lord’s. And I had a very good time.

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There was no escaping this song in the summer of ’77, though I was far more interested in the Pistols and the Clash than chart-topping disco tunes.

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I don’t know how I forgot this one when I was trawling through the songs of my childhood. It wasn’t a big hit but back in 1974 it seemed to be everywhere.

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Four white men in black suits and white shirts. One black man in a shiny gold suit. And two classic Northern Soul tunes. That’s The Epitome Of Sound.

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