My mellow May playlist is perfect for chilling in the garden with a glass of something – a margarita, a mojito, a vermút, perhaps a long cool tinto de verano. We’ve got equally cool sounds: blissful jazz piano, heavenly harmonies, smooth reggae, blues, soul, hip-hop and tributes to the late great Sonny Rollins, Dennis Locorriere, David Allan Coe and Beverley Martyn.

Here’s another playlist for the transitional month of April, when wintry weather began to give way to longer days and occasional bursts of sunshine. There’s vintage reggae and soul, funk and swamp rock, old-skool hip-hop, new post-punk and country-rock, some unfamiliar versions of familiar tunes, and tributes to those we lost, including the last living Ronette.

Here we go again: the usual mix of old and new and black and white and funk and soul and reggae and jazz and country and disco. And tributes to  to the dead in a busy month for the grim reaper: Country Joe, Chip Taylor, Mike Vernon, Terry Cox, Wayne Perkins and Wes McGhee. There’s even some Peruvian punk, which is a first for me (and surely you). 

This month is the usual eclectic mix, including a couple of protest songs, tunes from Taiwan, Canada, Australia and France, some old soul and reggae, a bit of disco, and tributes to the late Fred Smith (Television), Neil Sedaka, salsa giant Willie Colon and a bloke from Cake.

Chase away the winter blues with my first playlist of 2026 – two and a half hours of eclectic pleasure to warm the cockles of your ears, kicking off with the S.O.S. Band’s and coming to a melancholy close with Mary Margaret O’Hara. In between there’s a few country numbers, a hefty dose of Krautrock deep cuts, some reggae and soul, a couple of protest songs against ICE and Trump, and tributes to those we lost, including two drummers – Sly Dunbar and Kenny Morris – and actress Catherine O’Hara.

My last playlist of the year spans more than half a century, starting in the early 1960s with Sandra Barry and taking in tributes to those we lost in December, including Brigitte Bardot, Joe Ely, Steve Cropper and Chris Rea. In between there is folk, blues, soul, country, Eurodisco – and even a little Schumann.

November’s playlist finds autumnal songs slowly turning to winter sounds, saying hello with one of the greatest tunes of all time by Squeeze and waving goodbye with Soft Cell. (more…)

To celebrate Samhain – or Hallowe’en if you prefer – here is my latest autumnal playlist. We start and finish with radically different versions of Ghost Town, from almost 45 years apart. In between there’s something old-but-new by T.Rex and more Glam from Sparks and Suzi Quatro. Plus a lot of steamy early-’70s funk and jazz-funk, and some Soft Cell in tribute to my old pal Dave. 

The days are growing shorter, the nights are drawing in and, as Jim Morrison put it, Summer’s Almost Gone. So what better way to start a September playlist than with The Doors’ elegiac tune? And what better way to end it than with that Adrian Sherwood remix of Saint Etienne? In between there’s everything from vintage rockabilly and folk to fingerpicking guitar and French hip-hop, and tributes to those we lost in September, from Supertramp, Blancmange and Pentangle to Robert Redford.