Soul Music

Marking 25 years of the award-winning series, Soul Music features songs from the last 25 years.

“I tried to drink it away... I tried to run it away...” Solange’s hit song, written in 2008 and released eight years later, muses on themes of isolation, loneliness, and depression. She penned the lyrics to Raphael Saadiq’s instrumental in a Miami hotel room, gazing out at the cranes filling the skyline during the...

"Look at the stars, look how they shine for you..."

True stories of what Yellow, one of Coldplay's most iconic songs, means to people 25 years on from its release.

It's December 1999 and a relatively unknown band called Coldplay are midway through recording their debut studio album, Parachutes, at Rockfield Studios in Wales. The days are long, often working late into the evening. One night after a recording session, they step outside...

A song that was everywhere after it was released as a single in 2000. Moby's Porcelain has been used in films, TV and adverts yet remains a much loved melancholic downbeat electronic ballad. Reportedly written about the fragility of love after a break up it's a track that has a place in many people's hearts.

The people featured are: Felicia Narhi aka DJ Damselfly Steve O'Brien Gyu Ola Mazzuca John E Roy Michael Weinhardt

Producer: M...

This hour long special celebrates a quarter of a century of the programme and charts the course of a human life through pieces of music.

Cerys Matthews introduces a compilation of some of the diverse pieces of music we've featured throughout the years - together with stories of the people whose lives have been changed by it. Everything from Satie's Gymnopedies and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending to Wichita Lineman by Glen Camp...

The Mexican pianist and composer Consuelo Velázquez was only 16 years old when she wrote Bésame Mucho, and she was yet to have her first kiss.

Composer and conductor Odaline de la Martinez remembers hearing the song on the radio as a child in Cuba. She translates the Spanish lyrics - "Kiss me, kiss me passionately, as if tonight was the last time... Kiss me, because I'm afraid to lose you, afterwards". It's an achingly romantic bol...

"May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold / May you never make your bed out in the cold."

A perfect folk song of brotherly affection, with simply voice and guitar, John's Martyn's May You Never has captured listeners' hearts since 1971.

John Martyn was born in Surrey in 1948 and grew up in Glasgow. Part of the potent London folk scene in the late 60s early 70s, John's style evolved from these folk roots. Written in h...

Robert Burns began a correspondence with Agnes McElhose, also known as Clarinda and Nancy, a married woman he was besotted with.

When she left Scotland to reunite with her husband he wrote Ae Fond Kiss as a heartfelt farewell.

It was later set to music and is one of his most famous 'songs' along with Auld Lang Syne and My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose.

Karen Matheson, the singer with Capercaillie, talks about its meaning to her and ho...

Stories of love, loss and legacy surrounding Donna Summer's iconic 1977 hit. Producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte wanted to make something which sounded like the future, and sure enough 'I Feel Love' went on to revolutionise disco and pave the way for electronic dance music. Almost 40 years on, it still sounds fresh to this day: the pumping arpeggiated bassline, the synthesized drones, and Donna's soaring multi-tracked vocal...

Written in 1963, 'Sailing By' by Ronald Binge was chosen by the BBC as the musical interlude to be played every night before the Shipping Forecast. These are the stories of some of the people for whom this piece has a powerful emotional connection.

After Cyrilene Tollafield's parents left Barbados for the UK, Cyrilene heard 'Sailing By' whilst cuddling up to her grandmother and her cousins during hurricane warnings. Writer Henriet...

Sir Karl Jenkins' Benedictus is the penultimate movement from his anti-war mass, The Armed Man. Written twenty-five years ago this year and performed over three thousand times, Sir Karl dedicated it to the victims of the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. It was originally commissioned by The Royal Armouries Museum and premiered for the millennium.

The Armed Man as a whole reflects the descent into war, but the movement of Benedictus' emerges ...

"Lovely Day" was released in 1977. Its simple blissful melody masks profound lyrics which on closer examination offer hope and solace to many fans of the song. Some of them share their stories here of what it means to them, including two people who had the privilege of meeting and working with Bill Withers. Taro Alexander was a shy insecure young man with a stutter who founded an organisation for children like him who struggled w...

"Tender is the night lying by your side / Tender is the touch of someone that you love too much..." - Chris Lightfoot will always associate Blur's song 'Tender' with his first big love. A relationship he moved across the world for, with someone he loved deeply and who changed the course of his life. A relationship he ultimately couldn't make work. The song came on, and they held each other - knowing they had to let each other go.

"...

“Well, I'll be damned, Here comes your ghost again…”

Joan Baez, also known as the "Queen of Folk", is halfway through writing a song one day when she gets a call from Bob Dylan. It’s 1974; almost 10 years after their relationship ended. The song went on to become the iconic ‘Diamonds and Rust’, an outpouring of memories from their time together in the early sixties.

Music writer Kevin EG Perry tel...

Elton John's slow burner is now one of his most beloved tracks. Released in 1971 during a prolific period for Elton and Bernie Taupin, many people see themselves in the lyrics.

Eliza Hewitt grew up in a strict household in Pennsylvania. During the tumultuous early 70s, her brother introduced her to the music of Elton John, and she's still a tiny dancer in her late 60s.

Lee Hall wrote the screenplay for Rocketman, the Elton John biopi...

"I never felt magic crazy as this....."

For some it's a beacon of hope, for others a metaphor for love. 'Northern Sky' is the penultimate track on Nick Drake's 1971 album 'Bryter Layter'. The sound was shaped by the Velvet Underground's John Cale who added the piano, organ and celeste. His records didn't sell well much to Nick's disappointment, but after his death in 1974 his music and genius became much better-known. These are ...

"I can see clearly now the rain is gone / I can see all obstacles in my way / Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind / It's gonna be a bright / Bright sunshiny day"

I Can See Clearly Now was written by the Houston-born singer-songwriter Johnny Nash. First released in 1972, it became a huge hit and the song has been covered by hundreds of artists, from the Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff to the Irish rock group Hothouse Flowers.

For ...

Written by George Gershwin for the musical Oh Kay, Someone To Watch Over Me has endured as a tender ballad about searching for someone special. It has been recorded by many different artists from Ella Fitzgerald to Willie Nelson but it's perhaps Ella's version that is best known. Lyn Mackay grew up listening to it as a small child at her parents' home in Swansea. As she grew up and became a musician and entertainer the song has ch...

Sweet Thing by Van Morrison has an atmosphere full of tenderness, wonder and joy.

But underneath this, there a feeling of transience, a melancholy sense of things coming to an end, and of inevitable change.

It was written for his 1968 album Astral Weeks, at a time when the Northern Irish born Van had left his home country and was down-and-out in Boston, USA.

Hear how the track has come to mean so much to so many.

Caroline Mellor fr...

Antonin Dvorak wrote his Gypsy Songs in 1880. He was passionate about the folk music of his native Bohemia and set a poem by Czech poet Adolf Heyduk to music. Songs My Mother Taught Me is the fourth song in the cycle.

Songs my Mother taught me In the days long vanished Seldom from her eyelids Were the teardrops banished....

It's a wistful melancholic piece evoking memory and loss. Soul Music hears the stories of musicians, poets and...