Soul Music

Landslide was written by Stevie Nicks in 1973, on the cusp of huge change in her life. Penned while she was depressed and struggling financially in the snow-covered mountains of Aspen, Colorado, the song captured a moment of uncertainty and reflection.Soon after the song was written, Stevie and her partner and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham joined the band Fleetwood Mac and became superstars. But the pair would go on to experience a turbulent relationship breakdown while remaining in the same band for years to come.The song's themes have resonanted with listeners around the world, becoming an anthem of quiet courage and acceptance in the face of change and the passing of time.Featuring Heather Shtuka in Alberta, Canada; Sarah and Fiona from the Sing for Joy choir in Waterford, Ireland; Gregg Breinberg, Director of the PS22 Chorus in Staten Island; and Zoe Howe, author of Stevie Nicks: Visions, Dreams and Rumours.Producer: Eliza Lomas for BBC Audio Bristol Editor: Emma Harding

"Oh the Summer time is coming. And the trees are sweetly blooming" Wild Mountain Thyme also known as Will Ye Go Lassie Go? is a much loved song around the world with its rousing chorus "And we'll all go together". It was featured recently on the soundtrack to the Oscar winning film "Sinners" introducing it to a whole new audience. This programme explores the origin and lasting popularity of the song. Belfast singer and piper Francis McPeake IV recounts the story of his great-grandfather Francis McPeake I writing the song in the 1940s recalling a fragment of an old song he'd heard 'Will ye go lassie go?' that may or may not have come from another song "The Braes of Baquhidder" based on a poem by Robert Tannahill with the line "Let us go lassie go". Charlie Gorman is a musician from Paisley, Tannahill's home town. Charlie plays in hospitals and care homes and tells the moving story of being asked to play in a stroke unit where a seriously ill patient underwent a form of recovery while singing along to Wild Mountain Thyme. Scots singer Fiona Kennedy has happy memories of her childhood home in Glasgow. As the daughter of two famous Scottish singers Callum Kennedy and Anne Gillies she recalls hearing the strains of Wild Mountain Thyme from her bedroom during her parents' legendary parties where well known guests such as Andy Stewart and Billy Connolly would sing it on repeat. For Kevin Fry being at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC when singer Jacob Collier performed it with the National Symphony Orchestra turning the audience into a choir transformed a song he already loved into an emotional experience of human connection. And Nicole Lazarus pays tribute to a remarkable man - Graham Peddie under whose guardianship at Tanners Hatch Youth Hostel in Surrey many often disadvantaged young people thrived. Nicole started going to Tanners as an awkward teenager and recounts the joy of the monthly folk nights singing "Graham's song" Wild Mountain Thyme. Francis McPeake says its strength is its universal message of love and hope.Producer: Maggie Ayre

Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline was released in 1969, but it wasn't until the 1990s that it became a theme song for the Boston Red Sox, spreading to other other countries and sports, including the England football team. Danielle Capalbo is a Red Sox fan who explains where it began, and Lionesses fans Donna and Liz take up the story.Meanwhile in Essex, dance teacher Meryl Kiddier has found the perfect song to help Parkinson's patients with movement and mood. Cathy Hill describes how Sweet Caroline is a catalyst for changing the way she thinks about her condition. and Peter Lovatt, AKA Dr Dance, explains the science behind it all.And in Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, Agnes goes to a day care centre which is all about the singing and dancing. Sweet Caroline has become her theme song, and still gets her up and moving in her 90s.Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Sally Heaven

Rasputin was a massive disco hit for the British-German Caribbean group Boney M in 1978. Nearly fifty years later it remains a much loved symbol of happiness and freedom for a a truly global audience. This edition of Soul Music features stories from Iran, Cameroon, India and of course Russia.Anahita Tishtar says Rasputin is a song that represents a golden age in Iran before the Islamic Revolution restricted Western music. It reminds subsequent generations of happier times when people were free to dance. Famil Ismailov recollects his wild dancing in the style of Bobby Farrell at teenage discos in the former Soviet Union. Boney M was one of the first Western music acts allowed in Russia.Eric Ngalle Charles heard the song on his sisters' cassette player as a small child in Cameroon. The song became significant to him a decade later when he was trafficked to Russia and ended up dancing on stage with Boney M at one of their many Russian concerts.Sweta Amit danced to it as toddler at her parents' dinner parties in Thailand. As a child from a conservative Indian family the song represents freedom and a way to banish stress.Rasputin on the violin and cello: the Scottish-Egyptian classical duo The Ayoub Sisters first heard it as children in the back of their surgeon father's car as he drove to the hospital to do his ward rounds. Later on they released a classical version of it.The original lead singer of Boney M Liz Mitchell says Rasputin has a sound and rhythm that incorporates so many different styles of music that people all around the world can identify with, and that it just makes people feel free and happy.Producer: Maggie Ayre

"When the rain is blowing in your face / And the whole world is on your case / I could offer you a warm embrace / To make you feel my love"Written by Bob Dylan for his Time Out of Mind album, 'Make You Feel My Love' went on to become a huge hit for Adele and has been covered by Billy Joel, Ane Brun and many more. With its promise of unfaltering love, we find out what the song means to different people around the world. It has inspired a translation into a 65,000 year old language and a choral version with the comfort of a psalm; it has soundtracked heartbreak and grief; and become a lullaby of parental love. Featuring: * Music writer Annie Zaleski * Musicians Ane Brun and Dyagula * Organist and conductor Anna Lapwood * Howard Simons * Aly Halberstadt * Adele's manager Jonathan Dickins. Producer: Mair BosworthA BBC Audio production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in January 2026.

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 onset of the housing crisis and financial crash. Solange Knowles released her debut album in 2002 at the age of 16. This single appears on her third album, A Seat at the Table. She's the younger sister of Beyoncé.Featuring: Journalist Douglas Markowitz; music writer Kiana Fitzgerald; author of Why Solange Matters and Big Joanie guitarist Stephanie Phillips; and Rebecca McNeil. Producer: Eliza Lomas

"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 with their producer Ken, and look up to a sky full of stars. The rest, as they say, is history... Featuring, in order of appearance: Dylan Bode, musician and coma survivor Ken Nelson, music producer on Coldplay's Parachutes album Debs Wild, fan liaison for Coldplay and author of Life In Technicolor: A Celebration of Coldplay Neil Brand, composer, writer and broadcaster Katherine Ho, singer of the Mandarin version of Yellow for the film Crazy Rich Asians Producer: Becky Ripley

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 WeinhardtProducer: Maggie Ayre

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 Campbell and Computer Love by Kraftwerk.Stories of birth, childhood, adolescence, as well as the griefs and joys of adulthood are expressed through the music that shapes and sustains us through the emotional ups and downs of our lives' journeys. Producer: Maggie Ayre

Mexican pianist and composer Consuelo Velázquez was only 16 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 bolero that has been translated into more than 20 languages and recorded by hundreds of artists, including João Gilberto, Frank Sinatra, Cesaria Evora, Diana Krall, Josephine Baker, Trio Los Panchos and The Beatles. Music writer Richard Williams talks about the eternal appeal of the melody and how it creates its emotional impact.German singer and composer Roland Kunz tells the tragic story behind the melody which inspired Consuelo to write the song: a piece by the Catalan composer Enrique Granados, who died the year Velázquez was born. At the height of the First Word War, Granados and his wife were on their way home to Spain from New York, when their passenger ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat. The story goes that Enrique was picked up by a lifeboat but saw his wife struggling in the water and dived in to save her. They perished, along with 50 other passengers.We hear stories of three very different couples who loved to dance to the song. Peter and Dorothy Tozer met at a dance school in Acton in 1962 when they were 17 and 16. When the song played during the lesson on the night they met, the dance instructor suggested that - as it was Valentine's Day - everyone should give a kiss to whoever they were dancing with at that moment. The two complete strangers shared a kiss, and have been together ever since.When Stephen Miller met his Mexican wife Maria, love wasn't on either of their minds. Stephen was in his fifties and had lost his first wife to cancer. Maria had been a single mum for many years. He didn't speak much Spanish, and she didn't speak much English, but they fell in love and had many wonderful adventures together. One day Stephen was backing the car out of the driveway when he hit the wall. He had begun to lose his sight. As the couple were still adjusting to their new reality, Stephen realised that Maria's memory was beginning to slip. He talks about navigating blindness and dementia, and how they would drop everything to dance together to Bésame Mucho, the lyrics of which grew ever more poignant over time.And Denis Ledoux remembers his wife Martha, who died at 56. They loved to dance to the Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora's version of the song, practising their dance steps in the living room. After Martha's death, he would listen to the song all the time, sometimes every day. The song became a way to hold onto her and the life they has shared. Denis reflects on how the song's lyric "kiss me, as if tonight was the last time" made him think of all the last times with Martha that he didn't know were last times.Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Mair Bosworth.First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2025