"Your true colors...are beautiful, like a rainbow..."Billy Steinberg's lyrics were originally inspired by his mother but his song writing partner Tom Kelly recognised it's universal appeal and with a slight re-write, it became the song that Cyndi Lauper made famous the world over. Growing up in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ken Kidd ...…

"God only knows what I'd be without you"For artist Kim Lynch God Only Knows is a song that she has carried with her from the moment her father played it to her mother back in their 1960's London home and it's the song that resonated throughout her parents 65 years together. Meanwhile in land locked Burundi, another couple are bought together fr ...…

Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun speaks to artists of different kinds. Jamaican poet Ishion Hutchinson recalls hearing it through an open window in Kingston Jamaica and being mesmerised by its beauty, but not knowing what it was, setting off on a quest to find out and to write a poem that captured his feelings about the piece ...…

A Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum: Why has this surreal track remained enduringly popular for over 50 years? Soul Music hears the stories and memories of those who love it. Released in May 1967, A Whiter Shade of Pale was Procol Harum's first single. It went to No. 1 in the UK, and stayed there for six weeks.Contributors:Musicologist, Alla ...…

Actor Clarke Peters narrates a special edition of Soul Music marking fifty years since the assassination of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King on April 4th 1968. "If in doubt, pray and sing" an activist recalls how music was used as part of Dr King's non-violent resistance movement.This edition of Soul Music tells the stories of the songs behin ...…

Cerys Matthews delves into the archives to put together a specially curated mixtape of her favourite stories from across 25 series of the BBC Radio 4's Soul Music.Each episode of Soul Music takes a different piece of music - it might be a pop song, or a hymn, or a piece of classical music or world music - and looks at why it moves us and what i ...…

Cerys Matthews delves into the archives to put together a specially curated mixtape of her favourite stories from across 25 series of the BBC Radio 4's Soul Music.Each episode of Soul Music takes a different piece of music - it might be a pop song, or a hymn, or a piece of classical music or world music - and looks at why it moves us and what i ...…

Cerys Matthews delves into the archives to put together a specially curated mixtape of her favourite stories from across 25 series of the BBC Radio 4's Soul Music.Each episode of Soul Music takes a different piece of music - it might be a pop song, or a hymn, or a piece of classical music or world music - and looks at why it moves us and what i ...…

How Kraftwerk's classic album Computer World has changed people's lives. On their first wedding anniversary, David Sanborn and Jennifer Huber remember their Kraftwerk themed celebrations. Ramona Gonzales from the band Nite Jewel recounts how a car crash and a chance encounter with Computer World changed the course of her life. And Andy McCluske ...…

Boys Don't Cry by The Cure is, on the surface, a tribute to teenage angst and a slice of pop perfection. Lol Tolhurst, the band's drummer, wrote the song with his band mates in Robert Smith's parents' house extension.Poorna Bell saw the song's lyrics echo her husband's struggle with expressing his emotions, and describes the devastating impact ...…

J.S Bach wrote his cantata Ich Habe Genug for the Feast of the Purification of Mary to be performed in Leipzig on 2nd February 1727. The work is a retelling of the story of the old man Simeon who, waiting in the temple, was presented with the baby Jesus. As he held the baby in his arms, in Bach's version he says: It is enough.I have held the Sa ...…

"If you've never heard of Bob Marley then you must be living under a rock" - Neville Garrick, Bob Marley's Art Director and friend. At the time he wrote 'Redemption Song', circa 1979, Bob Marley had been diagnosed with the cancer in his toe that later took his life. It is considered one of his greatest works and continues to inspire generations ...…

"O' Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining..." and so begins the gentle carol of reflection that has touched the lives of listeners around the world. For The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, it's the carol that lifted his spirits as he lay in a London hospital battling pneumonia. It is also the hymn that inspired a fellow patient to fin ...…

Sandy Denny was just 19 years old when she wrote 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes?', her much-loved song about the passing of time. Soul Music tells the story behind the song and speaks to people for whom it has special meaning. The record producer Joe Boyd and founder member of Fairport Convention Simon Nicol remember Sandy and her music. We spe ...…

You Are My Sunshine was written in or around 1939 and was adopted by the then Governor of Louisiana, Jimmy Davies who recorded and used it as his campaign theme song. It has since been recorded by more than four hundred artists from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash to Aretha Franklin and Bryan Ferry. A mother and daughter tell their story of how the s ...…

Wagner's peaceful Siegfried Idyll was written to thank his wife after the birth of his son Siegfried. On her birthday, she awoke to find an orchestra on her staircase performing the music for the first time. It is music which celebrates family relationships, and Soul Music hears from people whose lives and relationships have been touched and ch ...…

"Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens"... In this week's Soul Music, guests from around the world share their special memories of The Sound of Music classic 'My Favourite Things'.Written by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1959 this deceptively simple song has travelled the globe to comfort and enthral children the world over. Iranian Astronaut ...…

Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks was released in 1967. To mark its 50th anniversary, Soul Music hears the poignant, thoughtful and life-changing memories of those who love it.Childhood holidays were an escape from bullying for John Harvey. He describes the unforgettable moment when he heard Waterloo Sunset for the first time, on the radio, in 1967. ...…

America's national anthem was written by a lawyer, Francis Scott Key, after watching the British navy bombing Fort McHenry in 1814. It was set to an English social men's club song and recognized as the national anthem in 1889. Notoriously difficult to sing, and traditionally played at public sports events and orchestral concerts, the anthem has ...…

Memories of first love, first borns and loss are stirred by The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, the timeless love song written by Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, and made famous by Roberta Flack. The activist and folk musician Peggy Seeger tells the story of her first meeting with Ewan MacColl, which would inspire him to write the song, and tal ...…

"Jerusalem" has become a quintessentially middle-class and very English song, but it is held in the hearts and memories of people from different backgrounds and cultures. There is a bit of cricket - Aggers discusses England's stunning and unexpected victory in the 2005 Ashes. Jerusalem reminds of that extraordinary summer. We hear from Pamela D ...…

Soul Music explores a song that has become synonymous with the American Civil Rights Movement, Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come released in December 1964 two weeks after he was shot dead in Los Angeles. Contributors include Sam Cooke's brother LC, singer Bettye Lavette who sang it for Barack Obama at his inaugural ceremony and civil rights ac ...…

'Feed The Birds' was written for the film Mary Poppins by Richard and Robert Sherman.

How Mozart's Requiem, written when he was dying, has touched and changed people's lives. Crime writer Val McDermid recalls how this music helped her after the loss of her father. Hypnotist Athanasios Komianos recounts how the piece took him to the darker side of the spirit world. And a friend of ballet dancer Edward Stierle, Lissette Salgado-Lu ...…

'The Way You Look Tonight' was written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields for the 1936 film 'Swing Time'. Sung by Fred Astaire to Ginger Rodgers while she was washing her hair, the song won an Oscar. It's been recorded by Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday. Sarah Woodward, daughter of actor Edward, recalls how age seven, she watched him sing it on ...…

Memories of a prison camp in the Arizona desert, a tsunami and a plane crash are stirred by the bittersweet Japanese song Sukiyaki, a huge global hit of the 1960s.Originally released in Japan with the title 'Ue o Muite Arukou' ('I Look Up As I Walk'), the song was retitled 'Sukiyaki' (the name for a type of beef stew) for international release. ...…

Bring Him Home, from Les Miserables, is a beautiful and moving prayer-in-song that has developed meaning and identity outside the hit musical.Taking part in the programme: The celebrated tenor, Alfie Boe, has sung this many times in the West End and on Broadway; he discusses what the song means to him.Herbert Kretzmer talks about the agonising ...…

The tragi-comic tale of love gone sour and shattered dreams eloquently depicted in the Christmas classic Fairytale of New York is the focus of this edition of Soul Music. James Fearnley, pianist with The Pogues recounts how the song started off as a transatlantic love story between an Irish seafarer missing his girl at Christmas before becoming ...…

Edward Elgar's incomparable Nimrod, and the part it plays in people's lives, is explored this week:Composed as part of the Enigma Variations in the latter part of the 19th century, Nimrod was inspired by Elgar's friend and music editor, Augustus Jaeger.In an interview for this programme, Jaeger's granddaughter, Gillian Scully, talks about her g ...…

The Brecht/Weill song, 'Mack The Knife' first appeared in 'The Threepenny Opera' in Berlin in 1928. Sung about the criminal MacHeath, the 'play with music' is based on John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera', who was inspired by the real-life English highwayman, Jack Sheppard.The song became a hit when performed in 1959 by Bobby Darin. Ella Fitzgerald ...…

Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica (Lord Bless Africa) is a song that runs through the very soul of South African life.It was originally composed in 1897 by Enoch Sontonga, a Xhosa clergyman at a Methodist mission school near Johannesburg who is said to have been inspired by the melody of John Parry's 'Aberystwyth', a hymn that would've been shared by Welsh ...…

ELO's brilliantly off-beam classic, Mr Blue Sky, is explored in this week's Soul Music.It was released as a single in 1978, having first appeared on the ELO album 'Out of the Blue' in 1977. Written by Jeff Lynne, it was a no.6 hit in the UK, and has endured on the radio airwaves ever since.Contributing to the programme:Tracey Collinson whose hu ...…

This much-loved hymn based on Psalm 23 has been set to music many times, including Brother James' Air and Crimond. The Queen requested the Crimond version at her wedding. Harriet Bowes Lyon's tells the story that her mother, Lady Margaret Colville, ( formerly Lady Margaret Egerton) taught the descant to the Queen and Princess Margaret, and was ...…

"Tomorrow we're going in search of a song and in search of a dream of England which has travelled right around the world" - Will ParsonsNo one can be sure of the true origins of the song Scarborough Fair. It's a melody of mystery, of voices of old, of ancient days. It's travelled through land and time, drawing singers and listeners in where eve ...…

Long before it was a worldwide hit for Rod Stewart, the Cat Stevens song 'First Cut is the Deepest' made a name for the former Ike and Tina Turner backing singer, PP Arnold. In an interview for Soul Music she describes the emotional connection she felt to the lyrics, having emerged from an abusive marriage shortly before recording it.Also contr ...…

Bach's Cello Suite No I in G major is one of the most frequently performed and recognisable solo compositions ever written for cello. Yet it was virtually unknown for almost two hundred years until the Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals discovered an edition in a thrift shop in Barcelona. Casals became the first to record it and the suites are now c ...…

Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' took him years to write. It originally had as many as 80 verses. Recorded for his 'Various Positions' album, it was almost ignored when first released in 1984. Only Bob Dylan saw its true worth and would play it live. John Cale eventually recorded a version which was heard by an obscure musician called Jeff Buckley. ...…

"La Boheme is a work of genius, for me it's the perfect opera. There's not a bar or a word or anything you'd want to alter. It just gets to you" - Opera Director John Copley CBE.For the final programme in this series of Soul Music, we venture back into the Parisian winter of Puccini's beloved 'La Boheme' where legendary Opera Director John Copl ...…

The Smiths' 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' is explored through personal stories. Released in 1986 on 'The Queen Is Dead' album, it has become an anthem of hope, loss and love. As a teenager, Andy listened to it with his father, as he drove him to work. They had a moment of connection, and when his father died suddenly a few weeks later, ...…

Gracias A La Vida - thank you to life - is a song that means a lot to many people around the world. Recorded by artists as diverse as Joan Baez and the magnificent Mercedes Sosa, the song reflects the bittersweet nature of life's joys and sadnesses. To the people of Chile where it was written in 1966 by Violetta Parra, it has become an anthem t ...…

In this week's Soul Music Marianne Faithfull recalls the French Love song which went on to inspire Elvis's 60's hit, 'I Can't Help Falling in Love with You'.'Plaisir d'Amour' is the classical French love song which somehow found its way through 18th century orchestration (Hector Berlioz) and 1960's folk revival, to an unexpected re-invention in ...…

"Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again."So wrote the poet AE Housman lamenting the loss of his brother in the Boer war in his epic poem A Shropsh ...…

Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor, is one of the most popular and moving pieces of music but, as academic and composer Andrew Gant explains, it wasn't written by Albinoni and is now attributed to the twentieth century Italian composer, Giazotto.Award-winning veteran BBC foreign correspondent, Malcolm Brabant recalls the ' cellist of Sarajevo', Vedra ...…

The hauntingly beautiful Welsh song Myfanwy 'is in the air in Wales' according to singer Cerys Matthews. She along with others discuss what the melodic tale of unrequited love means to them. They include a Welsh woman living in Sicily for whom the song represents 'hiraeth', a longing or homesickness for Wales and another who believes it express ...…

Labi Siffre wrote Something Inside So Strong in 1984. Widely believed to have been inspired by seeing film footage from South Africa, of young blacks being shot at by white policeman, he now reveals that the lyrics were also informed by the oppression he had experienced as a homosexual.The song has been taken up by individuals and groups around ...…

"It's the kind of music that makes you feel like you're just hurting so good"People of different ages reflect on why the pop country classic 'Crazy' made famous by Patsy Cline brings out such strong emotions in them, including a young woman mourning the loss of a father's love after divorce, broadcaster Fiona Phillips on losing her father to Al ...…

"I'm convinced it's the best thing ever written and recorded in the history of things written and recorded" - Moby.Rhapsody in Blue was first heard exactly 90 years ago when it premiered on February 12, 1924, in New York's Aeolian Hall. Through its use at the opening of Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' it has become synonymous with the city that inspi ...…

Soul Music tells the story of the song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and talks to people for whom it has special meaning.'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', was first performed by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St Louis', for the now famous scene in which Garland and her seven year old sister, played by Margare ...…

How Brahms' German Requiem, written as a tribute to his mother and designed to comfort the grieving, has touched and changed peoples lives.Stuart Perkins describes how the piece arrived at the right time in his life, after the death of his aunt.Axel Körner, Professor of Modern History at University College London, explains the genesis of the wo ...…

Few songs can claim to be - quite literally - as far reaching as the 1967 classic 'Can't Take My Eyes off You'. In this edition of Radio 4's 'Soul Music', we hear from former astronaut Christopher Ferguson who heard this song as an early morning wake-up call aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. And from mum of two Michelle Noakes who sang this c ...…