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

"Oh the Summer time is coming. And the trees are sweetly blooming"

Producer: Maggie Ayre

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.

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, and Adele's manager Jonathan Dickins.

Produced by Mair Bosworth

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:

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:

Producer: 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

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 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 WWI, 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 years old. 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, practicing 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 by Mair Bosworth

"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 his early 20s, the enduring version of May You Never was recorded in one take in the early hours of recording his beloved 1973 album, Solid Air. The lyrics encapsulate something of the essence of John Martyn: sweet, joyful and affectionate, yet with a hint of danger ("And may you never lose your temper / If you get in a bar room fight"). John's life was beset by substance abuse and addiction and he died in 2009, age 60.

May You Never, perhaps his most famous song, is remembered by those whose lives became entwined with the song, and by others who knew John or have covered it.

Featuring:

With thanks to Kit Hawes and Spencer Cozens for the instrumental recordings.