Maddi Fearn

The Zombies recorded “Time of the Season” at Abbey Road in 1967 while struggling financially and nearing a breakup. Their album Odessey & Oracle initially received little support: CBS declined its American release after “Care of Cell 44” failed to chart, and a subsequent single, the anti-war “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914),” also flopped. Al Kooper persuaded CBS subsidiary Date Records to issue the album, but “Time of the Season” still gained momentum only gradually after a Boise, Idaho, DJ began playing it. By March 1969, the song reached number one on Cash Box and number three on Billboard, becoming the band's biggest American hit after the group had already split.

After the Sex Pistols collapsed in 1978, Johnny Rotten travelled to Jamaica with photographer Dennis Morris and encountered a vibrant reggae and dub scene involving Don Letts, Big Youth and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Time spent at Perry’s Black Ark studio and Jamaican sound systems helped inspire Lydon’s next musical direction, leading to Public Image Ltd with Jah Wobble and Keith Levene. The piece also contrasts this formative period with Lydon’s later commercial appearances and shifting views of Donald Trump.

Frank Sinatra regarded his 1964 collaboration with Count Basie and the Count Basie Orchestra on It Might as Well Be Swing as one of the most exciting engagements of his career. With Quincy Jones overseeing the sessions, Basie’s propulsive arrangements pushed Sinatra to function as part of the ensemble rather than simply as its featured star. Sinatra especially admired Basie’s understated piano-led approach and ability to create powerful sounds with minimal technique, making the collaboration both a major big-band recording and a personal musical masterclass.

Peter Gabriel has credited seeing Otis Redding perform at London’s Ram Jam Club in 1967, when Gabriel was 17, as a formative experience. Redding’s emotional honesty, vocal intensity, lyrical depth and dramatic control helped shape Gabriel’s approach to performance and storytelling, even though Genesis moved in a progressive-rock rather than soul direction. Billy Joel likewise praised Redding’s rough, dynamic voice and expressive vocal riffs, illustrating the singer’s broader influence across genres.

Opus Kink’s eight-years-in-the-making debut album, The Sweet Goodbye, channels the band’s chaotic live energy into an expansive blend of jazz-punk, country-punk, folk, brass and post-punk. Tracks including “Come Over, Do Me Wrong,” “Will It Come For You?” and “I’m a Pretty Showboy” demonstrate the group’s restless range, while a collaboration with The New Eves adds a haunting folk dimension through the story of Alice Molland, the last woman tried and hanged as a witch in England. The album’s long gestation resulted from the members’ varied work and touring commitments, but producer Craig Silvey helped turn the fragmented recording process into a cohesive, richly textured debut.

Woody Guthrie's political songwriting and working-class ethos are traced to the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, whose members used rewritten hymns and popular melodies to communicate about strikes, poverty and exploitation. The article argues that Guthrie adapted this model during his Dust Bowl-era experiences and that his protest songs influenced Joe Strummer and The Clash, helping establish a lineage from labor activism to punk. It also emphasizes the radical meaning of songs such as “This Land Is Your Land,” which is often treated as a patriotic anthem despite its critique of inequality and property rights.

A Sheffield council house transformed into Studio Electrophonique became a crucial early recording space for artists such as The Human League, Heaven 17, ABC and Pulp. Operated by mechanic Ken Patten, the modest home studio provided affordable sessions and fostered a creative environment that shaped the city’s music scene. Early demos recorded there, including Pulp’s first Peel Session material, helped launch several bands toward national success, illustrating Sheffield’s distinctive charm and its capacity to find the extraordinary within ordinary surroundings.

Jessie Buckley chose The Gloaming’s 2013 recording “Samhradh Samhradh” as the song she could not live without for Desert Island Discs. Built around an ancient Irish sean-nós melody, the track combines fiddle, piano and haunting vocals, evoking the landscapes and musical traditions of Buckley’s childhood in Killarney. She associates it with family, her mother’s music, the Atlantic coast and the Skellig Islands, making it a lasting emotional link to her Irish upbringing.

Billy Joel reflects on his musical inspirations, rejecting claims that he imitated contemporaries like Elvis Costello and emphasizing that the only artists he ever consciously emulated were The Beatles. Drawing from their collage-like process used on the Abbey Road medley, he shaped songs such as Scenes from an Italian Restaurant by assembling fragments into cohesive narratives. His admiration focused on their creative method rather than copying their sound or style.

Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith has identified Queen II, released in 1974, as his favourite Queen album and the record he believes the band never surpassed. The article explains how the album’s heavy, theatrical sound, split Side White and Side Black structure, and songs such as “Ogre Battle” and “Seven Seas of Rhye” appeal to Smith’s hard-hitting musical sensibility. In a 2009 Classic Rock interview, Smith praised the album’s cohesive band sound, lack of synthesisers and dramatic volume progression.

Arctic Monkeys’ 2013 album AM developed a distinctive black-and-white visual identity from Alex Turner’s original waveform sketch, which Matthew Cooper refined into the final cover. The design evokes an amplitude-modulation radio signal and subtly incorporates the letters “AM,” reinforcing both the band’s name and the album’s late-night atmosphere. The article also explains that the title was inspired partly by The Velvet Underground’s VU, while the band briefly considered naming the record The New Black after a recording amplifier. The cover’s minimalist aesthetic extended to the album’s music videos and promotional imagery, helping AM become one of the decade’s most recognizable records.

Joe Perry identifies Jeff Beck as the “Mozart” of guitar playing, crediting Beck’s early records with The Jeff Beck Group and The Yardbirds as foundational influences. Perry was especially inspired by Beck’s version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’,” which Aerosmith later recorded and performed with Beck and Jimmy Page. The piece argues that Beck’s originality, experimentation with tone and feedback, and seemingly effortless technique expanded the vocabulary of electric guitar and distinguished him from his peers.

Neil Diamond has repeatedly expressed regret over “The Pot Smoker’s Song,” a surreal 1968 track inspired by his involvement with New York anti-drug organization Phoenix House. The song contrasts a cheerful marijuana-themed chorus with an addict’s spoken account, but its earnest message was widely seen as awkward and unintentionally comic. Although the song appeared on the poorly regarded album Velvet Gloves and Spit, the record marked Diamond’s break from the restrictive Bang Records and gave him greater creative freedom at Uni. Neither release ultimately damaged his career, though both remain available on streaming platforms.