Curated playlist

Ivor Novello Award winners

David BowieDavid Bowie died two days after releasing his final album. He planned Blackstar as a parting gift while privately dying.
ColdplayColdplay's first release was 500 copies of a self-financed EP. The band later grossed a billion dollars on one tour.
U2U2, the Irish rock band, began with a note pinned to a school notice board in Dublin in 1976. Larry Mullen Jr., then a 14-year-old pupil at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, was looking for musicians for a new band. The first practice…
John LennonJohn Lennon was ordered to leave the United States in 1973. His anti-war activities had alarmed President Nixon.
MadonnaMadonna arrived in New York in 1978 with thirty-five dollars. It was her first plane ride and first taxi.
Queen (band)A DJ was told not to play Queen's song "Bohemian Rhapsody", then played it fourteen times in one weekend.
Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera closed on Broadway in 2023 after 13,981 performances.
T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
Elton JohnElton John sang "Candle in the Wind 1997" live only once, at Princess Diana's funeral. He wrote it days before.
BeyoncéOn the 13th of December 2013, Beyoncé released a complete album on the iTunes Store with no warning and no promotion. Within six days it had sold one million digital copies, a record for any album on iTunes at the time. The artist behind…
Led ZeppelinAtlantic Records signed Led Zeppelin without ever seeing them play. The November 1968 deal came with a $143,000 advance.
Spice GirlsThe Spice Girls fired their manager the morning they won an MTV award. They then ran their own tour.
Keith RichardsKeith Richards, guitarist of the Rolling Stones, began his musical life by stretching toward an instrument he could not reach. His maternal grandfather, Augustus Theodore "Gus" Dupree, toured Britain with a jazz big band called Gus Dupree…
AdeleA friend posted Adele's three-song class demo on Myspace, and a record label phoned.
George MichaelGeorge Michael refused to appear in his own music videos, so five supermodels lip-synced in his place.
Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney traded a trumpet for a guitar and wrote his first song on it. His father had given him the trumpet.
Oasis (band)Oasis, the rock band from Manchester, once drew applications for 2.5 million tickets to a pair of shows at Knebworth. Only 250,000 tickets were actually sold, which meant the band could in theory have filled twenty nights. Instead they…
Ed SheeranEd Sheeran bought a thirty-pound guitar two days after hearing Eric Clapton. He was eleven years old.
Amy WinehouseAmy Winehouse won five Grammys singing by satellite from London at 3 a.m. Her visa was not processed in time.
Cat StevensCat Stevens sold more than 100 million records before he walked away from pop music. A 25-year break followed.
Blur (band)Blur's 1995 chart battle with Oasis became a story on national news. Both bands released singles on the same day.
Kate BushKate Bush's second UK number one came 44 years after her first. That gap beat Tom Jones's record of 42 years.
Peter GabrielOn the 19th of June 1971, Peter Gabriel took a running jump off a stage and expected the audience to catch him. They moved aside instead. He landed on the floor and broke his ankle, then performed the next several Genesis shows with a…
Mick JaggerMick Jagger was carrying records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters on Platform Two of Dartford railway station on the 17th of October 1961. The man he met there was Keith Richards. The records revealed a shared passion for rhythm and blues,…
BonoBono, the lead singer of U2, took his name from the sign of a hearing aid shop in Dublin. The shop was called Bonavox, and it stood just off O'Connell Street, the city's principal thoroughfare. The word comes from the Latin for good voice.…
Celine DionCeline Dion spent her earliest months sleeping in a dresser drawer, because her family could not afford a crib. She was the youngest of 14 children, born on the 30th of March 1968 in Charlemagne, Quebec. Nothing about that crowded, careful…
George HarrisonGeorge Harrison mortgaged his home to save Monty Python's Life of Brian. EMI Films had pulled its funding in 1978.
Barry GibbBarry Gibb wrote songs that held the number one spot on the American Billboard Hot 100 for 27 of the 37 weeks between the 24th of December 1977 and the 2nd of September 1978. Many of those records were not sung by him. He is a British and…
Sting (musician)Sting, the English musician and actor born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, once disowned his own first name on camera. In the 1985 documentary Bring On the Night, a journalist addressed him as Gordon. He answered, "My children call me Sting,…
Robbie WilliamsRobbie Williams walked onto a stage at Knebworth on the 1st of August 2003 and faced a crowd of 125,000 people. He then did it again on the 2nd and the 3rd. Three consecutive nights, with that many people each time, made it the biggest…
Lana Del ReyLana Del Rey was born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, and for years she performed under names that almost nobody remembers. One of them was Sparkle Jump Rope Queen. Another was May Jailer. These were the stage identities of a young American…
Eric ClaptonEric Clapton got the nickname Slowhand from a broken guitar string. Fans clapped slowly while he replaced it.
Freddie MercuryFreddie Mercury, the pianist and lead singer of Queen, once described himself in two halves. "When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man." The showman who held whole stadiums in his hand gave very few…
Phil CollinsPhil Collins is the only artist who performed at both Live Aid concerts on the 13th of July 1985. He crossed between London and Philadelphia by helicopters and a Concorde to do it. Born Philip David Charles Collins, he went on to sell an…
Avril LavigneIn November 2000, Avril Lavigne stood in a Manhattan recording studio and sang for Antonio "L.A." Reid, then the head of Arista Records. The audition ran for just 15 minutes. Lavigne, a Canadian singer and songwriter, was 16 years old. She…
Brian MayBrian May climbed onto the roof of Buckingham Palace on the 3rd of June 2002 and played a guitar solo of "God Save the Queen." It was part of the Golden Jubilee celebrations for Elizabeth II. May, born in 1947, is the lead guitarist of the…
Michael FlandersOxford refused Michael Flanders re-entry after polio left him in a wheelchair. He became a stage comedian instead.
Horizon Zero DawnIn Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 game from Guerrilla Games and Sony, an infant is found before a sealed door inside a sacred mountain. She grows up as Aloy, an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by a fellow outcast named Rost. Her world is a…
EnyaThe Fugees first sampled Enya's "Boadicea" without permission. She took legal action and got about 3 million dollars.
Jeff LynneJeff Lynne helped finish John Lennon's demo "Free as a Bird" for the Beatles. George Harrison asked him to join in 1994.
Damon AlbarnDamon Albarn was due to speak at a rally in Hyde Park in February 2003. A million people had taken to the streets of London to protest the coming war in Iraq. He never gave the speech, because he was too emotional. Afterwards he explained…
Robert Smith (musician)On the 14th of October 2024, Robert Smith of the Cure said he plans to retire in 2029. His reasoning was tidy. He turns 70 that year, and 2029 marks 50 years since the band's first album, Three Imaginary Boys. Smith added a caveat: he has…
Lily AllenIn the months before her debut album, almost nobody outside her record label's A&R department knew who Lily Allen was. Even so, 500 limited edition 7-inch vinyl copies of her song "LDN" were rush-released, and they resold for as much as…
Bryan AdamsIn 1990, Bryan Adams sat down with two collaborators, Robert John "Mutt" Lange and Michael Kamen, and finished a song in a single 45-minute session. The song was "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You," and it went on to reach number one in at…
Quincy JonesQuincy Jones taped a sign to the entrance of a recording studio in 1985, and it read "Check Your Ego at the Door." Behind that door waited most of the major American recording artists of the day. Jones needed every one of them to work as…
MorrisseySteven Patrick Morrissey, known to the world as Morrissey, once led a tour of Manchester for the Oxford Road Show in 1985. Late in that tour he reached the secondary school he had attended. He described it in harsh terms and closed with a…