Curated playlist
Parlophone artists
- The BeatlesIn 1964, an estimated 73 million Americans watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
- 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.
- Pink FloydRoger Waters went to the High Court in 1985 to dissolve Pink Floyd. He called the band "a spent force creatively."
- John LennonJohn Lennon was ordered to leave the United States in 1973. His anti-war activities had alarmed President Nixon.
- Queen (band)A DJ was told not to play Queen's song "Bohemian Rhapsody", then played it fourteen times in one weekend.
- Deep PurpleDeep Purple began as a plan for a band that rotated like a carnival roundabout.
- Tina TurnerTina Turner crossed a Texas freeway on foot on the 1st of July 1976 with 36 cents and a Mobil credit card in her pocket. She had slipped out of a hotel suite in Dallas after a fight, while her husband slept. Her destination was a nearby…
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney traded a trumpet for a guitar and wrote his first song on it. His father had given him the trumpet.
- GorillazGorillaz performed at the Grammy Awards, though no band member ever existed. The four are cartoon characters.
- Blur (band)Blur's 1995 chart battle with Oasis became a story on national news. Both bands released singles on the same day.
- Daft PunkDaft Punk ended with a short video and no explanation. On the 22nd of February 2021, the French electronic duo posted a clip called Epilogue to their YouTube channel. In it, one robot explodes while the other walks away into the sunset. A…
- Chris MartinChris Martin, the English singer and pianist born on the 2nd of March 1977, composed a three-minute instrumental called "Electric Thunder" when he was 12 years old. In February 2020, a former fellow pupil found it on a cassette tape.…
- George HarrisonGeorge Harrison mortgaged his home to save Monty Python's Life of Brian. EMI Films had pulled its funding in 1978.
- Paul McCartney and WingsPaul McCartney named Wings after a frightening hospital night in 1971. Both Linda and baby Stella nearly died.
- Ringo StarrRingo Starr's first drum was a cotton bobbin used to tap the cabinets by his hospital bed.
- 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…
- George MartinGeorge Martin called the Beatles' audition recording a "lousy tape" before he signed them.
- KraftwerkKraftwerk did not own a computer when recording Computer World. The 1981 album was about computers.
- Kylie MinogueKylie Minogue's hit "I Should Be So Lucky" was written in under 40 minutes.
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…