Curated playlist
Parlophone artists
- The BeatlesThe Beatles formed in Liverpool in 1960, and within four years an estimated 73 million Americans watched four young men from northern England play on a single television broadcast. That figure represented 34 per cent of the American…
- David BowieDavid Bowie was born David Robert Jones on the 8th of January 1947 in Brixton, London, and he died two days after releasing his final album, on the 10th of January 2016. That timing was not coincidence. Producer Tony Visconti later…
- ColdplayColdplay are a British rock band who, over roughly two decades, went from pressing 500 copies of a self-financed EP to becoming the first band in history to gross a billion dollars from a single tour. That EP, called Safety, cost Chris…
- Pink FloydPink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965, and by the time their final studio album arrived in 2014, they had sold more than 250 million records worldwide. That number alone invites questions. How did a group of…
- John LennonAt approximately 5:00 p.m. on the 8th of December 1980, John Lennon autographed a copy of his new album for a man named Mark David Chapman outside his New York apartment building, The Dakota. Just under six hours later, the same man shot…
- Queen (band)Queen played their last concert with Freddie Mercury on the 9th of August 1986, in front of more than 120,000 fans at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire. Roadie Peter Hince stood backstage and felt, as he later put it, that it was going to be…
- Deep PurpleDeep Purple formed in London in 1968 with a concept borrowed not from rock and roll but from a carnival ride. The original organiser, a former Searchers drummer named Chris Curtis, envisioned a revolving "supergroup" where musicians would…
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar he had traded for a nickel-plated trumpet his father gave him for his fourteenth birthday. That swap - brass for strings, a solo…
- GorillazGorillaz are an English virtual band formed in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett. Their four members - 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle, and Russel Hobbs - have never actually existed, yet they have given interviews,…
- Blur (band)Blur formed in December 1988 when Alex James walked into a rehearsal room and joined Damon Albarn's band. Within a few years, they would be at the centre of a media storm that briefly brought the British music press closer to sports…
- George HarrisonGeorge Harrison was born at 12 Arnold Grove in Wavertree, Liverpool, on the 25th of February 1943, in a terraced house on a cul-de-sac with an outdoor toilet and a single coal fire for heat. He would grow up to become the lead guitarist of…
- Paul McCartney and WingsPaul McCartney and Wings formed in London in 1971, a band born from one of the strangest creative moments in rock history. McCartney was sitting in a hospital, praying while his wife Linda gave birth to their daughter Stella on the 13th of…
- Ringo StarrRingo Starr was born on the 7th of July 1940 at 9 Madryn Street in Dingle, one of the oldest and poorest inner-city districts in Liverpool. His real name is Richard Starkey, and he grew up in a neighbourhood where, as his childhood…
- George MartinGeorge Martin stood at a mixing desk on the 26th of November 1962, listening to the Beatles run through "Please Please Me" for a third time. When the take finished, he leaned over the console and told the four young men from Liverpool:…
- KraftwerkKraftwerk formed in Düsseldorf in 1970, built by two students named Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. They had met at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in the late 1960s, drawn into the experimental music and art scene that a British…
- Kylie MinogueKylie Ann Minogue was born on the 28th of May 1968 at Bethlehem Hospital in Caulfield South, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. Her mother, Carol Ann, had sailed to Australia from Wales in 1958 aboard a ship called Fairsea, part of an…