There used to be singers and there used to be songwriters. Okay, that is a massive simplification, but the term 'singer-songwriter' only really took off in the late 60s and early 70s. Joni Mitchell is one of its leading lights with a large catalogue spanning five decades. This performance is from 1970. It must have been something to hear that voice live.
Cilla Black became best known for hosting the ITV dating show Blind Date. But she had started as a singer and in the 1970s had a regular BBC Saturday evening 'light entertainment' show (i.e unwatchable if you were under 50).
American modernist composer Charles Ives first wrote the Unanswered Question in 1908 before revising it in the 1930s. It wasn't performed until 1946. In the piece a trumpet repeatedly asks the question. The woodwind struggle to find an answer. Sound familiar?
Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto (1919) was one his last works but it was made famous many years later by the 20-year-old Jacqueline du Pré. This concert is from 1967, 2 years after that first recording. Daniel Barenboim conducts the London Philharmonic. It (the Adagio) is over 8 minutes, but what an 8 minutes.
PS. Apologies if the ads appear mid music. Does anyone actually use Grammarly?
The instrumental Telstar, created by the sound engineering genius of producer Joe Meek, was named after the eponymous communications satellite of the same year. The track captures Meek's obsession with sound rather than melody (he couldn't read music anyway).
Cult Birmingham band Broadcast made three albums in the early 2000s, mixing sounds around co-founder Trish Keenan's soft voice.
If you are new to - or old and unmoved by - classical music then maybe Benjamin Britten can persuade you; or at least show you how it can work. The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1945) was Britten's way of showing off the roles and ranges of the various instruments in the orchestra. This last section, the short Fugue, brings it all together. If you want to know more about the piece here is a good explanation. Then maybe go and listen to it all?
Should you need relief after a long term, try a little hypnosis, Gregorian style. This chant is taken from a 1959 recording from the Abbey of Saint-Maurice and Saint-Maur, Clervaux in Luxembourg and is regarded as one of the gems of its type by the Gregorian cognoscenti. It was apparently recorded during Mass.