Soul Music at 25

Soul Music

BBC

Music, Music Commentary

4.7 • 831 Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This hour long special celebrates a quarter of a century of the programme and charts the course of a human life through pieces of music.

Cerys Matthews introduces a compilation of some of the diverse pieces of music we've featured throughout the years - together with stories of the people whose lives have been changed by it. Everything from Satie's Gymnopedies and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending to Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell and Computer Love by Kraftwerk.

Stories of birth, childhood, adolescence, as well as the griefs and joys of adulthood are expressed through the music that shapes and sustains us through the emotional ups and downs of our lives' journeys.

Producer: Maggie Ayre

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:07.0	Hello, Greg Jenner here, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously and then laughs at it.
0:13.4	This Christmas, forget about socks. We've got the best present of all.
0:17.2	Dead people!
0:18.2	All that sounds like zombies. Sorry, it's not zombies. Let me start again.
0:21.8	In our new family-friendly podcast series, dead funny history, historical figures come back to life
0:26.8	but just long enough to argue with me, tell their life stories and sometimes get on my nerves.
0:31.8	You're dead to me, dead funny history.
0:34.1	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:36.5	Welcome to Soul Music at 25, the Radio 4 series that looks at songs with a powerful, emotional impact.
0:44.1	I'm Kerris Matthews and I've long been a fan of the series and the way it finds stories from people over the world who've taken a particular piece of music into their hearts.
0:54.0	This special compilation programme celebrates a quarter of a century of who've taken a particular piece of music into their hearts.
0:59.5	This special compilation programme celebrates a quarter of a century of soul music stories by charting a lifetime's journey through the music we love.
1:05.7	I knew that I wasn't going to be able to conceive a baby naturally.
1:09.7	The only way for me to get pregnant was to have IVF.
1:13.8	I think in those lower moments where you're not sure what's going to happen and you're not sure if things are going to work out,
1:22.4	music was just so important to me.
1:26.5	So I remember I would always have a playlist with me
1:28.8	when I was waiting in the IVF clinic.
1:36.3	It did take around five years.
1:43.7	And then we had our baby.
1:46.7	The labour was pretty long, so I did spend a few days in hospital.
	...

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