BBC Four Music Specials

There was nothing predictable about David Bowie - everything was designed to intrigue, to challenge, to defy all expectations. But perhaps no period in David BowieΓÇÖs extraordinary career raised more fascination, more surprise, and more questions, than the last five years. This film - to be broadcast on the night before what would have been BowieΓÇÖs 70th birthday - is an intimate portrait of one of the defining artists of our time, told by the people who knew him best: his friends and artistic collaborators. It follows the widely acclaimed film David Bowie: Five Years, first broadcast on BBC Two in 2013. It takes a detailed look at BowieΓÇÖs last albums The Next Day and Blackstar, and his play Lazarus. Through the prism of this last work the film shows how, in his final five years, Bowie not only began producing music again but returned to the core and defining themes of his career. These were artistic rebirth, a shedding of skins, a quest for a different palette to express the same big ideas - dissonance, alienation, otherness - the human condition. The film explores how Bowie was a far more consistent artist than many interpretations of his career would have us believe, by tracing the core themes from his final works through his incredible back catalogue. Viewers will see Major Tom reflected in Blackstar; Diamond Dogs in the play Lazarus; and Fame in the song The Stars (Are Out Tonight). BowieΓÇÖs urge to communicate feelings of spirituality, alienation and fame underpin his greatest works, from the 1960s to 2016. This is what lies at the heart of his success and appeal, music that deals with what it means to be human in a way that goes far beyond the normal palette of a rock star. This film is not a comprehensive overview of his entire career, but an in-depth exploration of its pivotal moments and a look at how the themes, the narrative, the approach are consistent - it is simply the palette that changes. It features every key me

Evolutionary biologist Professor Armand Leroi believes data science can transform the pop world. He gathers a team of scientists and researchers to analyse over 50 years of UK chart music. Can algorithms find the secret to pop success? When the results are in, Armand teams up with hit producer Trevor Horn. Using machine-learning techniques, Armand and Trevor try to take a song by unsigned artist Nike Jemiyo and turn it into a potential chart-topper. Armand also takes a scientific look at pop evolution. He hunts for the major revolutions in his historic chart data, looking for those artists who transformed the musical landscape. The outcomes are fascinating and surprising, though fans of the Fab Four may not be pleased with the results. As Armand puts it, the hallmark of The Beatles is 'average.' Finally, by teaming up with BBC research and development, Armand finds out if his algorithms can discover the stars of the future. Can he predict which of thousands of demo tracks uploaded to BBC Introducing is most likely to be a hit without listening to a note? This is a clash of science and culture and a unique experiment with no guarantee of success. How will the artists react to the scientist intruding on their turf? And will Armand succeed in finding a secret science of pop?

A portrait of Amy Winehouse the artist threaded together from extracts from interviews she gave to the BBC for a variety of documentary projects including the Jazz and Soul Britannia series on FOUR, much of which material is previously unbroadcast, blended with performances from across her career, including some which are also previously unbroadcast and unseen. Winehouse had a strong relationship with many parts of the BBC from when she launched herself as an artist back in 2004. In her short musical career, the north London native changed the landscape of modern pop culture, won countless awards, achieved critical acclaim and garnered global success before tragically dying at the tender age of 27. On the eve of the release of Asif Kapadia's Amy documentary film which explores Winehouse's life and death, here is an exploration of her music and her influences in her own words. Consisting of performances and interviews entirely from the BBC archives, this film celebrates Amy's music, her influences, her challenges as an artist and her eternal brutal honesty in her own words. Featuring exclusive unseen and rarely seen songs from her triple platinum selling album Frank and revered Grammy-winning album Back to Black, the programme pays homage to the tattooed rebellious rock 'n' roll-spirited songstress who wrote smart, sad, soulful and original pop songs that became instant classics and inspired a generation.

Former Spice Girl Geri Horner looks back on the 1990s and reflects on her own incredible journey from working-class Watford girl to international superstar. She describes it as a decade of hope and opportunity that gave young people the freedom to be themselves and break down barriers. Set against a backdrop of great political and social change, the 1990s was also a decade which saw a homegrown cultural revolution. The music and art scenes exploded, and suddenly Britain was the place to be. Britpop and girl power conquered the charts, and Geri herself became the iconic face of Cool Britannia in her famous Union Jack dress. But fame didn't arrive until the mid-1990s for Geri, and she reflects on the key events that shaped her life before becoming part of one of the most successful girl bands of all time. She talks movingly about her close friendship with her pop idol pin-up George Michael and recalls how supportive he was when she left the Spice Girls and embarked on her solo career.

Dazzling duets from four decades of BBC entertainment, from Parkinson to the Proms. Whether it's pianos or banjos, violins or voices, kora, erhu or harmonica, this is a journey full of striking partnerships and extraordinary combinations. Oscar Peterson, Larry Adler, Ballake Sissoko, Kiri Te Kanawa, Nigel Kennedy and Bela Fleck are just some of the featured artists bringing us a musical feast, full of fun and surprises.

Documentary following the rise of The Shires, the first British country group to have a top ten album in the pop charts, and the band to have spearheaded today's interest in country music in the UK. The programme follows Ben and Crissie both as they launch their second album My Universe and on a working trip to Nashville, where they are signed by leading country label Big Machine. They play the Bluebird, the legendary club where the performances from the TV series Nashville are filmed, and meet with Scott Borchetta, who discovered Taylor Swift. Interviews include Scott Borchetta, Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes of The Shires, sisters Catherine and Lizzy of Ward Thomas and Thomas Rhett, a rising star of American country music who mixes country with funk, pop and rock

Big Gold Dream is the everyday story of how a group of disaffected youth in search of the only fun in town went on to change the world. High on theory and with only cheek, cheek bones and cheap guitars to get them through between dole cheques, they took a set of hand-me-down reference points plundered from books, TV and subtitled films, created a scene and transformed it into art. As was typical of the times, entryism was in and subversion was from within, but like all great movements, it was never going to last. Except everything you hear today, tomorrow and knocked into the middle of next week started here. Indie-Disco, Art-Rock and Difficult Fun are all in the mix. Big Gold Dream is as much about now as then. Featuring contributions from Bob Last, Alan McGee, Peter Hook, Eugene Kelly, Norman Blake, Martyn Ware, Malcom Ross, Douglas Hart and Davey Henderson.

He was lanky, he wore glasses and he sang as if permanently battling hiccups. Aesthetically, Buddy Holly might have been the most unlikely looking rock 'n' roll star of the 1950s. But he was, after Elvis Presley, unquestionably the most influential. It was an all-too-brief career that lasted barely 18 months from That'll Be The Day topping the Billboard charts to the plane crash in February 1959 in Iowa that took Holly's life. That day was immortalised in Don McLean's 1971 song American Pie, and has become known as 'the day the music died'. This film tells the story of Buddy Holly's tragically short life and career through interviews with those who knew him and worked with him. This combined with contributions from music fans paints a picture of an artist who changed music. Rock 'n' roll started with Elvis, but pop music started with Buddy Holly and The Crickets.

Sharon Osbourne presents the story of pop deals through the decades. From Little Richard's half a cent a record to Robbie Williams's £80m deal via notorious bad deals for The Beatles, The Small Faces, The Animals and NWA and great deals for Led Zep, The Police and Moby, Sharon gets the inside story from those still chasing royalties and those who took on the music biz and won. With The Small Faces, Eric Burdon, The Police, Moby, NWA, Charles Connor (Little Richard's drummer), Art Rupe (aged 99, who signed Little Richard), Pamela Des Barres, Tim Clark (Robbie Williams's manager)

Fifty years ago this week, on 1 June, 1967, an album was released that changed music history - The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In this film, composer Howard Goodall explores just why this album is still seen as so innovative, so revolutionary and so influential. With the help of outtakes and studio conversations between the band, never heard before outside of Abbey Road, Howard gets under the bonnet of Sgt Pepper. He takes the music apart and reassembles it, to show us how it works - and makes surprising connections with the music of the last 1,000 years to do so. Sgt Pepper came about as a result of a watershed in The Beatles' career. In August 1966, sick of the screaming mayhem of live shows, they'd taken what was then seen as the career-ending decision to stop touring altogether. Instead, beginning that December, they immersed themselves in Abbey Road with their creative partner, producer George Martin, for an unprecedented five months. What they produced didn't need to be recreated live on stage. The Beatles took full advantage of this freedom, turning the studio from a place where a band went to capture its live sound, as quickly as possible, into an audio laboratory, a creative launch-pad. As Howard shows, they and George Martin and his team constructed the album sound by sound, layer by layer - a formula that became the norm for just about every rock act who followed. In June 1967, after what amounted to a press blackout about what they'd been up to, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. It was a sensation, immediately becoming the soundtrack to the Summer of Love - and one of the best-selling, most critically lauded albums of all time. It confirmed that a 'pop music' album could be an art form, not just a collection of three-minute singles. It's regularly been voted one of the most important and influential records ever released. In this film, Howard Goodall shows that it is the sheer ambition of Sgt Pepper - in its c

In 1987, two brothers from Auctermuchty in Fife released an album called 'This Is the Story'. Featuring songs such as 'Letter From America', the album propelled The Proclaimers and the Scottish accent into the charts. Superfan David Tennant talks to Craig and Charlie Reid about 30 years in the business which has taken them from playing small pubs and clubs across Scotland to become one of the nation's most iconic bands.

Film shining a spotlight on the untold story of The Sidemen, the musicians behind some of the greatest artists of all time. The Sidemen are the forgotten 'guns for hire' that changed musical history. Featuring interviews with Mick Jagger, Billy Joel and Keith Richards, this film takes viewers from the 1960s to today, via global stars such as Prince, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Beyonce.

This intimate biography, narrated in Marc Bolan's own words, marks the 70th anniversary of his birth and the 40th of his death. The film traces Bolan's remarkable journey from Hackney's own 'king of the mods' to Tyrannosaurus Rex, as he evolved into the artist known as 'the hippie with a knife up his sleeve'. With the dawn of the '70s and the breakup of The Beatles, Bolan became the gender-bending glam rocker whose band T. Rex revitalised the British music scene. But director Jeremy Marre - incorporating unseen movies shot by record producer Tony Visconti and Marc Bolan himself - reveals a far more complex and driven figure whose life was tragically cut short, aged 29. Featuring those who were closest to Marc, his friends, colleagues, family, partner Gloria Jones and producer Tony Visconti.

In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations exploded on to Britain's FM airwaves. Unlike their seafaring swinging 60s forerunners, these pirates broadcast from London's estates and tower blocks to create a platform for black music in an era when it was shut out by legal radio and ignored by the mainstream music industry. In the ensuing game of cat and mouse which played out on the rooftops of inner-city London across a whole decade, these rebel DJs used legal loopholes and technical trickery to stay one step ahead of the DTI enforcers who were tasked with bringing them down. And as their popularity grew they spearheaded a cultural movement bringing Britain's first multicultural generation together under the banner of black music and club culture. Presented by Rodney P, whose own career as a rapper would not have been possible without the lifeblood of pirate radio airplay, this film also presents an alternative history of Britain in the 1980s - a time of entrepreneurialism and social upheaval - with archive and music that celebrates a very different side of Thatcher's Britain. Featuring interviews with DJs, station owners and DTI enforcers - as well as some of the engineers who were the secret weapon in the pirate arsenal - this is the untold story of how Britain's greatest generation of pirate radio broadcasters changed the soundtrack of modern Britain forever.

Behind-the-scenes archive documentary following Queen's Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon as they record their sixth album News of the World and embark on a groundbreaking tour of North America. By 1977, Queen had become a major headlining act in the UK, releasing chart-topping albums and singles as well as playing sell-out concerts in all the country's major venues. However, they were facing an increasingly hostile music press, who had a new favourite in punk and had turned against the elaborate, multi-layered recording techniques that had become the hallmark of the band's previous albums. But an unfazed Queen had their sights set on greater things. As the band announced plans to record their next album, the expectation was it would be another production extravaganza, but Freddie, Brian, Roger and John already had other ideas. News of the World showcased them at their most raw, simple and best, returning to their roots as a live act. With a self-imposed limit on studio time and produced entirely on their own for the first time, this stripped-back album took the fans and press by surprise and demonstrated Queen's ability to transcend fashions. It was to prove a seminal moment in the band's history. At the time, BBC music presenter Bob Harris was given exclusive and extensive access to the band to cover this period. Conducting insightful interviews with all four band members as well as filming them at work in the studio as they were planning and rehearsing their forthcoming North American Tour, and then following them as they performed across the US, Bob captured a band attempting to replicate their huge domestic success on the global stage. Curiously, the documentary he set out to make was never completed, and the footage lay unused in the archive until now. To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of the News of the World album, the footage has now been carefully restored and revisited to compile this hour-long portrait of a grou

Roy Orbison died 29 years ago but he's hardly forgotten. As one of rock 'n' roll's pioneers he achieved superstar status in the 60s, writing and releasing a series of smash singles such as Oh, Pretty Woman, Only the Lonely, In Dreams and Crying. But while his professional life was full of triumph, Roy suffered terrible misfortune in his personal life, losing his wife and two of his children in successive tragedies, rebuilding his life by relying on his music to distract him from desolation. Roy's legacy as a beloved rock legend and a devoted father is revealed through intimate interviews with Roy's three surviving sons, featuring previously unseen home videos as Alex, Roy Jnr and Wesley Orbison discuss the immense talent and fierce determination that provided the driving force behind their father's incredible success and the dedication to Roy's family that helped create a strong spiritual base to escape the pressures of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. This is the personal story of the relationship between three children and their father; a father who died when they were young, and who they have reconnected with and come to understand through embracing his life's work. It is not often that one gets to understand the person who is the music phenomenon, but in this film about relationships, family, love, loss and affirmation, we get to see the man behind the ever-present dark sunglasses and brooding loner persona, witnessing his struggle with personal demons, and ultimately redemption and acknowledgement from his peers.

John Travolta and Barry Gibb star in Saturday Night Fever - The Ultimate Disco Movie, with Bruno Tonioli. This documentary celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the 1977 blockbuster dance movie, and sees Strictly Come Dancing's Bruno, who was a young dancer in New York in 1977, walk us through the steps that made the movie legendary. He also revisits the streets of New York where the film was shot and looks back at the success of a film that gave everyone disco fever. Travolta, Gibb and other members of the cast and crew give gripping accounts of supreme success against a backdrop of setbacks and unexpected twists and turns. Bruno unpacks the skill, athleticism and dedication of Travolta, whose incandescent performance prompted a disco dance craze. We also hear about the potent influence of impresario Robert Stigwood, whose faith in Travolta and a group who had hit a glitch in their career - The Bee Gees, proved visionary. With clips from the original movie as well as astonishing access to those involved and rarely seen on-location archive, this programme retells the nail-biting evolution of a groundbreaking US film that originated in the work of a British journalist, saw a director fired, suffered mafia threats, filmed guerrilla style on the streets of Brooklyn, had a newcomer cast, benefited from disco hits written in a weekend and delivered a white suit and a performance from the man who wore it that have gone down in history. Other interviewees include actors Karen Lynn Gorney, Donna Pesco, Joseph Cali and Paul Pape, producer Kevin McCormick, former head of RSO records Bill Oakes, writer Nik Cohn, director John Badham, dance instructor Denney Terrio, costume designer Patricia von Brandenstein and location manager Lloyd Kaufman.

Supersonic, the award-winning feature documentary, tells the phenomenal story of iconic band Oasis - in their own words. Featuring extensive unseen archive, the film charts the meteoric rise of Oasis from the council estates of Manchester to some of the biggest concerts of all time in just three short years. This palpable, raw and moving account shines a light on one of the most genre- and generation-defining British bands that has ever existed, and features footage of new interviews with Noel and Liam Gallagher, their mother and members of the band and road crew.

The widely accepted Elvis narrative is that the Vegas period was the nadir of his career, but this film argues that Elvis reached his peak both as a singer and performer in the first few years of his Vegas period. He became, in those short years, the greatest performer on earth. The film tracks this five-year renaissance with some of his key musical and artistic collaborators of the period, including the creator of his most memorable jumpsuits, to celebrate the greatest pop reinvention of all time.