My soul and R&B iHeartRadio station and Coast FM radio show, Coast Soul, turned one last week. To celebrate, all the featured artists were the greatest of the great – think Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, the Temptations, Diana Ross, the Commodores, Aretha Franklin etc.

One of the joys of creating this station is the balance between the most famous songs everybody knows – songs like Michael Jackson’s Man In The Mirror that we featured for the first birthday – alongside the hidden gems like another of this week’s highlighted tracks, Letter Full Of Tears by Gladys Knight & The Pips.

If you’ve never listened, Coast Soul plays 50 years of all the best soul and R&B and exists both as a radio show (Sundays 6pm-8pm) on top-rated nationwide New Zealand radio station Coast as well as a full standalone station through iHeartRadio. Each week I select 12 different artists and tracks and go behind the scenes with interview clips and insights into how these songs came to be. For more you can click here to link to the Coast Soul page on the Coast website.

Explaining things further still is a Q&A I did for the publication GetFrank.co.nz which goes beyond Coast Soul to flesh out my well-known obsessions with things like cricket and the Bee Gees – click here.

Though for the most in depth look into what sets Coast Soul apart and why I set it up, click here to read an excellent piece by M+AD!

Thanks so much if you’ve ever tuned into Coast Soul – it’s hugely appreciated. Summing up what we do in two songs isn’t easy, but here are the two I mentioned above. One is the gospel-sounding Man In The Mirror by Michael Jackson – one of five US #1 hits from his Bad album in 1987.

And from the most familiar to something a little more buried, check out this gently funky, melancholy beauty from Gladys Knight & The Pips, Letter Full Of Tears. A song the band recorded twice, first in 1961 again in 1970, it’s the latter, reworked version I love. Especially the keyboard flourishes, the guitar riff, the bass and the false ending. Enjoy.

Click here to listen to Coast Soul on iHeartRadio. It’s entirely free and is an app you can download for your phone or you can simply listen through your computer. Creating an iHeartRadio account takes just a few seconds. You can also keep up to date with Coast Soul through Facebook: facebook.com/iheartradiosoul. Thanks again! Tim.