Launches 5th January 2025 on BBC Sounds

Beverley Knight, star of song and stage, is back with a new series exploring fifty years of Gospel music. This time, it’s how the message of the Gospel has made it into the pop charts, on our film screens and, for the first episode, Gospel in the clubs. From house and electronic dance music to R&B slow jams and early Hip Hop experimentation, artists with a church background have created some of the most iconic music moments.

Beverley shares the influence of the vocal gymnastics of The Clark Sisters on modern R&B and how she would call for a ‘rewind’ when a dancefloor stomper like the garage-styled ‘Shall Not Be Moved’ by The House Gospel Choir would come on. She gushes over her early obsession with BeBe and CeCe Winans alongside the influence of an instrumental Gospel song by The Winstons that became the blueprint breakbeat for Hip Hop and Drum and Bass.

Producers: Emma Stephens and Christopher Mitchell | Assistant Producer: Nieema Hassan | Mixed and Edited by Bernard P Achampong