Clare Fischer, a prolific composer, arranger, conductor and keyboardist active in jazz, R&B and pop music for more than 60 years, died on 26 January in Burbank, California at the age of 83.

If the biz doesn't stop churning out retro-style soul singers, pop will turn into an Amish farmstead

Adele made her long-awaited comeback as she took six gongs to become the biggest winner at the Grammy Awards - and dedicated one of the prizes to the doctors who saved her voice.

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Soul-rapper Maverick Sabre has steadily built a devoted following, as witness the Jazz Café audience enthusiastically singing along with "They Found Him a Gun", the bonus track concluding Lonely Are the Brave.

England full-back Ben Foden opens up to Hugh Godwin about his pregnant pop-star girlfriend, rubbing shoulder pads with Elton John and that infamous World Cup diary

Adele has led the way – and now a new crop of young artists like Michael Kiwanuka Emeli Sandé and Daley are spearheading the great soul revival

Naming your band after one of the all-time great albums is quite a yoke to saddle yourself with, and The Big Pink are making heavy weather of it on Future This.

As newspaper reporting enters an age where it is as much about multimedia as it is about print, the videos Independent.co.uk readers have been most interested in this year provide a diverse snapshot of what you want from televised news.

Drums - Ginger Baker
I think we need to go with a vintage drummer such as Ginger Baker, who played in bands like Cream and Blind Faith, because he was a machine. There's no other word for it. I used to play drums, it was the first instrument I learnt, and although I never really got into Cream that much, I used to drum along to what he was doing on record because I thought he was great.

Amy Winehouse reached the top of the album chart last night, more than four months after her death. Her posthumous collection Lioness: Hidden Treasures, which features original tracks and covers, was released last Monday.

Imagine the scene at the BBC. There they are, busily collecting nominations from sports editors for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award, when someone notices that most of the names belong to men. How on earth did that happen? Especially after they went out of their way to create a "level playing field" – I think that's the requisite cliché – by seeking nominations from such admirably gender-neutral publications as Nuts and Zoo. Sick as parrots all round!