Singer/Songwriters Today

These aren't your mum and dad's singer-songwriters: contemporary troubadours learned the lessons of Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor et al., and threw them into a fresh, modern mix where everything from folk to soul and lo-fi electro-pop is fair game. In fact, any of the old-school balladeers would have been as pleased as punch with our selection opener, "Someone Like You," but it's Adele who co-owns that composition (along with fellow GRAMMY®-winner Dan Wilson). Roses Kings Castles (aka Babyshambles cohort Adam Ficek) lays his unique vocal imprint on the excellent "One Born Every Minute" and Joanna Newsom favours the piano, rather than her trademark harp, on "Easy".

We highlight some of the most distinctive vocalists among this talented bunch, in Next Steps.

The current crop of singer-songwriters doesn't neglect the singer side of the equation; they've got voices that grab you by the soul and demand both your attention and your loyalty. Jesse Sykes' cracked and echoed desert-dust whisper on "Hushed by Devotion" imparts the feeling that you're listening to a singer who exists outside of time as we measure it, London's Jonathan Jeremiah invests every natural note with passion and tenderness on "Happiness", a signature expression of his lightly orchestral brand of acoustic soul, and Alela Diane's warm tone soaks straight to our hearts on "The Wind", which is delivered like a secret wrapped in a dream.

In Deep Cuts, our singer-songwriters take you from the South of France to California, via the Isle of Mull.

A memorably eccentric or colourful name is no guarantee of singer-songwriter success, but when it's appended to undeniable natural talent and stunning tunes . . . well, now we're really cooking. Roddy Woomble supplements his band work for Idlewild with solo releases, and 2011's The Impossible Song & Other Songs, conceived and recorded on the remote Scottish Isle of Mull, opens up with the feel-bright, up-tempo track "A New Day Has Begun". Elsewhere, Californian import Morgan Manifacier, who owes his alliterative moniker to a childhood in Southern France, impresses with banjo-backed "Liberty Street" from his 2011 debut album, Grande.

Today's singer-songwriters are a wildly varied cast of characters — there are sweet-voiced chanteuses (Ellie Goulding, Lisa Mitchell) and down-home story-tellers full of gravitas and grit (James Vincent McMorrow, Laura Marling). Wily wordsmiths who nail our sympathies and emotions with pin-point poetic imagery (Fyfe Dangerfield) stand shoulder-to-shoulder with soul-slinging singers (Amos Lee) who deal in deceptively straightforward statements. The one thing they've all got in common is a rock-solid sense of their own individuality and a brightly blazing artistic identity that can't be ignored. So whether you're in the mood for some mellow, folk-flavoured pub vibes or slow-burning, funk-infected grooves, this is the place to meet a batch of fascinating new friends who've got their own, unique, unforgettable stories to tell.