Trying To Get To You

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Here Come The New Soulsters

It had to happen. In the wake of Amy Winehouse’s success last year, there is now a flood of “soulful” female artists whose albums are about to come out. One of the most anticipated ones is Duffy, from the UK. She hearkens back much more to the pop/soul tradition of Jackie DeShannon and Dusty Springfield (pre-Dusty in Memphis). I haven’t heard the album yet and my experience with her so far has been reduced to seeing a few videos, but so far, I’m not that impressed. She’s got a fine technical voice; excellent range and tone. But in watching the videos, I’m not getting that hit of emotional depth that I need for my soul music to occur as, you know, actually soulful. I’ll hold off on rendering a real verdict until the album drops in mid-May. Here’s one of her videos.

4 comments:

Go Nicole Yourself said...

I'm interested to hear what you think of Adele....

Anonymous said...

This video really shows the ugly truth about the soul nation circa 2008: a white female singer from the UK with a scratchy voice -- being COACHED to sound like a soul singer -- does not necessarily equal a soul singer. It's like buying a chair from Restoration Hardware and dragging it behind your car on the way home to make it look like an antique.

Saul Good said...

I dunno, I thought it was pretty dope. But I didn't have the luxury of growing up with the stuff you did. So the renaissance will probably lead a bunch of youngsters back to the real deal. Regardless, I'd give up all kinds of shit that I love to sing like that.

Anonymous said...

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