Choose England’s next adorable soul belter!
Based on my tastes in music and novels, you might say I’m a bit of an Anglophile. Sadly, as I near the half century mark, I’ve never been on English soil. Spending a few hours between flights at Heathrow doesn’t count. I need to get there someday.
For every 2 things I love about my father’s people’s contributions to rock ‘n roll, there’s something I find funny. Culturally, historically, and politically—on a level predating Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry—the English and continental Europeans have every right to shake their heads and tsk tsk at our naivete, but when it comes to rock ‘n roll, they’re the babes. For instance, I find the Brits’ love for American soul music both adorable and often highly appreciated. In our own country, specific periods of African American popular music are often left in the dust. You don’t see a whole lot of young African American musicians, for instance, forming Motown-style bands or Stax-style bands. (Yeah, I know it happens a little more frequently these days.) The beat goes on, baby. Gotta keep with the times. White rockers keep the flame burning for the Memphis sound, which their kin had a hand in from the beginning, but large swaths of urban soul styles are ignored by all but some music obsessives who hang around places like the Halls of Rock.
In England I get the idea that our discarded forms of soul music are constantly in high demand. For all the good intentions the island’s music lovers bring to the music—and for all the worthwhile acts of preservation and often-overdue props English artists provide—each generation puts a sparkling, fresh, cheeky take on the music. Often this comes in the form of a cherubic young woman whose booming voice sounds years more experienced and skin tones darker than could reasonably be expected. Despite the pain and suffering evident in the singer’s voice, her image is always of girl-in-the-flat-next-door variety. Adele,of course, is the latest and greatest of these soul stylists.
Most of these English pop-soul belters, male and female, adopt the Look and mien of the cast members of To Sir With Love. I hope Happiness Stan and other friends from across the pond have time to fill us in on the cultural significance that film plays over there. I bet it would explain something regarding the pep and vigor England’s soul singers bring to the genre.
Let’s take a few minutes to review the brief peak of Lisa Stansfield‘s career. I can’t say I know anything about her, and a brief read of her Wikipedia page wasn’t that interesting, but I first heard her music and saw her videos the year my wife and I lived in Hungary, the year when EuroMTV meant so much to me. When I stumbled across this video for “Never Never Gonna Give You Up,” in which the cat had already been dropped as the video begins, I was immediately brought back to a time when it was slightly exhilarating to know that anyone still dug the Barry White records of my teenage years.
