British soul

British soul, Brit soul or the British soul invasion is soul music performed by British artists. Soul has been a major influence on British popular music since the 1960s, and American soul was extremely popular among some youth subcultures, such as mods, skinheads and the northern soul movement. However, a clear genre of British soul did not emerge until the 1980s, when a number of black and white artists who made soul their major focus began to enjoy some commercial success. The popularity of British soul artists in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s led to talk of another British Invasion or a soul invasion.

History

Widespread British interest in soul music developed after the advent of rock and roll from the mid-1950s and the subsequent interest in American music. In the early 1960s, rhythm and blues, including soul, was particularly popular among some members of the beat music boom, including The Beatles, and among bands of who contributed to the British blues boom, including The Spencer Davis Group, The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who. Most of these were popular with members of the Mod subculture, out of which grew the northern soul movement, in which northern English youths avidly collected and played rare soul records.

Britain produced only a handful of soul acts, most significantly the blue-eyed soul singers Tom Jones and Dusty Springfield. Dusty in Memphis (1969) is one of the few albums by a British performer considered among the great soul recordings. One black British soul band was The Real Thing. It has been suggested that the performance of soul in Britain was so limited because white fans saw it as exclusively a black genre, and because black British performers, while incorporating some sounds into other forms like reggae, considered soul a distant American genre. A handful of British artists continued to perform soul-inspired music in the 1970s. These included David Bowie, whose "Plastic soul" on his Young Americans album (1975), helped keep the sound in the British mainstream. One of the key figures in Britain's soul and disco scenes during the 1970s was Biddu, an Indian-British composer and producer who gained breakthrough success with chart-topping hits such as "Kung Fu Fighting" (1974) with Carl Douglas and "I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance)" with Tina Charles, while his own Biddu Orchestra records also appeared in the charts. Other British soul artists working with Biddu at the time included The Outriders and Jimmy James.

In the 1980s, the situation began to change radically, with a wave of nostalgia for 1960s soul music. There were flourishing soul scenes in major cities like London and Manchester, often with many black artists, supported by local and pirate radio stations, but most acts were unable to break out into the national consciousness. This interest was reflected and fuelled by a series of covers and songs inspired by soul for a number of major acts, including Phil Collins's "You Can't Hurry Love" (1982), Culture Club's "Church of the Poison Mind" (1983), The Style Council's "Speak Like a Child" (1983), Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" (1986), and Steve Winwood "Roll With It" (1998). For the first time since the 1960s, there were also notable acts who specialised in soul. These included George Michael, who reinvented himself a white soul singer with the multi-platinum album Faith (1987). Also significant were Sade, Simply Red, and toward the end of the decade, Lisa Stansfield and Soul II Soul. The latter's breakthrough hits "Keep on Movin'" and "Back to Life" in 1989 have been seen as opening the door to the mainstream for black British soul and R&B performers.

In the 1990s, the British soul-influenced acts included Omar and acid jazz bands Incognito and Brand New Heavies. Particularly noticeable was the proliferation of British female black singers, many, like American artists of the 1950s and 1960s, coming out of a gospel tradition. These included Mica Paris, Caron Wheeler, Gabrielle, Beverley Knight and Heather Small.

British soul in the 2000s has been dominated by female singers, most notably Amy Winehouse, Estelle, Joss Stone, Duffy (singer), Paloma Faith, Florence Welch, Adele and Leona Lewis. They have enjoyed success on the American charts, leading to talk of another "British Invasion", a "Female Invasion" or a "British soul invasion". In 2009, Jay Sean's single "Down" reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold two million copies in the United States, making him "the most successful male UK urban artist in US chart history." His success was followed by Taio Cruz also topping the US Billboard Hot 100 in March 2010. The success of Sean and Cruz, as well as the upcoming US release of Tinchy Stryder, has led to talk of how "U.K. stars seize American R&B". British R&B has also been increasingly incorporating electropop sounds in recent years, exemplified by the music of Jay Sean and Taio Cruz.