TIME - Man of the Year/CompactPublishing-TimeMagazine-TimeManOfTheYear-Win31MSDOS.iso/moy/112392/1123440.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 119 lines

                                                                                MUSIC, Page 68

Soul with a British Accent


Transatlantic musicians like Mick Hucknall, Lisa Stansfield
and Seal revitalize an American pop invention -- and in some
cases make it better

By DAVID E. THIGPEN


    In the 1960s and '70s, the soul sounds of Detroit and
Philadelphia were the glory of American pop. From the funk
styles of James Brown to the fervid testifying of Aretha
Franklin and Marvin Gaye, soul music was something you could not
only hear but also feel: rhythm without blues, emotion without
sentimentality. Then in the '80s a few big record companies
discovered they could rack up sales by substituting hyperactive
beats and overdressed arrangements for soul's honest impact.
Subtle vocal stylists gave way to crooners; soul gave way to
dance music, marketed mainly to black listeners. Even powerful
singers like Whitney Houston were steered into this aesthetic
dead end.

    But soul wouldn't die. Instead it migrated to the damp
environs of Manchester, England, a roughneck working-class
stronghold. There, in much the same way that British rockers of
the '60s adapted American rock 'n' roll, a new wave of musicians
have been revitalizing soul, uncovering new artistic
connections and in some cases improving on the American
originators. The result, for music fans, is that the soul
searching is over.

    The godfather of the British soul invasion -- and its
finest vocal stylist -- has flaming red dreadlocks and a
ruby-embedded front tooth. Manchester's Mick Hucknall, 32, the
peppery-tongued lead singer of Simply Red, started a punk band
in the early '80s but quickly tired of punk's anger. Sensing a
widespread hunger for American soul sounds, he and three
Manchester pals formed Simply Red in 1984. Their first No. 1
hit, Holding Back the Years, harked back to the fluid ease of
the pure soul classics of the '60s and showcased Hucknall's
dapper, crying tenor.

    In their fourth and newest album, Stars, they're still at
it. But despite his vocal mastery, Hucknall has taken flak from
critics who accuse him of ripping off black music. He fires back
that the record industry's marketing of music along racial lines
reflects something deeper in Americans, to whom he says, "Black
music by and for black people, white music by and for white
people; that's one of the reasons you have such divisions in
your society."

    The gorgeous, ripened voice of Lisa Stansfield, 26,
embodies the romance and sexiness of soul. Her lyrics are
succinct portraits of love, seduction and loss; her sound is
ardent but never florid, soft but never sappy. While still
barely a teen in her hometown of Rochdale, Stansfield
desperately longed to join the nightclub scene of nearby
Manchester, which was a bubbling kettle of soul, rock and punk
sounds. "But I was underage," she says, "so I'd put tissue paper
in my bra and sneak in with my older sister. Of all the music
I heard, soul was the most honest."

    At 14 she started singing in local pubs, but quit three
years later to begin recording with two Rochdale musicians. Her
payoff came in 1989 when her debut album, Affection, scored two
No. 1 hits on the black charts in America. Her newest disk,
Real Love, is her finest yet; the breathy come-ons of Time to
Make You Mine are arrestingly seductive, and in Change she
shows off the glorious arc of her upper register.

    The most visionary of the new wave is Sealhenry Samuel,
a.k.a. Seal. The London native, whose parents are Brazilian and
Nigerian, took a year-long solo spiritual journey through Nepal,
India and Thailand before returning to London on a tail wind of
inspiration. Last year Seal, 29, released a namesake album
intermingling soul, rock and blues hooks into a strikingly fresh
hybrid. He also introduced a novel instrument in soul circles:
a solo acoustic guitar, which vividly sets off his yearning,
crackling voice. With its shifting rhythms and varied sonic
textures, Seal shows that soul can accommodate unorthodox
structures and a mystical tinge while still shining through
handsomely.

    No performer has plumbed the sensual side of soul with
more skill than newcomer Ephraim Lewis. When he was a child in
the factory town of Wolverhampton, Lewis' parents forbade him
to listen to any secular music. His father tried to steer him
into the ministry, but Lewis had other plans; he left home as
soon as he turned 17. Settling in Sheffield, he bunked with
friends and worked through the night in recording studios,
listening to records and composing songs. Says Lewis, 24: "I
discovered Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell and Curtis Mayfield. I
just swallowed it all up." As he was writing his debut album,
his mother and brother died. Skin, as Lewis titled the album,
became a record of his feelings: melancholy and vulnerability.
When he sings, "Is my skin just a veil I'm wearing/ Protect me
from the world," his languid baritone catches gently, and the
beating rhythms wash over a listener like a wave.

    How do the British do it? Perhaps by not pigeonholing
musicians and by giving them a wider reign in the studio. Says
Sade, the British chanteuse whose Diamond Life album in 1984
signaled the British knack for soul: "There's less consumerism
in England and more idealism in the record business than in
America."