Before Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele were all held responsible for bringing back real soul vocals and soul music, Joss Stone was on the same mission.
Growing up on old soul music, she was a real surprise to music when she released her debut album at age 16 and sounded like she’s was about 10 years older and black.
It’s that combination that is always a ’thing’. It doesn’t matter in what time we live, when a white singer sounds black, it’s getting as much praise as it’s getting criticism. But music knows no boundaries. It gently finds its way to everybody and everybody takes what they can from it and adds a little something to it.
Joss has been adding her little something to it for 13 years (since her debut album). It’s made her one of the richest British musicians. Nevertheless, Joss is remaining a bit of a free spirit.
As a true nomad, she is currently in the final stages of doing a real world tour. Real, because she’s going to places other artists skip. Her mission was to bring the music to everyone and combining her visit with collaborations with artists from the country she’s visiting.
It’s brought her to places like Lebanon, on which she explained in an interview that it’s quite safe. “You get texts about where something happened and you just don’t go down that street”. Like music, life always goes on as well.
Her taste for adventure can also be found in the musical move she made in 2014, releasing a reggae album. I recently, did a reggae song myself, which unfortunately due to copyright issues will never be released, probably.
Where my track brought pop and reggae together, Joss stayed as true the genre as she could. Topics like weed pass by a couple of times on the album “Water For Your Soul”. It made her the biggest selling reggae artist of 2015, according to Billboard. And yes, you got it, criticism followed instantly.
Putting the criticism aside though, however relevant it may or may not be, the album is a great album to listen to. Very soulful.
The criticism itself is mainly about culture, race and commercial success. You know, the usual light topics to have at the coffee machine during your five minute break. ;-)
All sides are very understandable. Reggae is so much part of a lifestyle, Jamaican lifestyle. While no one minds that it hits the mainstream charts on occasion with a mindless pop song, it was a bit of a stretch having a British white female representing the genre for a full year according to Billboard.
Joss saw it coming and is pretty cool about it, when she speaks on the subject. She’s a citizen of the world, an artist without borders, who has lost some of her British cultural restrictions and inherited some global cultural awareness, somewhere along the 200 countries she’s visited. It’s a luxury, we all should get to fully understand what it’s like to embrace the world like that and all of its music.
