An increasingly irritating rock cliche
Posted by Lucas Hare on 14 April 2008 - 9:38am.
In my current obsession with southern soul, I'm coming across a phrase that increasingly annoys me the more I hear it. Dan Penn, The Box Tops, Eddie Hinton, Dusty Springfield and Donnie Fritts and the like are always placed firmly in the category "Blue Eyed Soul". Apart from being an irritating, limiting category, it seems to harbour a slightly racially dubious assertion that white people don't 'do' soul, but if they do, they get their own pigeonhole.
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they are all at it...
I am going to assume this is one of those media fuelled "spats"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_7342000/7342154.stm
Yep
There you go. I knew I'd read it somewhere else over the weekend.
Can Blue Men Sing The Whites?
The Great Bonzos Conjecture gains new ground every day.
you just couldnt let a thread go by
without mentioning the mighty Bonzos could you?
Speaking of which, will you be at their London show in June?
Logistics issues
I would, but catching the last tube home to Cadiz might be a bit tricky.
look at the list!
Had to have a look. Not sure how my iTunes is set up but it said not available in the US store, switch to UK. So I did. What an amazing mixture - makes the discussions on here about genres and organising your music collection seem redundant.
Spandau Ballet, Simply Red, John Fred and the Playboy Band ... wow!
Don't really see what's wrong with the term
It's just a way of describing white people singing in a style normally associated with black people. Can't see why it's offensive or "limiting".
Agreed...
I don't see any problem with it at all.
Those Blackface Blue Eyed Boys...
Work that one out, then.
Well
The term itself is only half my problem. The other half is its ubiquity.
Agree with Richard
Richard Lowe totally agree. For me the problem comes when people say it's not "Real Soul".
Anyone else hear that fantastic Dean Parrish doc on Radio 2 ? Can't tell me that's not Soul.
Some of the Greatest Northern Soul Classics are Blue-Eyed.
Here's a couple
origin
Where was it first coined it's not like "southern Gospel" which I only found out from BBC4 doc last month is the euphemism laden term for whites only gospel music. Isn't it just away foe US record shops and radio stations to complete their pointless mission to divide all music into tiny tiny catagories based largely on racial demographics. I wouldn't let it worry you
Oh well
I won't let it get to me then. If I post this, I'll feel better:
Arrrrunbeeee
There also seems to be a propensity for any black pop singers to be bracketed as a RnB even if they are just singing the same chart freindly pop stuff as all their white contemporaries. Lemar for instance is surely just pure pop, but he often gets called an RnB singer because he's black. I've also heard Leona Lewis described as RnB.
And
Don't even start on 'urban'.
Is Roots the same as.....
Black folk? I suspect not entirely, but the same tar brush of euphemism seems to be afoot.
Cerebral
My most hated one at present is "cerebral". Totally over-used in reviews at the moment. A journalist's shorthand for "it's clever...and so am I!"