Soul Sisters—Adele and Beth Ditto -- By Tara Bowen

Image from sweetslyrics.com

I've been listening to a lot of Adele lately. My interests/tastes range from indie, all the way to-pretty much everything, but mostly indie. In the way of mainstream pop, though, Adele is where it's at. She's consistently putting out great stuff, far ahead of its time-since 2007. When the track 'Tired' came out. I just heard this the other day, and thought it was her 'new' single-little did I know..it was actually from 2007.

Adele is, to me, the embodiment, of this ‘soul’ movement happening in Pop. A ‘Neo-soul’ if you will.  A lot of it’s coming out of the U.K. in general-what with Amy Winehouse, Duffy...Joss Stone...but (I think), Adele, is doing it best. She’s reinvented the genre so to speak-taken it to a whole nother level. There’s a lot of that happening, this ‘mo-town’ Americana thing, that the U.K. has sort of taken by storm/’adopted’...but among them all, Adele stands out most (to me). She is a master of her voice/her vocal style, which to me, is some variation/form of bel canto. Her voice is a treasure unto itself. She should, one day, do an acapella album. Adele, is basically, what it means to be a ‘soul’ artist, today. She’s the whole point of this ‘movement’, taking one genre, and furthering it. Extending onto it. Modernizing it. I never felt the ‘Mo-town’ ‘soul thing’, was ever done.  My Same, Tired, Rolling In the Deep and Cold Shoulder-are my favorite tracks by her.  Her album, 21, was just released in the U.S., on Columbia Records.

Image from jezebel.com

Where Adele corners the ‘pop’ version of this soul movement—Beth Ditto (on the other hand)-captures ‘soul punk’—(I think, best).  Two sort of similar, voices, vocally, their styles compare, but Beth is the pop-punk of soul, and I love her band, the Gossip. So, the pop version of this-is happening mainly in the U.K.-where, the punk, seems to be happening here. I think it’s ‘our’ way of extending on to it, and I love and am excited for them both. Adele and the Gossip should one day collaborate I think-that’d be a dream duo.

Vive ‘soul-pop’!

Check out Tara's Blog: http://hmmdiddlydum.blogspot.com/

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