Playground magazine

Over a period of barely a month and a half, we have seen the recording debuts of Maverick Sabre, Emeli Sandé, Michael Kiwanuka and Marcus Collins; four figures who were expected to release albums that would have an impact, and not only from a commercial point of view. So far, however, they have responded unevenly to the expectations generated during the months of media warm-up prior to their releases. During its first week, Maverick Sabre’s “Lonely Are The Brave” sold almost 50,000 copies, a decent but discreet figure in terms of the expectations generated. “Our Version Of Events”, by Sandé, sold 300,000 units in two weeks of commercial activity and is on its way to becoming one of the big super-sellers of 2012 in the UK. “Home Again”, Kiwanuka’s debut, has slipped into fourth position on the British charts practically upon release, and “Marcus Collins” has reached seventh the same way. Looking at it this way, one could argue that they are a big commercial success - and that right now soul, or at least the idea of voices inspired by and modelled on the black musical legacy, is currently one of the most profitable and financially healthy sounds around.

The thing is that beyond their strictly artistic value - which is debatable from many points of view - the appearance of these titles at almost the same time leads us to formulate a more general question: why is soul in fashion? Is it a coincidence that the four big multinational debuts on the British scene in the year so far, have this genre as their main point of connection? In the music industry there aren’t many coincidences or strokes of blind fate. It is relatively easy to decipher the reasons why the big recording companies, out of the blue, seem to only have eyes for singers with strong voices, retro sounds, and expressive emotional qualities - forgetting all else, as if it were only possible to get a return and media impact by way of this shortcut.

On the one hand we have the death of Amy Winehouse, which not only took away one of the most talented artists of the last decade, but also left the industry itself without time to respond; having lost a very profitable icon without warning, without even having thought of finding a reasonable replacement for her. The music industry is slow by definition, awkward and imitative, and very predictable. It reacts at the wrong time and clumsily. One could sense that after the disappearance of the author of “Back To Black” there would be an intense search for fresh meat to be billed as her replacement. But we weren’t expecting them to be so obvious and evident.