The Soul Sessions

Joss Stone who's from Devon, is being hailed as the new soul sensation - a white Aretha.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
She grew up listening to this music. She's imitating. She doesn't pretend to have suffered, but she's picked up the sound and she's picked up the moves, and I think it's an incredibly impressive debut. I think she's going to have a big career.

KIRSTY WARK:
Well, Kwame, you brought out your own CD in November, partly of Soul as well, so you know the business of bringing out your first record. But she's 16 years old. She sings songs like Dirty Man. I can't quite get my head around the fact she does that.

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH:
I think, first of all, she has an incredible voice. I was really moved by her voice. I wasn't moved by the choice of material on it. Yes, I agree, at 16, I don't quite know what you know about the world in the way that one does with soul. But what I was more interested in - I would like to have heard not just stuff that was her own, but I'd like to have heard that voice on more modern-sounding music, and I was slightly taken aback by the kind of record company's kind of hiding of her identity, kind of shading her in the album cover so we didn't know whether she was black or white. I think we've kind of gone past that. I didn't think we need to do that.

KIRSTY WARK:
And then they sold her in the press release, of course, as...

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH:
A white Aretha. That I find offensive. I think either take race out of it, don't use it at all, or pay homage to it. I'm not sure if they have done this correctly.

KIRSTY WARK:
It is extraordinary to think that she entered that talent contest when she was 12. For the last four years, presumably, she has been groomed.

PAUL MORLEY:
What I find objectionable is the way they're trying to invent some myth, some back history for her, The Soul Sessions, leading up to her album later in the last three months of the year, leading to the Christmas market of her original versions, and give her this strange pretence she has been around, paid her dues. I think she's like a post-modern Lena Zavaroni I think she parrots it - I kind of don't feel it for a moment. Every syllable is so over the top, the demonstration of I have got it - it's just as objectionable as a Pop Idol or Fame Academy winner and they're setting it up as if there's some kind of integrity when, in fact, they're just as manipulative...

KIRSTY WARK:
Your voice can be trained into singing whatever particular style, I suppose, if you have got the voice in the first place.

ELAINE SHOWALTER:
She has got the voice. These are her inspirations. I hope she doesn't have a fate like Lena Zavaroni. She's quite restrained. She's not a belter. She doesn't do the sort of kid shtick where "I'm a little girl with a great big voice and I'm going to knock you over and sob and pull my hair out."

PAUL MORLEY:
I just think it's designed to appeal to the people who are disenfranchised by Pop Idol to superficially have a kind of integrity about it. And I can't see or hear beyond that.

KIRSTY WARK:
Kwame, originally she wanted to produce an album of her own material, but actually she was steered away from that. Do you think that when she comes out with her own album, then you'll have a better sense of whether or not she is going to be some kind of a lasting talent?

KWAME KWEI-ARMAH:
I think she will be a lasting talent. I think there's no doubt she has a great voice. If somehow she can create songs or have songs created for her that really tap into her soul as opposed to her singing Soul, then I think she will last. I think it will be very interesting. I would be very interested in hearing that album. This one, I played it and went, "mmmm" and, then I kind of went, "OK". I don't think I will play it very often.

PAUL MORLEY:
Michael Parkinson will love her.

KIRSTY WARK:
Really?

PAUL MORLEY:
Oh yeah. It's like real amber floats and fake amber sinks. If you think of that as a metaphor for Soul, and in this sense, I think she sings like a stone.