it's a word that means different things resulting in conversations at cross purposes
- a black style or black-originated style (resulting in all those MOBO like confusions where Ed Sheeran gets the award)
- music that's "soulful" meaning has "vibe", groove, funkiness, warmth, fluidity etc (i.e the sort of souljazz ideal of what music should be - which can be extended globally as with this blog which gives away a lot of African or other non-West world-y type musics but still within the value set -
http://hollandtunneldive.blogspot.com/) - kind of macrobiotic, organic, nutritional idea of music
- emotion (as content - raw, naked, confessional - and also as a transmitted effect on the listener, stirring up intense feelings)
i hesitate to dredge up something from the distant past (a good decade before Barty was born!) but at the height of the soul revival of late 80s - circa George Michael and Aretha Franklin duet getting to number one - me and David Stubbs wrote a polemic called "All Souled Out", and among the things we argued was that there was more "soul" - meaning emotional reality, ability to move the listener - in the weak vocals and not overtly demonstrative singing in a New Order or a A.R. Kane song than there was in all the groups at that time like Wet Wet Wet
A.R. Kane were actually black British but Alex Ayuli's singing was fragile, pallid and avoided any of the vocal conventions of soul or Eighties R&B
but we also argued that Alexander O'Neal type modern Eighties R&B music was fine because it was "delicious plastic"
it was a trans-valuation move - actually quite similar to Bowie describing his Young Americans as "plastic soul", preempting criticisms of him as honky jumping on the Philly bandwagon
cmon Barty, "Fame" is a great tune.
And that is actual "true Bowie soul" i think cos he's abjectly honest about his experience of fame and how it's fucked his ability to have any kind of normal relations - and it's quite a harrowing tune