How soulful do you consider Joe Smooth's Promised Land?
DOR
Two Ron Toe 9,904 Posts
Having a conversation with someone who believes tracks like Promised Land are not soulful. Is there truth to that?
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That said, I can see why the seemingly contradictory nature of that certain strain of house--the kind that uses straight-up old-time evangelicism in the service of lifestyles to which said evangelicism has historically been, uh, less than kind--is problematic for some people. Like, how can it be so fundamentalist yet so very very gay?
Stuff like Roy Davis's "Gabriel" or Todd Edwards's more Jesus'ed-out material can get a little slippery if you think about it. So I mostly just kinda don't. Mea culpa (ironically enough).
A few years back some whitey did a cover of "Promised Land" that toned down the emotional gospel feel for more subdued introspection, which--while seeming like something a religion-averse person like myself might like--ended up being one of those things I could only listen to once.
But I'm probably gone far down the wrong track. What is your man's argument, exactly?
Yeah, but say it soulfully.
That was the Style Council, no? Not long after the original came out, if I remember.
But yeah, hard to deny that it's a soulful tune, even if the gospel-ly feel isn't to one's personal taste.
I think this song has been murdered by a quite few people down the years but the Style Council version was really close to the original. Pretty sure my copy lists Joe Smooth on production duties. Both versions induce warehouse party flashbacks.
I'm still curious to hear DOR's dude's position, though.
(In a side note: Is Paul Weller the proto-Mick Collins, in terms of choosing really fucking good songs and then doing just-okay cover versions of them?)
You are selling yourself short.
Everybody has soul, son. It ain't exclusive to black men, even though they have traditionally cornered the market.
Another quality post and exactly what I was looking for making the post.
Personally even with everything, promise land to me is extremely soulful IMO.
This came up because I was working in a room and a playlist was running (Not mine or the guy I'm talking about) and Promise Land came on and the guy in question skips the song. The playlist was filled with music across a ton of different genres, but he only skipped that song. So I asked him why. At first he just stated that he didn't like the song. Fair enough. But then he asked me why I liked it... I ran off a couple of reasons with one of them being how soulful I found the song. With that he started to question me on it. At first going into the production merits... But a bit into he asked if I thought the song was a gay anthem. Which I only replied with "So what if it is that too? Did it matter?". At which point he went back into the production and music of the song staying away from the lyrical content.
In any case. I much more enjoyed your insights. Thx.
Sounds like one annoying dude!