Power: "Soul in My Shoes"

12 February 1986

"Pounding white soul music, what it lacks in lyrical variety (the line "I've got soul in my shoes" must be repeated at least 30 times) it makes up for with sheer driving energy."

— Simon Braithwaite

I'm not sure if it's a cliche just yet but it's worth mentioning that while eighties pop stars may not have cut the best records, they certainly had great record collections. Ideally, they would have had grandparents with fragile old Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller discs, their folks would have had some Elvis and Beatles and their older brothers and sisters would have collected glam and punk singles. Of course few would have been lucky enough to have had all of that good stuff passed down to them but certainly they benefited from there being an awful lot out there. It isn't the glut of product that we have today but it sure beats relying on those very generous Scouse sailors to keep you in new music.

Richard Jackman and Mark Lewis formed Power in Liverpool in the early eighties and they had a wealth of references to play with. Most obviously, they had the Northern soul boom of the seventies, which is very much the backbone of the decade's pop. They were by no means the first UK act to show their debt to Edwin Starr and Geno Washington; just on this blog we've already dealt with Dexys Midnight Runners, Roman Holliday and Simply Red. But it's in 1986 that it all becomes much more polished.

One of the chief criticisms of eighties white soul is that it's too smooth. Groups and studio staff could do a decent job aping the craft of old school black music but the singers never seemed to possess the grit of Otis Redding or Sam Cooke. They loved their records but they could never quite mimic them nor did they have the desire to do so. We are, after-all, just a year away from the rise of Johnny Hates Jazz and Wet Wet Wet, acts who achieved huge sales but who could never get beyond the gloss.

But, then, what choice did they have? "Soul in My Shoes" demonstrates the folly of so-called 'soulcialism' because Power end up sounding even less convincing by trying to be gritty and street tough. Where previous single "Work Hard" had been an adequate stab at catchy soul-pop, this comes across as trying too hard. Simon Braithwaite doesn't care for "I've got soul in my shoes" being repeated so often but I'd like to know what it means. Is it just a pathetic pun? There's another oft-repeated line ("black girl, white boy") and together they amount to the bulk of the song's lyrics. So, White Boy is having trouble impressing Black Girl and his "black" bona fides don't amount to a hell of a lot but, he takes the trouble to point out, he does have "soul" in his shoes. Yeah, that'll get her. It's a curious admission to make: I'm a painfully white guy who can't express myself but at least I've got soul covering my feet. Not something you'd expect from a soul revivalist.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Brilliant: "Love Is War"

Co-composed by Youth, Jimmy Cauty and Stock Aitken Waterman (as well as someone called June Montana who happened to be Brilliant's vocalist), you might expect "Love Is War" to sound like the love-child of Killing Joke, The KLF and Rick Astley. (I didn't expect it myself but you might) No, it isn't quite that good and, in fact, it's not close to being that good. Just very typical dance-pop of the era that no longer had that exciting New York club feel to it. Not the grittiest music this fortnight but, then again, 1986 was hardly the gritttiest year.