Will Janelle Monáe share Aloe Blacc’s success at Dollar academy?

Sometimes a record is irresistible. It might not be to everyone’s taste – James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful, Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time, Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out, Damien Rice’s Cannonball, KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree and Leona Lewis’ Bleeding Love all fall into that category. But when the song hits – and it can take a while or two weeks – it can make a worldwide star of whoever is willing to travel round the world singing it.

Aloe Blacc’s I Need A Dollar looks like it may be another example. Released 14 months ago, it failed to get traction over here despite support from Radio One’s Reggie Yates and Trevor Nelson, but a stealth movement – based on appearances on Jools Holland (in front of Sir Paul Thumbsaloft) – saw it chosen as iTunes Single of the Week and as the theme tune for the new HBO drama from Entourage producers Mark Wahlberg and Steven Levinson, How To Make It In America. Since then, it’s been top five in five European countries and made the UK Top 20. Blacc will be able to build on his success because he has a strong album to back it up. Good Things has echoes of the great old soul singers such as Curtis Mayfield, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding – both in smoothness of golden tonsils and in social consciousness. This is a fascinating time in modern soul music. Leaving aside the charts being overrun by more conventional R’n’B singers such as Usher and Bruno Mars, some interesting artists are pushing their way into the mainstream from the artistic margins. Just as in the mid-90s, when British guitar bands (Blur, Oasis, Pulp) harked back to groups of the past to produce something fresh, artists like Aloe Blacc, Cee Lo Green and Janelle Monáe are mixing brand new-retro sounds. As well as Good Things, Cee Lo Green’s The Lady Killer is a smart modern record with its own irresistible force-of-nature hit (Forget You) and nods to old Stax and Motown songs as well as a guest appearance by Earth, Wind and Fire’s Philip Bailey. Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III) is even more remarkable in its ambition and scope. To produce a debut record which is also a concept album which takes in time travel, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Judy Garland, Bernard Herrmann, The Matrix, Japanese imagery and James Brown. No wonder OutKast’s Big Boi, P Diddy (who signed her to his label) and Prince are all confirmed fans. Unlike Green and Blacc, Monáe is awaiting her breakthrough international smash, but those three artists have all marked themselves out as artists of note. At a time when rock is often off the agenda, soul is at the centre of what’s going on in music.

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