Joss Stone spent her teen years in the rural town of Devon,
where she bought her first album, Aretha Franklin's Greatest Hits, which
inspired her to become a singer. At the age of 14, she auditioned for a popular
BBC show, Star for a Night.
Therein, Joscelyn thought that she could do better than the
indistinguishable flock of pop star wannabes, who were mangling the popular
classics. Once onstage, the audience expected another squeaky blonde cutie to
sort of entertain them; but out of this giggly teenager came a vocal
reincarnation of Gladys Knight rolled up with Janis Joplin and a dash of Dusty
Springfield, as she performed Aretha Franklin's classic "(You Make Me Feel
Like) A Natural Woman." She was signed to an agent right away.
Stone began working on her third studio album, Introducing
Joss Stone, at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, in May 2006. It was
released on 12 March 2007 in the UK on Virgin Records, involving production by
Raphael Saadiq and collaborations with Lauryn Hill, Common, and Joi. Virgin
describes it as "an electrifying mix of warm vintage soul, '70s-style
R&B, Motown girl-group harmonies, and hip-hop grooves". Stone herself
describes it as "truly me. That's why I'm calling it Introducing Joss
Stone. These are my words, and this is who I am as an artist". She also
revealed on The Tavis Smiley Show that her break-up with Beau Dozier was a
source of inspiration while writing Introducing Joss Stone. The album debuted
at number twelve on the UK Albums Chart. It also debuted at number two on the
Billboard 200 selling 118,000 copies in its first week, becoming the highest
debut for a British solo female artist on the U.S. charts, surpassing the
record previously held by Amy Winehouse with Back to Black. It has sold 60,000
copies in the UK since its release, gaining silver status on the charts.
Joss Stone may have cast off her sunshine-sweet hippy image
and become a scarlet-haired siren for this, her third studio album, but she
appears to have devoted more attention to her appearance than her material.
Despite skilful production by Raphael Saadiq (Mary J. Blige, the Roots, TLC),
Introducing... is an unremarkable collection that blends uptempo, Motown-esque
beats with Stone's trademark crooning. The lead single "Tell Me 'Bout
It" is typical of this sound: Built from equal measures faux-vintage
production effects and sexually-amped lyrical platitudes, it is pleasant, but
wholly forgettable.
Typically, artists dispense with introductions after their debut
-- after all, that is an album designed to introduce them to the world -- but
neo-soul singer Joss Stone defiantly titled her third album Introducing Joss
Stone, thereby dismissing her first two relatively acclaimed albums with one
smooth stroke. She now claims that those records were made under record-label
pressure -- neatly contradicting the party line that her debut, The Soul
Sessions, turned into a retro-soul project after Joss implored her label to
ditch the Christina Aguilera-styled urban-pop she was pursuing -- but now as a
young adult of 19, she's free to pursue her muse in her own fashion. All this
is back-story to Introducing, but Stone makes her modern metamorphosis plain on
the album's very first track, where football-star-turned-Hollywood-muscle
Vinnie Jones talks about change ("I see change, I embody change, all we do
is change, yeah, I know change, we're born to change" and so on and so
forth), setting the stage for some surprise -- which "Girl They Won't
Believe It" kind of delivers, if only because it isn't all that different
from what Stone has done before. It's a sprightly slice of Northern soul
propelled by a bouncy Motown beat that doesn't suggest a change in direction as
much as a slight shift in aesthetic.
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