A guide to understanding the difference between Motown and northern soul
Motown and northern soul are like Tom and Jerry, Beano and Dandy, or Yorkshire puddings and gravy in that one wouldn’t exist without the other, but that doesn’t mean that they are both the same thing.
If you have ever been to a northern soul night, particularly in the 21st century, you might find that the style is often lumped in with a few Motown classics and, in fairness, the two often sound very similar. After all, Motown’s prolific output back in the 1960s essentially laid the groundwork for the sound of the northern soul scene.
During the early part of the 1960s, Berry Gordy’s Detroit label was dominating the US singles charts, but it struggled to gain a foothold in the UK market, where even cover versions by The Beatles couldn’t help Hitsville make its mark on the scene. It was only in the underground nightclubs of the mod subculture that Motown found its stronghold, but when that scene spilt over, and the likes of Mary Wells and The Supremes started earning charting hits in the UK, many of the original mods moved on to more obscure climbs.
That, in essence, is how the northern soul scene started; mod clubs and DJs searching for something with that ‘Motown sound’ that hadn’t been a chart hit. After all, no uber-cool club like the Twisted Wheel or The Flamingo would be caught dead playing what many old soulies might describe as “youth club music”.
Still, if you look at a song like The Four Tops’ ‘I Can’t Help Myself’, it sounds almost tailor-made for the northern soul scene that emerged years later, with its unrelenting four-on-the-floor rhythm and universal lyricism. The challenge for northern soul DJs, then, was to find songs that were along those same sonic lines, but hadn’t been heard by any mass audiences.
Luckily, the colossal, otherworldly success of Motown Records back in the 1960s meant that countless other soul labels sprang up in the United States, attempting to capitalise on the same kind of sound – with varying degrees of success. These were the songs that formed the backbone of the northern soul scene, particularly during its infancy, when DJs would go over to the States and return with crates of obscure records.
Instead of Motown, northern soul all-nighters coveted smaller labels like Ric-Tic, Golden World, Okeh, and Cameo-Parkway, among various others, all of which attempted to emulate the soulful sounds of Motown, without emulating the chart success of their neighbours Detroit.
If you were in a hurry, the sound of northern soul could be quite succinctly summarised as being the Motown sound, but not on the Motown label. There are, however, exceptions to that rule. Over the many years of all-nighters in Manchester, Blackpool, Wigan, and various other towns and cities across the north of England, some Motown-released tracks became major floor-fillers on the northern soul scene.
‘Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)’ is one such outlier, becoming arguably the most iconic northern soul song of all time, after initially being recorded by Motown back in 1965. Similarly, the likes of Chris Clark, The Originals, Brenda Holloway, and even a select few tracks from Marvin Gaye all have their place in the northern scene, despite having been on Motown’s roster at one time or another.
Crucially, though, none of those Motown tracks were big hits upon their initial release. Many of them, in fact, were resigned to one of Motown’s many imprints and sister labels, like Soul or V.I.P., which tended to release Hitsville’s more soul-focused recordings. In that sense, then, they do not break the northern soul rule of thumb or being obscure non-hits that nevertheless bear the marks of the Motown sound.
So, while it’s not wholly unlikely to hear the likes of ‘This Old Heart of Mine’ or ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’ at a self-professed northern soul night, the two realms of soul music are not interchangeable – even if they are irrevocably linked.
