Paul Weller’s favourite singer of all time: “The greatest”
Reinvention has been the only consistency in the ever-changing career of Paul Weller.
While most musicians who rose to prominence in a rock band eventually return for a lucrative payday, Weller has always tried to look forward rather than look back and reflect. He has aged gracefully as an artist, adding new tools to his box of tricks with every album, incorporating sounds from across the spectrum, such as soul.
The discovery of soul was a crucial moment in Weller’s life. The genre expanded his sonic horizons and led him to quit The Jam in order to start an adventurously bold new chapter of his career with The Style Council.
Weller may have started his career as a punk rocker, but he was only a teenager when The Jam became highly successful. Naturally, within a few years, he wanted to express himself in other ways. With his whole life ahead of him at 24, he needed to explore new musical territories to fulfil himself, and the lure of soul was too strong to resist.
One artist that particularly impacted Weller was the legendary Marvin Gaye, who he considers to be the best singer of all time. Falling in love with Gaye’s work was pivotal in changing the trajectory of Weller’s career, helping him realise music didn’t have to exist within the boundaries he’d previously been bound by.
Admittedly, The Style Council were blue-eyed soul rather than sounding like a Motown Records release; Weller was shaped by the records that came through that influential label.
During an interview with The Guardian in 2008, Weller named Gaye’s signature album, What’s Going On, as the soundtrack to his life when he formed The Style Council in the 1980s.
He explained: “It’s a choice between this, Innervisions by Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield’s first solo albums: all beautiful soul records that say something. Curtis was a prophet back then, out there on his own, putting humanitarianism and spirituality into black consciousness”.
However, despite his love of Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder, which also played an important role in this chapter of his existence, Gaye was his number one artist. Weller explained: “But What’s Going On is a symphonic concept album and Marvin Gaye the greatest singer of all time: his range and control over his voice is amazing. He raised the bar for me when I wanted to stretch out musically. Records this good take years to be properly appreciated.”
Additionally, in another conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Weller named the album’s title track as one of his favourite songs ever. The singer-songwriter said of the seismic impact it had on him: “I probably heard this at the end of the ’70s or early ’80s, but it was a real revelation. Marvin is one of my all-time favourite singers”.
That era of Weller’s life, when he first discovered soul singers such as Gaye and formed The Style Council, remains a special time for him. It was the focus of the 2020 documentary, Long Hot Summers, and to promote the project, he reflected to Esquire: “It was totally liberating. However much I enjoyed The Jam, towards the end, I just felt the constraints of being in a big band. I’d had enough of it.”
If it weren’t for discovering artists like Marvin Gaye, then Weller’s life could have looked immeasurably different. Perhaps, in this alternate universe, The Jam never split up and went on to create a number of more classic albums. However, it could have fizzled out, which would have not only damaged their legacy but also deprived the world of enjoying the works of The Style Council.
