Lovers Rock
Located in 2 routes
A smooth, romantic reggae style built for slow dances and courtship: sweet, soul-influenced love songs sung over a gentle one-drop rhythm, with mellow basslines, warm keyboards, tender rhythm-guitar skank and lush harmony backing vocals. Tempos are relaxed and swaying, the mood intimate and yearning, and the singing, often by young women, is close, breathy and emotive rather than declamatory. Lyrics dwell on love, longing and heartbreak rather than politics or Rastafari. It is reggae's answer to Philadelphia soul, made for holding someone close.
History
Lovers rock crystallised in mid-1970s London, where young Black British singers and producers, Dennis Bovell, and the Lovers Rock label of Dennis Harris, John Kpiaye and Bovell, married Jamaican rhythms to American soul balladry for a second-generation audience; Louisa Mark's 1975 "Caught You in a Lie" is widely cited as the first lovers rock hit. Janet Kay's "Silly Games" (1979) took the style into the UK Top 3 and onto Top of the Pops, while Carroll Thompson's album "Hopelessly in Love" became its touchstone LP. Jamaican singers such as Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Sugar Minott worked the same romantic seam, and lovers rock became a defining sound of Black British youth culture, later revived and canonised in film and reissue.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- Silly Games(1979) — Janet KaySpotifyYouTube
- Caught You in a Lie(1975) — Louisa MarkSpotifyYouTube
- Hopelessly in Love(1981) — Carroll ThompsonSpotifyYouTube
- Night Nurse(1982) — Gregory IsaacsSpotifyYouTube
- Good Thing Going(1981) — Sugar MinottSpotifyYouTube
- Money in My Pocket(1979) — Dennis BrownSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Lloyd Bradley, Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital (2013)
- Menelik Shabazz (dir.), The Story of Lovers Rock (2011)
- Steve Barrow & Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae (2004)