British soul

British soul, Brit soul, or the British soul invasion, is soul music performed by British artists. Soul has been a major influence on British popular music since the 1960s, and American soul was extremely popular among some youth subcultures, such as mods, skinheads, and the northern soul movement. In the 1970s, soul gained more mainstream popularity in the UK during the disco era.

However, a clear genre of British soul did not emerge until the 1980s, when a number of black and white artists who made soul their major focus, influenced by contemporary R&B, began to enjoy some commercial success. British soul artists began gaining popularity in the United States in the late 2000s, leading to talk of another British Invasion, this time a soul invasion (in contrast to the 1960s rock and pop, and 1980s synthpop invasions).

Widespread British interest in soul music developed after the advent of rock and roll from the mid-1950s and the subsequent interest in American music. In the early 1960s, rhythm and blues, including soul, was particularly popular among some members of the beat music boom, including The Beatles, and among bands of who contributed to the British blues boom, including The Spencer Davis Group, The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who. Most of these were popular with members of the Mod subculture, out of which grew the northern soul movement, in which northern English youths avidly collected and played rare soul records.

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