Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	74/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Blender
Entertainment Weekly	B+
The Guardian
The New Zealand Herald
Rolling Stone
Stylus Magazine	C
The Village Voice	C+
Yahoo! Music UK

The Soul Sessions is the debut studio album by English singer and songwriter Joss Stone, released on 16 September 2003 by S-Curve Records. The album consists of cover versions of soul songs from the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to a cover of The White Stripes' 2001 song "Fell in Love with a Girl". In 2004, The Soul Sessions was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize and was nominated for a MOBO Award for Best Album.

The Soul Sessions was produced by Miami soul singer Betty Wright and S-Curve Records chief executive officer Steve Greenberg. Stone worked with veteran Miami soul musicians Benny Latimore, Little Beaver, Timmy Thomas and Wright herself. She also worked with contemporary musicians such as neo soul singer Angie Stone and the alternative hip hop group The Roots.

Stone told MTV News that she felt intimidated by the credentials of the musicians that worked on the album. "It was weird because they've worked with so many great, great singers. I'm talking the best. I kind of walked in, just like this little girl and started singing."

The Soul Sessions received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 74, based on 15 reviews. Jon Caramanica of Rolling Stone stated that "Stone shines on this impressive covers set" and that "[s]he chooses songs wisely."AllMusic's Thom Jurek wrote that Stone "has unique phrasing and a huge voice that accents, dips, and slips, never overworking a song or trying to bring attention to itself via hollow acrobatics." Jim Greer from Entertainment Weekly noted that Stone "does have an extraordinary voice", but added that "the only misguided ploy on The Soul Sessions is a Roots-produced slo-mo cover of a White Stripes tune." Russell Baillie from The New Zealand Herald opined that "with her strong, emotive voice she nails it time and again, and with performances that aren't an excuse for the vocal acrobatic show you imagine this would have been had Stone been America's next bright young thing."

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