Blue-eyed soul
[14] Michael Sembello, who left home at age 17 to tour with Stevie Wonder, wrote and performed on numerous blue-eyed soul hits for Wonder, Brian McKnight, David Sanborn, Bill Champlin, and Bobby Caldwell.
After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell.
[15][16] Joe Cocker, who sang soul-oriented covers of songs such as "With a Little Help from My Friends", was said by the Chicago Sun Times to have "opened the door for all blue-eyed soul singers after him".
In 1973, the American band Stories and the Canadian group Skylark had successes with their respective blue-eyed soul singles "Brother Louie" and "Wildflower".
In 1985, Simply Red released "Holding Back the Years", one of the most successful blue-eyed soul ballads; "Money's Too Tight (to Mention)" and other singles by the group also performed well.
[citation needed] Other successful blue-eyed soul songs of the 1980s include Phil Collins' cover of "You Can't Hurry Love" (1982); Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" (1982), "Time (Clock of the Heart)" (1982) and "Church of the Poison Mind" (1983); Dexys Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen" (1983); the Style Council's "Shout to the Top" (1984); Teena Marie's "Lovergirl" (1985); Paul Young's "Every Time You Go Away" (1985); Eurythmics' "Missionary Man" (1986), and Steve Winwood's "Roll with It" (1988).
As the decade drew to a close, British artist Lisa Stansfield had considerable success on R&B radio, scoring three number-one R&B hits, the most popular being "All Around the World".
[citation needed] In the mid-1980s, George Michael found some success in the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs with hit singles such as "Careless Whisper" and "Everything She Wants"[19] but it was not until he reinvented himself as a white soul singer with the release of his multi-platinum album Faith (1987).
[23] Dance-pop singer Rick Astley shifted to blue-eyed soul and adult contemporary in the early 1990s with Free, featuring the hit "Cry for Help".
The article featured various members of the music industry, both black and white, who believed collaboration was a unifying force, and there was agreement that the future of R&B was not compromised by the contemporary urban sound.
[25] According to scholar Joanna Teresa Demers, the "successors [of Presley] in blue-eyed soul and white funk" embittered poet Gil Scott-Heron, as it proved that "blacks were still being victimized by cultural appropriation, making their contributions to American history virtually invisible and inaudible."
The "long tradition of white co-optation of black cultural identity" since Elvis amounting to "artistic theft" was, in Scott-Heron's words, "no new thing.
