Blue-Eyed Soul

Blue-eyed soul (also known as white soul) is rhythm and blues or soul music performed by white artists. The term was first used in the mid-1960s to describe white artists who performed soul and R&B that was similar to the raw, expressive music of the Motown and Stax record labels.

The term continued to be used in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly by the British music press, to describe a new generation of white singers who adopted elements of classic soul music. To a lesser extent, the term has been applied to singers in other music genres that are influenced by soul music, such as urban music and hip-hop soul.

Blue-eyed soul began when white musicians remade African American music to play for mass audiences, partly due to segregation laws that prevented blacks from performing for whites. Often the music was diluted for its new audience, a move that angered some African Americans as cultural expropriation, but pleased others who felt the growth of their music genre could only be a good thing. In some cases (most notably The Flaming Ember, Lonnie Mack and The Rascals), white artists initially passed as black singers on the radio - deliberately in many cases, to avoid alienating black radio audiences.