Freda Payne's 'Band Of Gold'. 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' by Diana Ross. PP Arnold's 'The First Cut Is The Deepest'. Tina Turner's 'River Deep, Mountain High'. Both the euphoria of love and the pain of its breakdown have been a prime motivation of music makers almost since man first banged two sticks together, maybe not to make fire, but because the rhythm provided a kind of comfort. This music is called "soul" for a damned good reason - it touches that part of you other music can't quite reach.The singers, writers and producers of the Motown stable in the 60s and early 70s left a legacy of powerful pop that's still extraordinarily resonant today. Many of them came from Detroit, but young British singer Michelle Lawson - whose deeply soulful, thrilling belter of a voice is in the very best Motown tradition - knows that heartache pays no heed to geography. Michelle was born and raised in Bootle, but now lives in Runcorn. The youngest of four children whose father was a regular singer on the northern clubs circuit, she became hooked on music at a young age. Her early memories are of her and her sister - now a dancer - hiding under a table with a tape recorder, taping themselves singing the tunes from her then favourite movie, 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'. Later, aged about 12, shed shut herself away listening to music. "My mum used to hear me singing away in my bedroom, so she bought me tapes of different artists to sing along to. I found comfort in that at a time when my mum and dad were splitting up. I just totally loved music and it gave me somewhere to retreat to."Her first public appearance was at the age of six, in a local boozer. "My auntie ran a pub," explains Lawson, "and she used to push the four of us kids on the stage together in the afternoon, when everyone was in there having a quiet drink. We used to sing without music and I was up the front, a little bit frightened. I remember the very first time we did it, my uncle picked me up and put me on his shoulders and it was a total buzz when everybody clapped."Dancing took over from singing until she was about 12, when Lawson regularly entered street dance competitions with her brothers (one of whom is now a rapper, recently graduated from the Liverpool Institute Of Performing Arts) and sister, encouraged by a woman from her local community centre who used to take them to shows right across the north country. Aged 16 Michelle did work experience in a studio in Birkenhead. While her teen classmates were bored rigid by their shop and office placements, Lawson was not only learning the basics of using a mixing desk, but also recording seven songs, so impressed were the studio engineers by her vocal talent. Her crucial big break, though, came with Urban Choice, the talent competition on Trevor Nelson's BBC radio and TV shows in 2001. Out of 1200 tapes submitted and after several live performance heats, the finalists were whittled down to five and put to an Internet vote. Lawson, who performed one of her own songs, walked it. Her prize was the opportunity to perform live on TV, with London band The Bays backing her.Throughout that time, Lawson has developed her own rich, warmly emotional sound, which leaves today's sanitised pop divas and formulaic nu-R&B chanteuses in the shade. Working with a team of co-writers as diverse as John McLaughlin, Steve Du Berry (Tina Turner), Peter Vetesse (Annie Lennox and Heather Small), YoYo, and Henry Binns from Zero 7, she's evolved what she describes as "a retro sound with the stamp of today." That aesthetic rules tracks like the debut single, 'I Just Wanna Say, which Michelle co-wrote with J-Walk, and featured as a instrumental on their 2002 album A Night On The Rocks as Soul Vibration. The track winds its way around the dusky, open-throttled soulfulness of Lawson's voice - a classic blend of Dusty Springfield and PP Arnold - as she sings of emerging from a broken relationship, wounded but with self-esteem intact. Remixes by the likes of Tom Middleton and the highly acclaimed Domu Mix complete the contemporary picture. Songs such as the dark 'You Are My Weakness' and the soaring 'Cry' use lush reverb and multi-tracking to up the old-skool ante, but are updated with cool, dance-informed beats and sassy orchestration."I absolutely love Motown," admits Lawson of her main influence. "If I could change anything, I'd choose to be living at the time when that music was in the charts. It's just fantastically happy-sounding and soulful, although a lot of the songs can be quite dark. And they sound big; that's what I wanted as opposed to going down the road of throwaway pop. I wanted big, classic songs that could be film tracks, too, and which will last forever."Lawson's subject matter is as classic as her musical inspiration. "A lot of women struggle with relationships," she reasons, "and if you're very passionate and very loving like I am, and someone hurts you, it makes you lash out and that comes across in the songs. I don't really like confrontation, but I am an Aries, so the fire burns deep inside and if anyone disrupts it, there's trouble! Not only am I singing about my own experiences in relationships, but I'm singing about a lot of women out there who feel exactly the same things. It's all about communication; I just want people to link up with what I'm singing. I do think women are emotionally undervalued and that sometimes men take advantage of us too much. Women are so loving and I'm not sure why men don't in general realise that we have a lot to offer."She happily admits to being a die-hard romantic. "Yeah, just a bit," Lawson laughs. "Although I've got a little bit of a nasty side to me as well. I might get tomatoes slung at me for some of the things I sing about! The songs are mostly about men and what hard work they can be. Sometimes," she adds, "they just need telling!"Following recent tours as official support for Craig David, Chris De Burgh, and Errol Brown, Michelle heads into the studio in December 2005 to work with a variety of producers on new tracks. Some acoustic soul tracks are on the horizon, and some of the the key players in the vibrant UK house scene are also queuing up to work with Michelle on dance tracks for release in early 2006.Michelle has a large catalogue of songs awaiting release if a forward-thinking record label can get the right deal together and give the songs the push they deserve. Next year the tracks are being taken around the world to the major music conferences, readily available for licensing in all territories. Watch this MySpace for all the latest devolpments!
You can purchase the compilation Dancefloor 2006 featuring 2 of Michelle's funky house tracks by clicking HERE
