Joss Stone

About Joss Stone

No matter how jaded a music fan you are, you wont help but look up when you hear 19 year old singer Joss Stone's velvet vibrato cut across your standard radio fare. The teenager from Devon, England grew up listening to American R&B records and she's not in the least ashamed to flaunt her influences-which could be awkward, if she didn't have a nearly supernatural knack for channeling the American soul powerhouses of the 60's like Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield. Although her initial career consisted of singing backup for her elders-everyone from Britney Spears to Blondie's Debbie Harry-she recorded her debut full-length LP in Miami in 2003. Joss Stone's debut The Soul Sessions eschewed the glitzy pop trappings of her contemporary connections and focused instead on timeless soul influences-collaborations on the under-hyped disc included Betty Wright, Angie Stone and socially conscious hip hop act The Roots. The disc's most attention grabbing single "Fell In Love With A Boy," was a sultry, piano-based reworking of The White Stripe's garage rock classic "Fell In Love With A Girl" with the pronouns reversed. As a follow-up to The Soul Sessions, Stone recorded 2004's all-original Mind, Body & Soul. Chart topping singles like "You Had Me" and "Right to Be Wrong" showed that Joss Stone was a song writer as well as a vocalist and she set records on both UK and US charts. In 2004, she joined a pop A-List to record a contemporary version of the Band Aid classic "Do They Know It's Christmas" to benefit the Darfur Crisis. Joss Stone has recently starred in the fantasy blockbuster Eragon and will release her third full-length LP in 2007.