It's Monday morning and many of you will be trekking off to work doing the commuter thing. I'm fortunate in that I can pretty much work from anywhere: have internet no problem. Still, Monday morning is still Monday morning with a week's worth of money to be earned to pay for what you need. Let's face it we need to get paid. That's my way of getting in to today's featured track (and No! It's not I Don't Like Monday's by the Boomtown Rats!).
Today it's time for 'old skool' to work with a more recent talent. Veteran O'Jay member Eddie Levert features on Eric Benet's recording of Paid. It's so easy to think of Soul music as simply lovey dovey relationship music. Boy sees girl, girl sees boy, fall in love, fall out of love, infidelity, divorce, heartbreak and so on and so on. These are constant popular themes of Soul songs. Lest we forget, Soul music is also protest music and about the the realities of working for the man. Social commentary is very much an integral part of Soul music. (Think to back in the day with the likes of Sam Cooke 'A Change Is Gonna Come' (1963)/Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen,' Curtis Mayfield 'Move On Up' (1970) and 'Pusherman', The Impressions 'Meeting Over Yonder' (1965), Nolan Porter 'Keep on Keeping On' (1971), Valentines 'Breakaway' (1970) and much more recently George Benson's 'Ghetto'). Paid comes from Benet's Lost In Time (2010) album. I'm fairly sure the vast majority of us have felt the same way at some point in our lives as we listen to the lyrics of Paid.
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(The O'Jays acoustic recording Pay The Bills an influence?)
Definitely more than just a touch of the 70s O'Jays flava here on Paid. It has that Backstabbers/Love Train feel about the arrangement.
CD should still be easy to locate. (Amazon UK)
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