Pop, rock, soul and folk come together in the songs of Paolo Nutini, the greatest Scottish musician today, according to the BBC. Anyone who thinks that the British public broadcaster is exaggerating would do well to pay attention to any of his four albums and his overwhelming live performance. He will be preceded by a musician whose passion for soul is his sister: the young American Jalen N'Gonda, one of the great emerging talents of the genre.
Paolo Nutini's songs always aimed high. To the big audiences, to the big sales, to the big venues and festivals. No wonder he has chained three consecutive British number ones with each of his last three albums, and has an Ivor Novello award and three nominations at the Brit Awards. The Scottish singer and songwriter, born in 1987, picks from Van Morrison, U2, Davie Bowie, Damien Rice, Oasis or The Beatles to form a powerful sound argument, which has its latest and most brilliant chapter in "Last Night In The Bittersweet" (2022), his acclaimed fourth album, the most complete of all and the one that has enjoyed unanimous critical acclaim. Troubadour, folk singer, crooner, rocker and soulman, all at once, Nutini accumulates more than four million records sold in these times of streaming primacy. An endorsement that explains his solid trajectory over the last decade.
Are we looking at an unreleased Marvin Gaye album, lost in the mists of time, a hidden gem of seventies soul? No, we are before a monumental album of 2023, carved in the wood with which the great classics of the genre are molded. The American - based in Liverpool - Jalen N'Gonda is only thirty years old, but his album "Come Around and Love Me" (2023), debut full-length released with the guarantee of Daptone Records (emblem of the best soul revival in the present century), is one of the greatest works of the most recent soul music. Not even the fact of having opened for Laura Mvula, Martha Reeves or Lauryn Hill alone explains this display of talent in spurts, which forces us to also mark in red this date of Noches del Botánico in our agendas.
