Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Joss Stone / The 'white Aretha Franklin' of soul

Joss Stone

Joss Stone: the 'white Aretha Franklin' of soul

Joss Stone is a close friend of the Duke of Cambridge. Below is a profile of the international soul singer.

11:00AM BST 15 Jun 2011

Joss Stone, the British soul singer who counts the Duke of Cambridge as one of her close friends, has become a star since bursting onto the international stage as a teenager.

She came to fame in 2003 as a small-town teenager with a big, soulful voice, showcased on her bestselling debut album "The Soul Sessions".

The Devon-raised singer is a household name in the US, where she spends up to nine months each year, and Barack Obama, the American President, is said to be one of her many legion of fans.

Her soulful vocals have seen her described as ''the white Aretha Franklin'' and she has enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic.

She was 16 in 2004 when she produced her first hit, Fell In Love With A Boy before a year later, having just turned 17, she stormed the Brit Awards picking up gongs for British Female Solo Artist and British Urban Act.

Stone, whom the Sunday Times Rich list said was worth more than £9 million, is in the top five biggest earning female UK singing stars. She is also the fifth wealthiest British and Irish pop star aged under 30.

The singer, born Joscelyn Stoker in Dover, Kent, on April 11, 1987, was raised on soul music by her mother Wendy, who would later become her manager.

Stone, 24, lives in her adopted Devon when she is not touring the world. Her mother operates a popular music haunt called Mama Stones nightspot in Exeter, where she recorded one of her albums.

The singer is said to have enjoyed singing from when she was a toddler and, after moving to Devon, began performing at school.

At the age of 13 she won the BBC's Junior Star For A Night talent contest, singing the Donna Summer hit On The Radio.

That led to her being snapped up by US record executives and in 2003 her first album, The Soul Sessions, was released to critical acclaim.

The record, a collection of classic covers recorded in just four days, was a runaway success and went gold in America.

More albums and hit singles followed with millions of copies sold and Stone found herself in demand for money-spinning advertising campaigns – most notably as the face of clothing chain Gap.

In 2006, she was the youngest woman on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated fortune of £6 million before she started to carve out a promising acting career.

But a year later she was hit by controversy, after being the subject of a backlash following her putting on an American accent at the BRIT Awards.

At the time she expressed her frustration, saying she felt unjustly lambasted as other celebrities behaved much worse.

"It's not really that big a deal is it," she said at the time.

"I didn't kill anyone – I wasn't snorting cocaine and punching paparazzi and showing my vagina to the world – I just had a little bit of a twang – J**** calm down!

In 2008 she was tapped to play Anne of Cleves, fourth wife of Henry VIII, in the racy historical drama The Tudors.

She starred opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers' as the king in season three of the Emmy Award-winning TV show.

It was her first TV role, although she did recently grace the small screen as the Cadbury's Flake girl.

Stone was said to have been keen to establish an acting career and made her debut in 2006 fantasy film Eragon.

Her first starring role, in British film Snappers, hits cinemas later this year.

She has recently become close friends with both the Duke of Cambridge and his brother, Prince Harry.

She among the guests at the recent royal wedding involving the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

In 2008, the British soul singer was reported to have begun working on a campaign song for Mr Obama, when he was campaigning for America’s highest political office.

Mr Obama is apparently a big fan of her work and had hoped her style will strike a chord with both black and white voters in America.

"Joss is a big supporter of Barack Obama and was very excited to be asked to do this for him," a source said at the time.

"He sent a personal message asking her to get on board. He has always admired her music and thinks she is the perfect choice because of her unique appeal to black and white voters.

"She believes he is going to be the first black American president and she is honoured to be a part of that."

Over the past 18 months she has been working with Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stone lead singer, on a secret album together with Dave Stewart, Damian Marley and AR Rahman.

Super Heavy is the name of the heavyweight musical collective, who plan to release their debut "fusion" album in September.

"It's a bit odd," Jagger recently told Rolling Stone magazine.

"A different kind of record than what people would expect." But Jagger promised that Super Heavy's music was "not all weird and strange". Fans, he added, "will find most of it accessible".

But Stone has still managed to maintain a level-headed approach to fame and once said she would become a social worker if her showbiz career was not a success.

She said: ''If I am destined to be as big as Britney, I will be. If not, I will not.''

In a recent blog-posting she said people living in Britain were "lucky buggers".

"I feel so, so lucky. Lucky because of many things. The fact I can take this time to travel with no plan just going anywhere that I feel is so much fun," she wrote.

"But more so today and everyday these past weeks I have felt extremely lucky to be born in England.

"We have so much as do most countries in the western world. How dare we moan about our situation."

She added: "There are people in England that claim benefits because they are too nervous to work, so they claim their benefits for anxiety and never have to go out side there free home."

She recently disclosed her secret to her voice – honey syrup, which she gets while shopping with her mum.

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