Music Monday: Ben l'Oncle Soul

Today's artist is the wonderful Ben l'Oncle Soul. He's a French soul singer-songwriter. He is heavily influenced by the classic 50s/60s Motown and Stax Records sounds which definitely comes through in his music. And he's actually signed to Motown Records now. He reminds me of a mix between Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and John Legend all rolled into a nice little French package lol. He sings in French as well as English and sounds amazing in both languages. There's just something about hearing soul music sung in French that makes my little heart flutter lol. And it doesn't hurt that he's not too bad on the eyes either ;)

Now the story behind his name goes that his friends would call him "l'Oncle Ben", which in English translates to Uncle Ben, because the bow ties he wears reminded them of Uncle Ben from "Uncle Ben's Rice". And apparently it stuck lol. I happen to love Uncle Ben's Rice so I think that's awesome lol. And of course, as we all know, bow ties are cool! (sorry, I had to throw that in there haha) 

I first stumbled upon Ben l'Oncle Soul when I saw a cover he did of The White Stripes, Seven Nation Army, on YouTube. Now I'm usually not a fan of covers of bands I really like, and The White Stripes are one of my favorite bands ever(I'm still mourning the fact that they're broken up) so I was very skeptical about this. But my goodness, it is amazing! It's basically a soul version of Seven Nation Army. After that I immediately went to look him up, and saw that he had an entire EP of cover songs including: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley, I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry, Barbie Girl by Aqua and Say You'll Be There by the Spice Girls!  

Now as someone that had 10 years of French lessons, I remember an embarrassingly little amount but that doesn't hinder my enjoyment of his music. And it's pretty cool when I do hear him say something that I can actually understand lol. So even if you don't speak French I think you'll still enjoy the music. He's got the EP as well as a full length self titled album that has 8 English songs(including Seven Nation Army) and 6 French ones. You can check it out here on Spotify. 

  *swooooooon*

Here he is preforming Seven Nation Army on Later with Jools Holland and the first time I ever saw him.

.

(Listen to that bass!) 

I don't know if/when he'll ever do a US tour so I think that means I'll need to make a trip over to France to see him live. I definitely think he's worth a trip haha. 

Happy Listening!
Bonne Écoute!

How do you like Ben l'Oncle Soul? Do you like listening to music in different languages? 

MKD