Queen of the Hill

Soul music: an over-used cliché in the modern journalistic lexicon, thrown rather sloppily at every slickly produced diva with a high voice and even higher heels. To these ears, most of the current crop couldn’t sing from their soul if their life depended on it, which it should. However, one possible saviour of real soul music is London’s Hilary Mwelwa, the voice of Hill St. Soul, whose second album Copasetic & Cool has a ring of real truth and experience.

“I’m pretty pleased with it overall,” Hilary modestly declares down a phoneline from a snowed-in London. “So far, the response has been really positive. All the reviews I’ve read, and generally what I hear from people, is that they really like it.”

Songs like the infectious ‘You’re All That (And A Bag Of Chips)’ and the classic-sounding ‘Reach As One’ have seen Hilary heralded in some quarters as a flag-bearer for UK soul and a worthy adversary for her American contemporaries. I wondered if Zambian-born Hilary is happy to carry that mantle upon her slender shoulders?

“I’m definitely one of these people who just wants to get on with it and let it happen but I am chuffed that people feel that way about my music,” she says. “Obviously, not everybody gets those sort of accolades but I try not to read too much into it because I am very much aware of how fickle this industry is.”

Hilary has always been a fan of classic soul music. “It’s what I’ve grown up on,” she avows. “I was brought up on soul music from a very early age because my parents, back in the day, were into Stevie and Marvin, so it was probably a natural thing for me to sing soul.”
How does she feel most modern soul or r’n’b compares to the classics like the aforementioned Messrs Wonder and Gaye?

“That’s a difficult question,” she pauses for a second. “Obviously, you’ve got r’n’b, which is more contemporary, but there are a lot of artists like India Arie and D’Angelo, who have been influenced by the soul of yesteryear but have updated it for today, using their own vibe. It just goes to show you the impact that kind of music has. For me, when I hear a Curtis Mayfield record, it’s like it was written today. It just has a classic sound, and I suppose that is what I’m trying to do with my own music, so I suppose it’s never going to go away.”

The press release for the album states that many of the songs were written after the break-up of a long-term relationship, which Hilary admits is true: “A lot of them were inspired not just necessarily by the relationship I had just come out of but just by life in general and things I was going through.”

Songs like ‘Pieces’ and ‘Blue Tears’ certainly have a touch of those post-relationship post-mortems about them, but the album also has more than its fair share of upbeat, floor-fillers.

“It’s not all sadness, it’s more of a mixture,” she laughs. “As much as a lot of the songs were inspired by the emotions I was going through at the time, there are also upbeat songs like ‘Alright’, which is really a feelgood tune, and ‘I’ve Got Me’, so there is balance in there.”

Her songs, she admits, are very autobiographical: “As an artist, I like to write songs from my experience. When someone is listening to it, hopefully they are getting an idea what Hilary is about. It makes it more personal and people can identify with it, so I do try to draw from personal experiences when I’m writing.” Which, as we all know, is part of what makes a singer… soulful.