Lovers Rock, adjective

Romantic style of reggae music cultivated on the London reggae scene, c.1975-1985.

While contemporary strands of reggae (dub, roots, rocksteady etc) were becoming increasingly politicised and serious, Lovers Rock maintained a clearer focus on more lightweight, romantic topics, taking its cue mainly from Philadelphia and Chicago’s soul and r ‘n’ b templates.

Origins: Cultivated principally by British artists in south London during the late Seventies and early Eighties, Lovers Rock is said to have begun in earnest with fifteen-year-old Louisa Mark’s 1975 hit, Caught You In A Lie.

Key figures: Unsurprisingly, it was popular with women: Janet Kay, Carroll Thompson, the young Mark and ‘Queen of Lovers Rock’ Deborahe Glasgow.  Kay worked with key producer Dennis Bovell (of British reggae dons Matumbi and also the engineer at Dip Records – laterre-named Lovers Rock) to record Silly Games, a UK Number 2 in 1979.  A teenage Glasgow worked as Debbie G with Neil ‘Mad Professor’ Fraser (most famous for the Massive Attack remix album, No Protection, 1995), the dub maestro at the start of his own career, before cutting her definitive, eponymous album almost a decade later, in 1989.  This record included the song Champion Lover, which Shabba Ranks consequently re-worked as Mr Loverman, scoring a massive hit in 1994.  Maxi Priest and Aswad are perhaps the most famous male British artists who became associated with the style, which continued throughout the Eighties and Nineties, mainly via labels such as Greensleeves, Fashion and Revue and, memorably, Boris Gardiner’s syrupy 1986 smash, I Want To Wake Up With You.  Jamaican legends Dennis Brown, John Holt, Gregory Isaacs, Sugar Minott, Freddie McGregor and Ken Boothe also all flirted with the genre to varying degrees.

This feature was originally published in March 2011 by The List magazine.  The article has been reproduced with their permission.

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