Craig David unaware of Motown label (From Worcester News)

Craig David unaware of Motown label

7:17am Saturday 20th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

Craig David has admitted he didn't know that Motown was a record label, saying he believed his latest album was based on the Motown "genre".

Craig's record Signed, Sealed, Delivered contains 12 tracks, but only seven or eight are in fact Motown.

He said: "[I] didn't actually know that Motown was a label ... I thought it was an era or genre, like New Jack Swing or something - I didn't know that if you weren't on Motown records, it wasn't Motown."

He added: "But then that didn't matter, because I wasn't conceptualising the album at all, it was purely songs that I liked and had inspired me, and songs that when I sang them, were a challenge too."

He had said the death of Michael Jackson prompted him to make the new album.

"I wanted to make an album of me re-recording famous songs," he said. "There was no strong concept, but it ended up falling into a Motown thing, which really stemmed from Michael Jackson dying last year.

"I'd got my tickets, and really wanted to see his show, so when he died I listened to his records a lot like a lot of people. I then looked at other music that had inspired me, from my childhood and later in my life, started singing them and realised that a lot of the records were Motown songs."

Explaining how his cover of Curtis Stigers' I Wonder Why ended up on the album, he added: "It's a bit of a curveball, isn't it? I just liked the song and could never understand why no one had ever covered it."

:: Craig David releases Signed, Sealed, Delivered on March 29.