Paolo Nutini
photo: ueli frey · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Paolo Nutini emerged from a Paisley chip-shop family as one of Scotland's most soulful pop voices, his gravel-edged tenor sounding older than his years on 2006 breakout These Streets. Raised on his father's soul 45s — the Drifters, Sam Cooke, Ben E. King — and his own growing obsession with classic R&B, he built a catalog that treats pop hooks and horn-driven soul revivalism as the same instinct. He's stayed defiantly outside the industry machine, releasing albums on his own unhurried schedule rather than the pop calendar's.
Nutini has said he grew up wanting to sing like Van Morrison, and it shows in his tendency to treat a lyric as something to worry at and stretch rather than deliver cleanly.
listen forListen for the way both singers let a phrase trail off into repetition instead of resolving it neatly — Morrison's trailing vamp on 'Brown Eyed Girl', Nutini's loose, breath-caught delivery on 'Last Request'.
Nutini has named Sam Cooke as one of the singers he grew up wishing he could sound like, and Cooke's smooth-but-aching phrasing sits underneath Nutini's own soul move.
listen forCompare Cooke's effortless, gliding delivery on 'A Change Is Gonna Come' to the warm, unhurried vocal Nutini uses on 'Coming Up Easy' — the same sense of a voice floating just behind the beat.
Nutini has cited Ben E. King as a formative singer he grew up on, part of the classic soul diet that shaped his own vocal instincts before he'd written a song.
listen forListen for the shared trick of a plain, almost conversational verse opening up into a big, hooky release — King's climbing melody on 'Stand By Me', Nutini's horn-punctuated lift into the chorus of 'Pencil Full of Lead'.