Henry Stone's Best of Gwen Mccrae

Post-disco emerged at the turn of the 1980s as club music adapted to the backlash against late-1970s disco. It kept disco’s dance-floor focus but pared down the orchestral lushness, replacing strings and large horn sections with drum machines, synthesizers, and tighter funk- and soul-informed grooves. The style favors mid-tempo, bass-forward rhythms (often around 105–120 BPM), crisp handclaps, syncopated rhythm guitar, and glossy keyboard textures. It served as a bridge between classic disco and later developments like boogie, electro-funk, house, freestyle, and dance-pop, defining the sonic palette of early 1980s urban contemporary R&B.

Southern soul is a regional style of 1960s soul music rooted in the U.S. South, centered on Memphis, Tennessee, and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It blends the sanctified fervor of Black gospel with the grit of Southern rhythm & blues, blues, and the storytelling sensibility of country. Compared with the smoother, pop-oriented Motown sound, Southern soul is rawer and more church-inflected: impassioned lead vocals, call-and-response backing, handclaps, Hammond organ swells, tight horn stabs, and a deep pocket rhythm section. Classic recordings were cut largely live in the studio by house bands like Booker T. & the M.G.'s and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, capturing a warm, unvarnished groove.