Omar
Thirty years ago this summer, U.K. soul singer Omar went on his first major tour in the States. He was promoting his third album For Pleasure, released domestically by RCA — still technically a major label, but much more prominent at that time.
“The tour was very well-organized,” says the singer (government name: Omar Lye-Fook), now 56. He’s speaking on a Zoom call from Brighton. “I remember being on a tour bus, for one. It’s been a while since I’ve done that, and it’s a very interesting experience, you know? Some people still didn’t know the music. They didn’t know me then. So it was kinda good getting around and educating people. But you’re telling me it was 30 years ago? Wow. That brought it back to me.”
What the born Londoner found most surprising was that, even though Pleasure was then a recent addition to U.S. record stores, his music was already building a fan base.
“L.A. was a place that surprised me in terms of how many people were big fans,” Omar remembers. “San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, I was up in Toronto. I was in Montreal as well. You know what I mean? So it was just good to get out of the U.K. and see how much love there was for the music.”
Omar has become an artist whose music is essential to fans of cool, cult R&B. Even though some of his albums — including his best one, aptly titled Best by Far — are still unreleased in the States and unavailable on streaming platforms, he still has enough of a loyal North American audience to make him come around these parts and perform regularly. He makes another run through this great land this month, and Saturday he’ll be making his first visit to Nashville.
In his 40-year career as a singing, scatting multi-instrumentalist, he has collaborated with many Black-music icons. Pleasure includes tunes written by legendary Motown songwriters Lamont Dozier and Leon Ware. He’s done duets with Erykah Badu and Angie Stone, and collabs with Common. Ol’ Dirty Bastard performed on a remix of one of his songs. And on his 2006 album Sing (If You Want It), he crossed the ultimate item off his bucket list: performing alongside Stevie Wonder on one track.
Originally coming out of Talkin’ Loud Records, the soul/acid-jazz label founded by famed British DJ Gilles Peterson, Omar’s midtempo progressive soul stylings are sophisticated and nostalgic. Evoking ’70s R&B icons like Wonder and Marvin Gaye, he throws in everything from lush strings to slithery synthesizers to Afro-Carribean grooves and rhythms — a continual nod to his Jamaican roots. Omar has never veered away from his classy but funky, undeniably British style of Black music.
“I think I’ve just been stubborn and stuck to my goals, which was to create music that was distinctly mine,” he says. “So you listen to a bar of it, and you hear straight away that it’s Omar — and I’ve stuck to that. And you know, here we are on the ninth album.”
The newly released Brighter the Days is Omar’s first release in eight years, since Love in Beats in 2017. What took so long?
“These albums take as long as they take,” he says. “Certain tracks would have been written from way before.”
Omar points to “Lovey Dovey,” on which he shares singing vocal duties with American indie-soul men Raheem DeVaughn and Eric Roberson.
“My brother [producer and DJ Scratch Professer] started the beats on that in 2007,” he says. Even though Omar released two albums during that time — Beats and 2013’s The Man — he held onto “Lovey Dovey,” finally giving it a home on Days. “It wasn’t right for those two albums, but it was right for this one.”
Days also features appearances from Brit blue-eyed-soul rocker Paul Weller, R&B queens India.Arie and Ledisi, rapper Jeru the Damaja, drummer Daru Jones, and — during the intro — Omar’s own twin daughters. With song titles that include “It’s Gonna Be Alright” and “There’s Much Love in the World,” you could say the album has Omar providing listeners with much-needed uplifting summertime soul to play during these dark times. Even the cover has Omar on his tippy-toes, Michael Jackson-style, taking in the sunny blue skies. Did Omar intend to make a musical salve for us wounded souls?
“I wasn’t thinking of a salve, as such,” he says with a laugh. “But definitely a lot of it was written during the time of the lockdowns and the pandemic, where we weren’t allowed to mingle. We weren’t allowed to perform. People couldn’t bury their loved ones. It was quite a depressing time.”
He credits songwriter Vanessa Simon, who wrote lyrics to six songs on Days, for coming up with the album title and its positive outlook.
“It’s kinda crazy to look back at what we were going through then. It was something that we needed to get through. And yeah, I think this album, like the album cover, shows that as well. You can see there with that glint of sunshine in the background; there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”
