Pop Soul
Pop soul is soul music shaped for the pop charts, with smooth production, catchy hooks and a lighter touch than rawer Southern soul.
The classic model is the 1960s Motown sound: a strong backbeat, tambourine, melodic bass, strings and tidy three-minute songs sung by gospel-trained voices. The approach was designed to cross over from R&B radio to pop radio, and it did. The term is also used for later singers who mix soulful vocals with mainstream pop songwriting. Compared with deep or Southern soul, pop soul is sweeter, more arranged and less gritty.
Artists it is known for: The Supremes, The Temptations, The Jackson 5.
- Family
- R&B & Soul
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Detroit, 1960s
- Also called
- pop-soul
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 11%
About 9,300 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have pop soul among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Pop Soul artists
Olivia Dean
SIENNA SPIRO
Adele
Teddy Swims
Cynthia Erivo
Jamie Miller
John Legend
Jessie Ware
SAULT
YebbaThe pop soul artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.