Introducing the Style Council

Introducing is something of an oddity in that it’s the debut Style Council album but is only a mini album — just seven tracks long — and it never got an official UK release. Introducing sees Weller completing the transformation from the angry young man who fronted The Jam to something quite different. The musical influences are broad with sweet seventies soul like Curtis Mayfield, contemporary soul/funk, chanteuse torch songs and pure, sunny pop all informing the songwriting here. Freed from the pressures of The Jam, Weller indulged his many musical interests resulting in an oft-blissful, optimistic first outing. 

By using R&B, soul, doo-wop and jazz as ideological and structural starting points, embracing his hot-nougat voice, and bridging the distance between the Stax catalogue and Wham!, leading man Paul Weller unfurled The Style Council: a lush Amazon of uniquely sumptuous schmaltz. Within six months of his band’s formation, out came Introducing the Style Council, and in it, a mountainously pretty, chuggy, Delfonics-on-holiday track titled “Long Hot Summer,” abandoning the Jam’s – his last punky band’s – laddish grimace for sun-fevered smiles and a video that features Weller luxuriating topless on a gondola.