Soul/R&B Genre Timeline

Whitney Houston: Greatest Love of All (1985)

Mariah Carey: Vision of Love (1990)

Mary J. Blige: I'm Goin' Down (1995)

Angie Stone: Wish I Didn't Miss You (2002)

Amy Winehouse: Rehab (2006)

This is a timeline of popular Soul/R&B music sung by female artists that show the growth and change of these genres and how they have come to be similar and complimentary to each other. From it's first successful start in the mid-1980's, the video's made have a similar context in the way they focus on the artist's vocals rather than visuals but, from Blige's I'm Goin' Down video, you can see how visuals became more prominent within the genre in the mid-1990's. By the early 2000's, narrative's being cropping into the video's where artist's are shown less of performing the song and more portraying the lyrics through a story. However, within the space of 4 years, soul artist's such as Amy Winehouse show to be inspired to return back to the previous way videos were made as Rehab was, although set in a rehab centre, much more focused on her voice rather than a narrative.

This change within the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s could have involvement from the music industry and their wanting the genre to become less raw with emotion and more produced, which was when R&B started to become more associated with the genre, even becoming one genre altogether Contemporary R&B. It was then popular to start creating various different types of soul music such as Neo Soul, Southern Soul, Hip Hip Soul, etc. and this began to influence soul music to become more mainstream within this era.