Northern Soul is thriving across the UK thanks to Gen Z looking to dance

Northern Soul, the up-tempo Black American music made during the 60s and 70s, is experiencing a resurgence. Will Foot and Lewis Henderson from the Deptford Northern Soul Club have brought this underground subgenre to venues across the United Kingdom, attracting a Gen Z audience looking to dance.

Greta Kaur-Taylor

LONDON – It’s 1964. No, wait. It’s 2023.

The music blasting through the speakers at this dark and sticky club in East London is 1964’s “Tainted Love” by American artist Gloria Jones.

You may have never heard of Jones, but you have listened to Soft Cell’s 1981 hit cover of the same song. If Aretha Franklin is the Queen of Soul, Jones is the Queen of Northern Soul. There’s an important distinction here.

“Northern Soul is inherently up-tempo, Black American music that never really made it in America,” says Lewis Henderson, who makes up one half of the Deptford Northern Soul Club (DNSC), the duo headlining this sold-out event at the Moth Club in Hackney.

“It’s like B music,” Henderson says, “but you know, like this kind of fast up-tempo music that people didn’t want to listen to in their homes.”

For more than seven years, Henderson and his musical partner Will Foot have brought this underground subgenre to venues across the United Kingdom, attracting a Gen Z audience looking to dance. But as packed and energetic as this dancefloor is, the story of Northern Soul hardly starts with this generation.

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