Van Morrison first emerged in the mid-60s as the frontman of the Belfast group Them. The band’s debut album The Angry Young Them (1965) still courses with excitement today: raw, urgent rhythm and blues delivered with youthful swagger and intensity. Hit singles Baby Please Don’t Go – and its even more classic B-side Gloria – and Here Comes The Night placed Them firmly within the orbit of the British blues boom that produced the Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds.
At this stage Morrison’s vocal style bore an unmistakable kinship with Mick Jagger’s – the same R&B phrasing, harsh tone and half-spoken attack – and the young Belfast singer sounded every bit as charismatic as his London counterpart.
After Them split up in 1966, Morrison’s solo breakthrough came the following year with Brown Eyed Girl, a bright, infectious pop single from his debut album Blowin’ Your Mind! that has since become by far his most widely recognised song. With more than a billion streams on Spotify, it is one of the most celebrated pop recordings ever made and continues to introduce successive generations of listeners to his voice. Yet the breezy charm of that first hit only hints at the artistic leap that was about to follow.
Latest Videos From Louder
Within a year, Morrison released Astral Weeks, an album unlike anything else in rock music before or since, followed two years later by Moondance. These records stand as twin pillars of his catalogue – one mystical and exploratory, the other warm, elegant and grounded in songcraft.
From that point on, Morrison settled into the role he has maintained ever since: not a pop star chasing trends, but a working musician and songwriter following his own highly distinctive lodestar. He has produced an astonishingly deep catalogue drawing on soul, jazz, folk, gospel and Celtic music, and albums ranked ‘good’ for Morrison would be ‘classics’ for most other artists.
Since the 90s he has continued to release albums of quality and conviction with remarkable regularity. But the bar he set through the 60s and 70s remains so high that his later work inevitably struggles to compete with the mythic stature of those early records. Morrison himself seems unconcerned by such comparisons; he regards songwriting and recording as the work he was born to do, and continues to pursue it with undiminished commitment to this day.
You can trust Louder
Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.