Music Quote by William Bell

There is a quiet flex in the phrase "oddly enough", a preemptive shrug that signals Bell knows the expected script for his era and scene and is about to swerve away from it. If you come up in rhythm-and-blues and soul, you are supposed to cite the obvious gods, the gritty church-to-juke-joint lineage. Instead, he reaches for Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole: architects of polish, phrasing, and emotional control. The "oddly" isn’t really about taste; it’s about crossing a cultural border that listeners often pretend is impermeable.

The intent feels twofold: to name the sources of his musical grammar, and to defend a sensibility that prizes restraint over spectacle. Ballads are where technique gets exposed. You can hide a lot inside a fast groove; in a slow song, every breath and consonant has consequences. By saying he was "more inclined to listen to ballads", Bell is also hinting at the kind of artist he wanted to be: someone who can hold attention without volume, who trusts intimacy, who believes heartbreak is a craft.

Context matters. Sinatra and Cole weren’t just singers; they were institutions of mid-century American cool, mediated through radio, TV, and record collections that traveled across racial and regional lines even when the country didn’t. Bell’s admiration reads like a backstage pass to how soul evolved: not in pure opposition to pop, but in dialogue with it, borrowing elegance to make sorrow sound sharp enough to cut.