Stephen Marley has released Old Soul, his fifth album and first full-length since 2016, on Friday, September 15, 2023, through Tuff Gong Collective, UMe and Ghetto Youths International, uDiscover Music reported at the announcement in August.
Thirteen of the 14 tracks are in the JamaicansMusic library: press Play all above to hear the album while you read, open the Old Soul album page, or jump to the track-by-track player below. (See the note on “Winding Roads” under Listen.)
The garage sessions
The record has an unusual origin. During the COVID lockdown, Marley set up a studio on a remote family farm in the Florida countryside and held nightly jam sessions in a converted garage with a small ensemble — binghi drums, bass, acoustic guitar and flute — working through reggae and through classics recorded by Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. “Irie vibration,” is how he describes it. The lion’s share of Old Soul came from those unplugged sessions.
“You have to be true to yourself. I refuse to be put into any category. I am inspired by everything,” Marley said. “So if I feel like I want to play some jazz music, I will go play some jazz music. Who dig it, dig it.” Of the arrangements: “We definitely did want some different sounds. We never want to come with the same ray ray ray. We try to make some of them something you can’t really identify. Ah just music.”
Who is on it
Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley joins on “Cast the First Stone” and Ziggy Marley on “There’s a Reward,” a tribute to Joe Higgs, the man who mentored the young Wailers. Buju Banton sings on “Thanks We Get (Do Fi Dem),” a ska-flavoured take on the Lee “Scratch” Perry composition made famous by Junior Byles. Eric Clapton plays lead guitar on an acoustic “I Shot the Sheriff”; Kyle McDonald of Slightly Stoopid takes a verse on “Standing in Love”; and “Winding Roads,” with Jack Johnson and Bob Weir’s Wolf Bros (Don Was, Jeff Chimenti, Jay Lane), was cut at Weir’s TRI Studios — the only song recorded with a full band. Covers of the Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Georgia on My Mind” and Sinatra’s “These Foolish Things” round it out.
The title track, released earlier this year, opens on the line “I’m an old soul, living in the body of a 9-year-old / Guess I’ve been here before,” and later dates its author: “April 1972, my mom and poppa brought me through… back then I was the favorite, so they say.”
Tracklist
Each title links to the song page in our library, where you can play it, queue it and find the official upload.
- Don’t You Believe
- Cool as the Breeze
- Cast the First Stone (feat. Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley)
- Thanks We Get (Do Fi Dem) (feat. Buju Banton)
- Don’t Let Me Down
- Georgia on My Mind
- Let the Children Play
- Old Soul
- There’s a Reward (feat. Ziggy Marley)
- This Time
- These Foolish Things (Reminds Me of You)
- I Shot the Sheriff (feat. Eric Clapton)
- Standing in Love (feat. Slightly Stoopid)
- Winding Roads (feat. Jack Johnson and Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros) — not in the library; see below
Editor’s note: In March 2024 JaRIA named Old Soul its Reggae Album of the Year (JaRIA); see our report.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play the album on the Old Soul album page. “Cool as the Breeze” is the official visualizer from StephenMarleyVEVO; the label did not publish audio uploads for the other songs on the artist’s channels, so the library uses the label-provided audio from YouTube’s auto-generated Stephen Marley – Topic release for the remaining 12. “Winding Roads” exists officially only as a lyric video, which we do not link, so it is omitted for now.
- Browse the Stephen Marley artist profile, including the Mind Control Acoustic set in the library.
- From our archive: Stephen Marley on the magic of Tuff Gong Studio (2015) and the “Rock Stone” video (2014).
Sources: uDiscover Music — “Stephen Marley Announces Diverse New Album ‘Old Soul’” (Tim Peacock, Aug 18, 2023); JaRIA — 2024 Honour Award Winners.
Editor’s note: This story is part of an archive backfill covering Jamaican music news from 2022 to 2026. It is dated to the events it reports.