Millie Jackson - It Hurts So Good

Label: Southbound
Format: LP
Cat: SEW 019
Released: 26 Apr 23 (reissue)
Genre: Soul

Tracklist
Side 1
I Cry (4:15)
Hypocrisy (2:14)
Two-Faced World (3:47)
It Hurts So Good (3:11)
Don't Send Nobody Else (3:19)
Hypocrisy (reprise) (1:58)

Side 2
Good To The Very Last Drop (3:53)
Help Yourself (3:03)
Love Doctor (2:57)
Now That You Got It (2:33)
Close My Eyes (3:15)
Breakaway (reprise) (2:03)

Millie Jackson's classic soul album It Hurts So Good has gone down in time as a shining example of what many hardcore soul fanatics might call 'deep soul'. Darker and more austere than the usual idea of soul at large, deep soul was known for its added grit and pain behind the beltings and breakbeats. Millie Jackson had this yet-nascent formula down to a T. Active in the early 70s and beyond, Jackson released It Hurts So Good as a testament to the test of love, an analogy for life itself. Yes, it hurts, but the pain is worth it when balanced out by the glorious highs. Heartbroken but jubilant, Jackson's sound is refined and always full of energy, occupying a juxtaposition between lyricising about crying and loss, and laying the fonk on thick, groovy and plentiful. The overall sound, firmly rooted in both the funky and tearjerky camps, is that of 'getting on with it'.