Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Bring the Funk on a Soulful Bonnaroo Saturday

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Soul shakedowns were all over the place at Bonnaroo on Saturday afternoon, as the drizzle gave way to sunshine. Over at This Tent, roots-rock duo The Wood Brothers jammed with keyboardist extraordinaire John Medeski; at the What stage, the Soul Rebels Brass Band turned out a set of pumped-up New Orleans soul, funk and jazz. Meanwhile, New York-based outfit Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings ripped up the Which Stage. They might not have been the most suavely-dressed of the three groups — former corrections officer Jones was decked out in a ruffled get-up she called her "Tina Turner dress," and her band sported stifling black suits — but they were by sure the funkiest. Over sexed-up riff-driven funk and retro-style big-band soul, Jones unleashed her firey pipes on tunes about broken and breaking hearts. The highlight? That one cut about a girl named Susie who turns tricks as Lucy and brings home a thousand dollars a night, which the group dedicated to "all the working girls out there."

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Song Stories

“Karma Chameleon”

Culture Club | 1983

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."

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