Canadian singer-songwriter Luke McMaster on Friday took the wraps off a video for “My Life is A Song,” a special collaboration with soul legend Lamont Dozier.
Dozier, 77, is one-third of the songwriting team that helped craft the Motown sound, penning hits for acts like The Supremes, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas.
McMaster, with Arun Chaturvedi, partnered with Dozier as part of the multimedia project Icons of Soul, which consists of an album (released last November) and a forthcoming documentary series.
“This is a way for me to honour the soul music and the Motown sound that I fell in love with and which continues to be my favourite music,” McMaster explained, in a release. “These songs and the documentary remind people who may have forgotten, and educates those who may have never known, about the legacy that people like Lamont Dozier have built, and that the music these individuals created in the 1960s is the foundation of much of what they are hearing in modern soul, R&B and pop music today.”
Manitoba-born McMaster, 42, is perhaps best known for his soul-pop project McMaster & James with Rob James in the early 2000s. The duo opened for NSYNC and Christina Aguilera and had some success with singles like “Love Wins Everytime” and “Thank You.”
McMaster described recording with Dozier as an “incredible” experience. “Even just watching him sing and what he did with the melodies and other aspects of the piece, just using his instincts, are things I wouldn’t have come up with in a million years,” he reflected. “The way he can just kind of close his eyes and tap into something is really inspiring.”
Check out “My Life is A Song” below: