Although not every blue-eyed soul artist actually has blue eyes, it's a completely fair assumption that just about every blue-eyed soul artist is white. The first successful groups performing exclusively in this vein in the 1960s (the Righteous Brothers, Mitch Ryder, the Box Tops, and the Rascals) gave way to a cadre of artists in the '70s who dabbled in the genre rather than fully embraced it: David Bowie on Young Americans, pre-Voices Hall & Oates, and Robert Palmer before shimmying, guitar-wielding women started showing up in his videos. In recent times, as the lines between soul and pop have increasingly blurred, a strong case could be made that most non-African-American artists on today's Top 40 pop charts owe a certain debt (whether they realize it or not) to blue-eyed soul.

Notable Artists: The Righteous Brothers, the Rascals; Hall + Oates; Michael McDonald