Which musical legend thinks modern R&B is 'robotic'?

But the R&B legend says he’s not a fan of the modern incarnation of the genre that defined his career, dismissing today’s R&B as “terrible” and “robotic”.

Morrison is gearing up to release his 35th studio album this month. He told the Times that he grew up listening to jazz and blues, music that was “esoteric, stuff that you had to think about”.

In his day, the Northern Irish singer says wasn’t into chart music. “I didn’t grow up on Top Of The Pops. It wasn’t like, turn on the radio and get the Top 10. So that is where I am coming from – jazz, blues, folk, the beat thing.”

But he just can’t get into today’s R&B offerings.

Morrison, 69, said: “I can’t relate to it now, what they call R&B. It doesn’t have any rhythm in it. It doesn’t have any blues. To me it is very unrhythmic. It’s very robotic. Words take on different meanings after a while.”

“It’s like soul. I don’t know what that is now. To me, soul was like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Bobby Bland, Solomon Burke, Bobby Womack. But what is it now? It is just a word. It can mean anything.”

But modern R&B isn’t the only genre Van doesn’t dig. He asked: “What is jazz? Some of the stuff that they say is jazz, I don’t know what it is. Blues also.”

Morrison blamed his reputation for being grumpy and never having a laugh on “lazy journalists” who “keep the mythology going”, and revealed he feels a very different person from the man he was at 40, when he says he “didn’t know anything”.

He said: “I still don’t know much. When you’re 40 you think you know everything. You realise that the older you get, how little you actually know.”