What's Going On
1971
Berry Gordy called it the worst thing he had ever heard and refused to release it until Gaye said he would never record for Motown again.
★ 9.8
The Albums canon
Sourced and spun.
Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Songs in the Key of Life
1976
It took so long that Wonder and the band took to wearing T-shirts reading We're Almost Finished. Twenty-one songs, and no filler.
★ 9.2
Sign "O" the Times
1987
It was meant to be a triple album and the label refused. Some of it is sung by a sped-up alter ego called Camille.
★ 8.8
There's a Riot Goin' On
1971
Sly overdubbed most of it alone onto a drum machine at home. The title track is listed as running zero seconds and has no music.
★ 8.4
Innervisions
1973
Wonder played almost every instrument on it himself. Days after it came out a car crash put him in a coma for four days.
★ 8.3
Back to Black
2007
Producer Mark Ronson had a Brooklyn soul band play it live to tape like a sixties session. Winehouse wrote about the man she kept leaving.
★ 8.2
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You
1967
The Muscle Shoals session collapsed in a fight after a day and a half, and the rest was finished in New York without the argument.
★ 8.1
Live at the Apollo
1963
King Records refused to pay for a live album with no new songs on it, so Brown funded the recording himself. It reached number two.
★ 8.1
Talking Book
1972
The Superstition riff is a clavinet, an electric keyboard with strings inside, layered several times over. Wonder had just won control of his contract.
★ 7.9
I Put a Spell on You
1965
Simone had trained to be a classical pianist and was turned down by the conservatory. You can hear the Bach in her left hand throughout.
★ 7.9
Let's Get It On
1973
The title song began as a political lyric someone else wrote, and Gaye rewrote it into a seduction before the tape rolled.
★ 7.6
Otis Blue
1965
Recorded in a single twenty-four-hour stretch, with a break so the musicians could play their regular Saturday gigs, and three Sam Cooke songs on it.
★ 7.5
Stand!
1969
One track runs thirteen minutes and another uses a talk box to make the two singers argue through their instruments about race.
★ 7.4
Superfly
1972
Mayfield watched the film and wrote songs attacking the drug dealing it made look glamorous, then sang them in a falsetto over congas.
★ 7.4
Dusty in Memphis
1969
Springfield was so intimidated by the Memphis players that she could not sing in front of them. Her vocals were added later in New York.
★ 6.9
Lady Soul
1968
Her sisters sing behind her throughout, and Eric Clapton plays guitar on one track without ever being credited for it.
★ 6.9
Star Time
Brown fined his musicians on the spot for missed notes and scuffed shoes, which is one reason the band plays like this.
★ 6.7
Greatest Hits
Sly's band was mixed by race and by sex at a time when almost no one else's was, and the singles sound like that too.
★ 6.4
One Nation Under a Groove
1978
The title track runs sixteen minutes and was cut with the band playing together in the room, audience noise dubbed on afterward.
★ 6.4
Fresh
1973
The drums land just behind the beat all the way through. Miles Davis is said to have played one track over and over for his band.
★ 6.0
Portrait of a Legend
Cooke set up his own record label and publishing company at a time when almost no Black artist in America controlled either.
★ 5.7
Greatest Hits
Producer Willie Mitchell muffled the drums with a towel and kept the horns low, so nothing ever competes with the top of Green's voice.
★ 5.5
At Last!
1961
The title song was already twenty years old, a Glenn Miller tune, when Etta James took it away from everybody for good.
★ 5.1
The Anthology 1961-1977
Mayfield wrote the songs the civil rights marches sang, then started his own label so that he would own them.
★ 4.9
The Dock of the Bay
1968
Redding wrote the title song sitting on a houseboat in Sausalito, and whistled the ending because he had not finished the last verse.
★ 4.9
The Definitive Collection
Signed to Motown at eleven, he had a number one at thirteen, and later played nearly every instrument on his own records himself.
★ 4.9
What's the 411?
1992
Blige was discovered from a karaoke tape recorded in a shopping mall, and the title comes from the phrase for asking someone's business.
★ 4.8
I Want You
1976
Leon Ware wrote it as his own record and Gaye liked it so much he took it. It plays as one continuous piece.
★ 4.4
Night Beat
1963
Recorded across three consecutive nights in the small hours, with a sixteen-year-old Billy Preston on organ and the pop arrangements stripped away.
★ 3.9
Uptown Saturday Night
1997
Named after a 1974 Sidney Poitier film. Luchini is built on a Dynasty record, and the pair's slang was obscure enough that listeners traded translations.
★ 3.3