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
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1971
Showing 15 albums from 1971
Led Zeppelin IV
1971
There is no title and no band name anywhere on the sleeve, just four symbols the members chose. The label thought it was commercial suicide.
★ 9.3
Blue
1971
Mitchell was so exposed making it that she asked visitors to leave the studio. Kris Kristofferson told her to keep something back for herself.
★ 9.1
Who's Next
1971
What survived an abandoned science-fiction project became this record. The keyboard figure opening Baba O'Riley was generated by a machine rather than played.
★ 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
Hunky Dory
1971
Rick Wakeman plays the piano throughout, and Bowie wrote Kooks in an afternoon for his newborn son. Ziggy Stardust was still a year away.
★ 8.1
Sticky Fingers
1971
Andy Warhol's sleeve had a real working zip, which scratched the records stacked behind it in the crates. The tongue logo starts here.
★ 8.0
Tapestry
1971
King had already written dozens of hits for other people before anyone heard her sing. This one sold twenty-five million copies.
★ 7.9
At Fillmore East
1971
Recorded over two nights in March 1971, and Duane Allman was dead in a motorcycle crash before the year was out.
★ 7.7
Imagine
1971
Recorded at his home in Ascot on a white grand piano, and one of the songs is a straight attack on Paul McCartney.
★ 6.9
Electric Warrior
1971
Marc Bolan sings everything with the same wobbling vibrato over two-chord boogie, and producer Tony Visconti buried strings underneath it.
★ 6.1
Every Picture Tells a Story
1971
The mandolin on Maggie May was played by a session man paid fifteen pounds, whose name Stewart admitted he had forgotten in the sleeve notes.
★ 6.1
Pearl
1971
Joplin died before recording her vocal for one song, so it appears as an instrumental with the space where she should be.
★ 6.0
Madman Across the Water
1971
Paul Buckmaster's orchestra was recorded live in the room with the band rather than added afterward, which is why the strings breathe with them.
★ 5.0
Coat of Many Colors
1971
Parton wrote the title song on the back of a dry-cleaning receipt, about a coat her mother really did sew out of rags.
★ 4.5