What's Going OnMarvin Gaye
What's Going On
1971 · From What's Going On
Party chatter, a sax that sighs, and Gaye asking the question Motown begged him not to ask.
★ 9.9
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1971
Showing 104 works across all media from 1971
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
Stairway to HeavenLed Zeppelin
Stairway to Heaven
1971 · From Led Zeppelin IV
Eight minutes that climb from recorders to Page's solo, never released as a single and never needing to be.
★ 9.3
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
Baba O'Riley
1971 · From Who's Next
That opening arpeggio is a Lowrey organ's marimba repeat function; Dave Arbus's violin sends the ending careening.
★ 9.0
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
Layla
1971 · From Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs
Clapton wanted his friend's wife; Duane Allman's slide answers every line, then Jim Gordon's piano coda changes everything.
★ 8.7
A Clockwork Orange
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1971
Kubrick pulled it from British cinemas himself after the reaction, and it stayed unavailable there for twenty-seven years: a state that enforces goodness, an invented slang, imagery nobody forgets.
★ 8.7
Let's Stay TogetherAl Green
Let's Stay Together
1971 · From Greatest Hits
Willie Mitchell and Al Jackson handed Green a track; he reportedly had the lyric in five minutes.
★ 8.6
Imagine
1971 · From Imagine
Grapefruit, Ono's book of poems, supplied the idea; Lennon supplied the piano; in 2017 she finally got the credit.
★ 8.5
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
Changes (David Bowie)
1971 · From Hunky Dory
Rick Wakeman's piano, Bowie's own saxophone, and a stutter on the title that flopped before it defined him.
★ 8.3
A Theory of Justice
1971 · 538 pages
Rawls asks which rules you would pick for a society without knowing your place in it. His answer, equal liberties and inequality only when it lifts the worst off, reset political philosophy.
★ 8.3
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
Won't Get Fooled Again
1971 · From Who's Next
Eight and a half minutes, a Lowrey organ run through a VCS3, and Daltrey's scream tearing into the final verse.
★ 8.0
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
Theme from ShaftIsaac Hayes
Theme from Shaft
1971
Skip Pitts on wah-wah, Willie Hall riding sixteenths on hi-hat, and the first Academy Award won by a Black composer.
★ 7.8
Ain't No SunshineBill Withers
Ain't No Sunshine
1971
Withers was building airplane toilets when he cut this, and he left the unfinished bridge as twenty-six repeats.
★ 7.8
Family Affair (Sly and the Family Stone)
1971 · From There's a Riot Goin' On
A rhythm box edited into a heartbeat, Billy Preston on Pianet, and three weeks at number one.
★ 7.8
Wild HorsesThe Rolling Stones
Wild Horses
1971 · From Sticky Fingers
Cut at Muscle Shoals in December 1969, with Jim Dickinson on tack piano after Ian Stewart refused the minor chords.
★ 7.7
Ziggy Stardust
1971 · From The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Cut at Trident in November 1971, never a single, and Ronson's riff draws the character as sharply as the words.
★ 7.7
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
Black Dog
1971 · From Led Zeppelin IV
Jones wrote the riff, Page took the stop-start idea from Fleetwood Mac, and a stray labrador supplied the title.
★ 7.6
Me and Bobby McGee
1971 · From Pearl
Joplin taped the vocal days before her death; Kristofferson did not hear it until the day after.
★ 7.6
The French Connection
Directed by William Friedkin
1971
It made the car chase in Bullitt look choreographed: this one was shot without permits, at ninety miles an hour, through real Brooklyn traffic that nobody had cleared.
★ 7.6
Brown Sugar (The Rolling Stones)
1971 · From Sticky Fingers
Cut at Muscle Shoals days before Altamont, Bobby Keys on tenor, and a lyric Jagger later said he would censor.
★ 7.6
Maggie MayRod Stewart
Maggie May
1971 · From Every Picture Tells a Story
Released as a B-side until DJs flipped it, with a mandolin credited only to a name Stewart said slipped his mind.
★ 7.6
The Last Picture Show
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
1971
Bogdanovich insisted on monochrome in 1971, when absolutely nobody did that: a Texas town running out of reasons to exist, and the teenagers running out along with it.
★ 7.4
Just My Imagination
1971
By Otis Williams's account Kendricks stayed for hours of takes; his final Temptations single spent two weeks at number one.
★ 7.4
Tiny Dancer
1971 · From Madman Across the Water
Taupin wrote it about Maxine Feibelman, the seamstress who toured with the band, and Almost Famous made it a singalong.
★ 7.3
Take Me Home, Country Roads
1971
Danoff and Nivert finished it with Denver one December night, and they premiered it hours later at the Cellar Door.
★ 7.3
Behind Blue EyesThe Who
Behind Blue Eyes
1971 · From Who's Next
Townshend's theme for the villain of his abandoned Lifehouse, and Daltrey sings the self-pity straight before Moon wrecks it.
★ 7.3
It's Too Late
1971 · From Tapestry
Toni Stern wrote the words in a day after her romance with James Taylor ended, and Curtis Amy's sax answers.
★ 7.2
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Directed by Robert Altman
1971
Altman made a western out of mud, snow and Leonard Cohen songs: a small-time gambler and a businesslike madam build a frontier town out of almost nothing.
★ 7.0