If that was the best soul had to offer, why bother digging deeper? My opinion of those albums have softened somewhat over the years, but I maintain that critics have put far too much importance on them, while unjustly ignoring the richness of talent bubbling beneath the hits. Songs had more musical highlights, but was bloated beyond redemption with sacharine, trite ballads. While both albums had some great lyrical moments, What’s Going On sounded to me like noodly supperclub music, with light jazz arrangements that reminded me of music from “The Love Boat” and meandering vocal tricks that try to distract from the lack of hooks and melodies. It was a combination of that presumption, and the fact that Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On (1971) and Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life (1976) were almost unanimously considered two of the greatest soul albums, that kept me from digging deeper for many years. Sam Cooke and, during her nine album Columbia tenure, Aretha Franklin also suffered in varying degrees. Two of his best studio albums, Think! (1960) and It’s A Mother (1969) are marred by out-dated tracks that clash with the revolutionary music. He seemed to have little interest in issuing strong albums, spreading his best singles thin throughout several albums a year. This is partly true, especially for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. The argument is that aside from some exceptions in the 70s, it was a singles based genre in which albums were haphazard collections of singles padded by filler. Considering the large scope of soul, that’s a pretty miniscule sample. If you go by typical album canons, you would think there were only a small handful of great soul albums by Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Otis Redding, Curtis Mayfield, and a couple live albums by James Brown and Sam Cooke.
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