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Reviews 148 Soundoffs 97 News Articles 6 Band Edits + Tags 76 Album Edits 98
Album Ratings 729 Objectivity 73%
Last Active 01-10-23 3:58 pm Joined 05-13-09
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| RIP rudolph: sona's fav isley cuts
Rudolph Isley died a few days ago. The 1970s were the Isley Brothers' oyster: they released one album for every year of the decade; the 1973-1978 releases all went Platinum (1975's THE HEAT IS ON 2x Platinum), and they released every one of these albums on their own record label (T-Neck). The miracle of the Isley Brothers' discography is their extended success, their extended afterlife in hip-hop and R&B, and how both were conditioned by a collectively-generated desire to make music that sounded really nice, music about love, music to put on. The dovetailing of consistently-applied personal artistic initiative and chart success to this extent is very rare, but the Isleys just had something people wanted. Their lead singer died at the age of 13 when they were a band of kid musicians, and Jimi Hendrix was their guitarist a decade later (1964-65) when they moved to New Jersey. Here are my favorite Isley Brothers songs from that decade | 1 | | The Isley Brothers Brother, Brother, Brother
Work to Do
Lay-away
(The album before this, the hilariously titled band-reinvention GIVIN' IT BACK [as in, I must imagine, "giving the favor of a cover back to the white dudes who couldn't stop covering our music in the 1960s": James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Stephen Stills all get the Isleys treatment], is really good too.) | 2 | | The Isley Brothers 3+3
That Lady
The Highways of My Life | 3 | | The Isley Brothers Live It Up
Brown Eyed Girl | 4 | | The Isley Brothers The Heat Is On
For the Love of You (Parts 1 & 2) | 5 | | The Isley Brothers Harvest for the World
Harvest for the World
(At Your Best) You Are Love
Let Me Down Easy | 6 | | The Isley Brothers Go For Your Guns
Footsteps in the Dark (Parts 1 & 2) | 7 | | The Isley Brothers Showdown
Groove with You | |
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