What's all this, then? Find out here.
These are the records every complete record collection should have, even if you aren't necessarily a soul fan. These records define soul to some degree, but represent the core qualities of what soul has to offer to an even more significant one. These aren't my favorite records in soul - and really anyone who gave you this list as their top 25 is either lying to save face or works for Rolling Stone - but they are all five-star classics that will forever be cited as the fundamental works of the genre. And, of course, many if not most of them are my favorite soul albums, most notably Live at the Whiskey, the record I often cite as my favorite album ever.
Perhaps more than any other genre, soul was defined by the single. Motown, the most popular and culturally significant record label in the genre, used a common business model of the 1960s to create their long players: opening sides with big singles and then padding the back ends with various lesser cuts. Most of the top Motown artists - the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, even the Jackson 5 - could make even the weakest song work, but none of these artists made a true through-and-through classic. I've decided to omit greatest hits records on this set, which means none of these incredibly important if not seminal artists are represented. That makes this less representative of soul as a whole, but makes for a stronger group of cohesive listens - not to mention that the three most significant Motown artists, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye, are represented here, just in the form of 70s masterpieces rather than 60s pop singles.
A note on "soul": this is essentially intended to be an early R&B list, which makes for some political choices (even calling early R&B soul and vice-versa is bound to make some 45-clutching nerds cringe). I've decided to mark the beginning of modern R&B at the rise of solo Michael Jackson and disco's break-through into the mainstream - basically the late 70s into the early 80s - so if you are wondering where Prince and D'Angelo are, don't worry. Also, I've omitted funk from this category - there's a real dividing line where artists moved away from the basic structure of R&B and began to create another genre altogether, and while James Brown's The Payback might not be out of place on this list, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain would stick out as the (totally awesome) ugly duckling. Anyway, let's get on to it.
Note: Instead of spending way too much time writing on each of these records, I've decided to insert a youtube video of a key song (or the whole album where applicable). If you don't understand an inclusion, ask me about it in the comments. Stop reading, start listening!
These are the 25 records in soul music that deserve to be canonized.
