[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

Curtis by Curtis Mayfield (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1970.
Country:
Overall rank: 825
Average rating: 80/100 (from 308 votes).

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Tracks:
1. (Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below, We're All Going To Go
2. The Other Side Of Town
3. The Makings Of You
4. We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue
5. Move On Up
6. Miss Black America
7. Wild And Free
8. Give It Up

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[manurock]

BEA rec which I like both musically and lyrically.
Favourite track: we the people who are darker than blue.

[Patman360]

As albums go, this is perfect.

Comfortably high up my overall chart and one of my most played albums on vinyl by a long shot.

Can't really fault it anywhere to be honest.

Also, that suit is slick as.
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2023
2022

[DommeDamian]

Such a slick and passionate and wild and danceable classic!
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[Daydreamer]

Amazing album.
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All time

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[Skinny]

In spite of its sometimes bleak lyrical portrayal of life as a black man in America (which, indefensibly, is just as prescient fifty - FIFTY! - years on), this album is simply one of the most joyous and life-affirming ever put to tape. Curtis really had nothing to prove, given his status as arguably the pre-eminent pop songwriter of the 1960s, a man who could turn both delightfully innocent love ditties and Biblical calls-to-arms into immediately memorable, three-minute, verse-chorus-verse wonders, but emerging from "The Impressions" banner really gave him a newfound sense of freedom to explore new sounds and structures, allowing him to make an ambitious, layered, kaleidoscopic masterpiece which not only broke free of the rigid structures of 7" singles soul but also deserved comparisons to - and surpassed, in my opinion - the likes of Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper's, and even my beloved Forever Changes. Curtis wrote lyrics which were forthright and plainspoken (and all the better for it), using his faith, and a few wisely-chosen American songwriting clichés, to create a series of paeans to Black empowerment and self-love; this in itself wasn't particularly new territory for Mayfield, even if his pen seemed more pointed than ever before, but the way that he married these words to a great swirl of strings and flutes and bongos and that magnificent, barely tamed horn section meant that they took on a new power, at turns syrupy sweet and then staggeringly defiant. I would argue that from the early 1960s through to the mid-1970s, Curtis was matched only by Bob Dylan - if anyone - in the field of pop music in terms of putting out consistently dazzling work that challenged both himself and his audience at nearly every turn, whilst still remaining a popular, accessible figure, meaning that his imperial phase was longer than anyone else's I can think of. Even with that in mind, his solo debut is still a shining beacon of creativity in a laughably stacked discography. It deserves all the praise it receives, and then some.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[baystateoftheart]

Agree with all the praise (except the better than Pet Sounds comment), and would add that the most amazing thing about this album is that as towering as it is, he hadn't even peaked yet. While his best two songs are here, his best album would arrive two years later. One of the greatest minds in music history.
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