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24-Carat Black's Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth 33 1/3 by Zach Schonfeld
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
In 1973, the musical collective 24-Carat Black released an unheralded masterpiece on Stax Records-and then disappeared. Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth, a soul-funk concept album primarily written by the ex-Motown arranger Dale Warren, was too bleak, ambitious, or just outright bizarre to reach mainstream a ...Show more
Carole King's Tapestry 33 1/3 by Loren Glass
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
Carole King's Tapestry is both an anthemic embodiment of second-wave feminism and an apotheosis of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter sound and scene. And these two elements of the album's historic significance are closely related insofar as the professional autonomy of the singer-songwriter is an expr ...Show more
Cornelius's Fantasma 33 1/3 by Martin Roberts; Noriko Manabe (Contribution by)
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Japan Ser.
In Tokyo in the early 1990s, an indie band called Flipper's Guitar was at the forefront of a new wave in Japanese popular music known as Shibuya-kei. The band's founder, Keigo Oyamada, would go on to produce, under the name Cornelius, a series of albums that are among the most innovative in Japanese pop ...Show more
D'Angelo's Voodoo 33 1/3 by Faith A. Pennick
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop ...Show more
DC Talk's Jesus Freak 33 1/3 by Will Stockton; D. Gilson
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
Late in the Reagan years, three young men at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University formed the Christian rap group dc Talk. The trio put out a series of records that quickly secured their place at the forefront of contemporary Christian music. But, with their fourth studio album Jesus Freak (1995), dc Talk ...Show more
David Bowie's Diamond Dogs 33 1/3 by Glenn Hendler
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
After his breakthrough with Ziggy Stardust and before his U.S. pop hits "Fame" and "Golden Years" David Bowie produced a dark and difficult concept album set in a post-apocalytic "Hunger City" populated by post-human "mutants." Diamond Dogs includes the great glam anthem "Rebel Rebel" as well a variety ...Show more
Dona Ivone Lara's Sorriso Negro 33 1/3 by Mila Burns; Jason Stanyek (Series edited by)
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Brazil Ser.
More than simply a paragon of Brazilian samba, Dona (Lady) Ivone Lara's 1981 Sorriso Negro (translated to Black Smile) is an album deeply embedded in the political and social tensions of its time. Released less than two years after the Brazilian military dictatorship approved the Lei de Anistia (the "Op ...Show more
Donna Summer's Once Upon a Time 33 1/3 by Alex Jeffery
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
Contradicting assumptions that disco albums are shallow and packed with filler, Donna Summer's double album Once Upon A Time stands out as a piece that delivers on its promise of an immaculately crafted journey from start to finish. A new interpretation of the Cinderella story, it is set in the then con ...Show more
Duran Duran's Rio 33 1/3 by Annie Zaleski
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
In the '80s, the Birmingham, England, band Duran Duran became closely associated with new wave, an idiosyncratic genre that dominated the decade's music and culture. No album represented this rip-it-up-and-start-again movement better than the act's breakthrough 1982 LP, Rio. A cohesive album with a retr ...Show more
Elton John's Blue Moves by Matthew Restall
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
By 1976, Elton John was the best-selling recording artist and the highest-grossing touring act in the world. With seven #1 albums in a row and a reputation as a riveting piano-pounding performer, the former Reggie Dwight had gone with dazzling speed from the London suburbs to the pinnacles of rock stard ...Show more
Elvis Presley's from Elvis in Memphis 33 1/3 by Eric Wolfson
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
I had to leave town for a little while-- with these words, Elvis Presley truly came home to rock and roll. A little over a month earlier he had staged rock's first and greatest comeback in a television program, forever known as The '68 Comeback Special. With this show, he resurrected himself--at the age ...Show more
I'm Your Fan: the Songs of Leonard Cohen (33 1/3) by Ray Padgett
Category: No Category | Series: 33 1/3 Ser.
When I'm Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen hit stores in 1991, Leonard Cohen's career had plummeted from its revered 1960s high. Cohen's record label had refused to release his 1984 album Various Positions--including the song Hallelujah--in the United States. Luckily, Velvet Underground founder John ...Show more