But the Isleys’ sixth album, released more than a decade into their career, is the beginning of what became an unstoppable era of great records for the group. This one’s not nearly as ubiquitious as that crowd-pleasing party anthem, but it does feature “It’s Your Thing,” a badass strut of a late ’60s funk track that’s probably in the group’s five best-known tracks (their Spotify top songs supports my hypothesis TIDAL’s top tracks lean more toward the psych-soul and slow jams). So I don’t feel the need to put too much attention on that song, instead offering 1969’s It’s Our Thing as a perfect entrypoint to the band of brothers’ versatile and constantly evolving funk-soul sound.
You might not have even known it was The Isley Brothers, but you’ve definitely experienced it. You know “Shout,” you’ve danced to “Shout” at weddings. The real place to start with The Isley Brothers is where they started, essentially-1959’s “Shout.” Their seventh single and first to chart achieved a ubiquity well after its release. It might not rewrite the canon, but I hope this Isley Brothers guide, featuring five of their best albums to start with, at least puts them in a few new fans’ regular rotation. There’s a lot to hear in the Isleys’ catalog, much of it familiar, some of it vastly underrated, but all of it worthy of rediscovery. Much like Parliament-Funkadelic, The Isley Brothers’ roots are in doo wop and gospel, and from there they spiraled outward, embracing funk, rock and psychedelia, and eventually finding their way to synth- and drum-machine-enhanced ’80s boudoir jams. But that took place four decades(!) after the group’s career began.
Perhaps it’s generational, though the group did enjoy a revival in the ’90s due to widespread sampling from hip-hop artists, a commercial rebound with 1996’s Mission to Please, and, regrettably, several collaborations with R. It’s a little hard to square the decades-long evolution and artistic reinvention of The Isley Brothers did, while maintaining an increasingly massive audience for much of that time, with what seems like widespread critical amnesia. Acclaimed Music, for instance, only lists one album of theirs-1973’s 3+3-which has appeared on publications’ best-albums lists (which includes the Rolling Stone 500, as our writer Virginia Croft recently took a trip through, but by and large mostly comprises British publications). And considering how big the divide is between critical acclaim and commercial success, sometimes, that’s a rare thing indeed.īut for a group as enduring and as successful as the Isleys, they’re often left out of the conversation in terms of the greatest albums of all time, or even just the decade in which they were released. The Cincinnati, Ohio group-founded by brothers O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald Isley-is one of the most prolific funk-soul groups of all time, releasing more than 30 studio albums, nine of which went platinum, another four of them going gold, and perhaps most incredible of all, their best selling albums mostly coincide with what are in fact their best albums.
To understand the limitations of canons, look to The Isley Brothers.
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