iTunes All-Time Essential Albums Sale
iTunes are exploring and honouring what is quite simply a selection of the greatest studio albums of all time, featuring some of the most iconic music legends and albums ever! They have rightly so placed two of Motown’s finest within the sale: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key of Life.
For those who want to enjoy these timeless records, grab them on sale now until 22nd July. Don’t miss out!
Here’s why we think these albums are considered ‘essential’:
- Marvin’s masterwork reveals something fresh with every hearing, just like the jazz of Miles, and his messages from 45 years ago lose none of their power.
- What’s Going On spent 53 weeks on the Billboard pop best-sellers, an achievement only topped by the 61 chart weeks of Marvin’s Let’s Get It On. The three single releases from What’s Going On ran up a total of 36 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 during 1971. One for the ages and a indisputable essential album.
- “The biggest result of What’s Going On…had to do with my own freedom. I’d earned it, and no one could take it away from me. Now I could do whatever I wanted” – Marvin Gaye, quoted in Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye by David Ritz
- Released in 1976, but recorded over the previous two years, Songs In The Key of Life remains Wonder’s most ambitious album, incorporating bouncy R&B, gritty funk, mellifluous jazz, gospel chants, Afrobeat, fusion and even Brazilian flourishes. Spanning 17 tracks (plus an additional four from the simultaneously-released A Something’s Extra EP) it aimed to capture the nuance of human existence, encapsulating love, relationships, and searing social commentary.
- The album topped the Billboard charts for 14 weeks and reached No. 2 in the U.K. In 2005, Songs In The Key of Life was added to the U.S. National Recording Registry, which recognizes recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.”
- President Obama, Kanye West, Sir Elton John and George Michael have all named it as their favorite recording.
- “Wherever I go in the world, I always take a copy of Songs In The Key of Life,” Sir Elton wrote in Rolling Stone six years ago. “For me, it’s the best album ever made and I’m always left in awe after I listen to it.”
What would be your all-time essential Motown album?
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