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The Isleys to own, probably–but there’s no doubt you can live without it.”

The only great songs are ‘It’s Your Thing’ and ‘Work to Do’ they reuse the same harmonies and dynamics again and again.

This two-LP compilation…reminds us that even back when were inventing their shtick, they were also victims of it. Christgau qualifies his skepticism while reviewing the 1978 set Timeless: “Though T-Neck puts out excellent product, product is all it is. Eleven of them receive a B (on his scale, “admirable”) or B+ (“good”), but none higher. In his book Rock Albums of the 70s, he rates and reviews 15 LPs the brothers released on their own T-Neck label during that decade.

Robert Christgau, who’s been writing about pop music for nearly as long as the Isleys have been making it, covered a long stretch of the group’s output in his Consumer Guide columns for the Village Voice. Yet white Americans know precious little of what the group has done in its 40-some-year recording career, save the handful of up-tempo crossover hits that have cropped up in movie sound tracks or TV commercials: “Shout,” “Twist and Shout,” “It’s Your Thing,” “That Lady,” and “Fight the Power.” And even those who know more dismiss most of it out of hand, including mellower late-70s fare like “Voyage to Atlantis” or “Footsteps in the Dark,” songs that established the group as an institution in black pop. Kelly’s chart-topping sexy soul balladry reflects the timelessness of the Isleys’ later, mature R & B style. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & RecreationĪ list of the artists the Isley Brothers have influenced reads like a brief history of cutting-edge pop: the Beatles covered their fist two hits and emulated their three-voice group sound Jimi Hendrix patterned the vocal-instrumental interplay of the Experience after tracks he’d cut as an Isley Brothers sideman the Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and numerous other rappers have sampled them liberally and R.