Day 335: Commodores – Commodores

Today I wanted something fun that you can jam to, and funk might be the most jammable and fun of all genres, so I thought I should finally listen to a bit of the Commodores. I don’t know anything about them but I do like a bit of Lionel Richie, so I should at least give them a go.

Album cover courtesy of Motown

The Commodores were formed in 1968 in Tuskegee, Alabama, as a merger between two university music groups, the Mystics and the Jays. They won their university’s talent show and started playing at frat parties. They eventually got signed by Motown and sold more than 70 million records, becoming best known for their hits “Three Times a Lady”, “Brick House” and “Easy”, as well as launching the career of their co-singer Lionel Richie.

Their self-titled album was released in 1977 as their fifth LP, and it was number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart for eight weeks. It consists mostly of southern funk with a few pop/soul ballads peppered in, most notably the Lionel Richie hit “Easy”. The uptempo funk tracks are all fun to listen to and the ballads are beautiful, but generally it’s just pretty good – there are such all-time hits on this album, but the other songs rarely reach the same level.

However, as far as sexual objectification of women in music goes, “Brick House” surely has to be up there as the best possible form of it. Frankly the whole sentence that it is based on, “she’s built like a brick shithouse”, kind of gets a pass from me on account of it being great use of language. The song, too, is a modern classic for a reason.

I’ve now condemned myself to about 72 hours of every quiet moment in my head being interrupted with “Cause she's a brick……….. house”, but as far as ear worms go, you could do a whole lot worse than that. Commodores is a fun album that’s on the cusp of being something I’d like to put on more than just once, but it’s just not quite there. I’m giving it a 7.5/10.