NIGHTBIRDS by

LaBelle

“I FIRST ENCOUNTERED NIGHTBIRDS, not through the sound of it, but through the look of LaBelle. When I was a kid, I saw a photo of LaBelle in their spacesuits on the wall of a friend’s house. Patti is leaning with her face in her palm. I thought, Who are these Black women from outer space?

I knew who Patti LaBelle was because my mother loved her. Nightbirds, for my money—and I think according to critical response, too—is the only good LaBelle album. The other ones are pretty rough, but they’re rough for a reason. LaBelle’s sonic impulses were all over the place. I adore Nightbirds because they found a sound that worked for them. The arrangements were deep in funk and had nice horns, but it’s also an album of sad songs. It’s an album about loneliness. Even ‘Lady Marmalade’ is kind of about loneliness.

Of all the albums on this list, Nightbirds is the one I listen to the most. There are certain albums that I am desperate to show people. One of my greatest pleasures is flipping to side two of Nightbirds —one of the greatest side-twos in music history. It opens with ‘What Can I Do for You?’ It then goes straight into the title track. Then you get ‘Space Children.’

I was talking to a friend, another critic, about a Drake album—I think it was Scorpion —a few years ago. I was like, ‘There are 25 songs here, and I like maybe 10. That doesn’t feel like an album to me.’ He said, ‘So you can just make a playlist of the 10 songs you like, and that’s your Drake album.’ I thought, My job isn’t to make the Drake album. Drake’s job is to make the Drake album. I guess I’m old school—I always love the physicality of a record. Now, I’m fine to let that go, I can acknowledge that the era of the album as physical object has waned. But that doesn’t mean artists should lose their responsibility for narrative-building, for crafting a sequenced arc of songs, not just a compilation with the occasional hit thrown in.”