Hot Buttered Soul, by Isaac Hayes

Released in 1969 on the tail end of the life of Stax, the category-defining, Memphis, Tennessee-based record label that shaped the very term “soul” , this album was the legendary singer and actor’s coming out party. Simply put, it crowned him as the successor to Otis Redding—sound and stature—after Redding’s untimely death.

The word orchestral is often [rightly] used to describe both the musical organization and sound of this album. Think 10-minute long ouvres laced with organ and strings-based soul riffs, tense musical accelerandos striving for the oft-reached crescendo, and confident-yet-understated bass vocals cutting across it all. I keep thinking about John Williams and how, in the most fulfilling sense, this album’s sound ebbs and flows like a Southern soul version of a Williams score, as if deliberately written to be paired with some visual masterpiece. Perhaps life is the visual masterpiece for which this album is the score.