Earth Wind & Fire — Shining Star
That's The Way of the World · 1975
Label: Columbia · Genre: Funk / Soul-Funk · Country: USA · From: Chicago, IL, North America
Maurice White assembled Earth Wind & Fire around a cosmology — Afrocentric imagery, astrology, horn sections stacked on top of horn sections, and a belief that music could elevate consciousness. That's The Way of the World was a film soundtrack that vastly outran the movie it was supposed to support. Shining Star became their first number one. The album's title track is seven minutes of slow ascent — strings, voices, brass, and a production ambition unlike anything else on pop radio in 1975.
Did you know: Shining Star was written and recorded in under 24 hours at Caribou Ranch in Colorado during a blizzard that kept the band snowbound in the studio. It became the first number one for Earth Wind & Fire and won the Grammy for Best R&B Song. Maurice White, the group’s founder, was privately dealing with Parkinson’s disease from the early 1980s but kept it hidden from the public for decades.
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