• Release date – 3rd May, 1969
• Length – 41:30
• Rank in year – 8th
• Rateyourmusic score – 3.91/5.00
• Rateyourmusic rank in year – 16th
• Genre – Psychedelic Soul / Funk
• The song(s) you know – Stand!, Everyday People
• The song you should know – Somebody’s Watching You
• Perfect setting – A scorching hot summer’s day, accompanied with a barbecue

The second straight soul-adjacent record on the list, but honestly this couldn’t really be more different to ‘Aretha Now’. Where Aretha was making a statement of her own womanhood and taking already existing songs and giving them such personal power, Sly pens all of these songs and is far more interested in the state of America in 1969. He was damn successful in doing so too, with this going down as one of the all-time great protest albums. But what makes a good protest album? And what makes it stand (again, pun intended) out from the crowd and still hold up to this day despite its then-topical lyrics?

Well, it helps that you can’t really ask to open an album better than with the title track, ‘Stand!’. A rolling snare drumbeat propels us into the opening cries of

“Stand, in the end, you’ll still be you

One that’s done all the things you set out to do

Stand, there’s a cross for you to bear

Things to go through if you’re goin’ anywhere.”

These powerful words are a call to action and set the tone for the entire album. Painting the picture of the song is the awesome funky guitar in the right channel accompanied by an-almost gospel flavour to the backing vocals, all behind Sly’s assured vocal, commanding your attention and your action. In truth, on top of all the political and social importance of the song, it’s just an absolute blast. It’s impossible not to sing along and by the time you’re two minutes in, you’re undoubtedly hooked. But what REALLY sets the song apart is the insane switchup at 2:16, where the soulful chorus switches abruptly into one of the all-time great grooves, leaving the last 50 seconds of the song to be a danceable funk jam. With the bass and guitar popping, the vocals soar together to repeat the title hook while a screeching organ crashes in like a car through glass. It all creates an endlessly catchy and intense protest song, with so much packed into the three minute runtime.

Following that instant home run comes a song with a title I won’t type out, for reasons which will be clear to all reading this. Suffice to say, this track takes the very effective “let’s all take a stand against injustice!” message of the first song and goes even bolder. The awesome vocoder, the guitar part and the horns give this a Hollywood feel, painting the picture of the grimey streets that such an interaction would be set in. The instrumental is consistently engaging throughout its six minute runtime and effectively gets across the clear point: racism is pretty dumb. I would say this is a universal truth but the unfortunately, even 54 years after this album’s release, it isn’t. Point is, song is great and its message is done in such an absurdly simple way that it works better than any other words could.

‘I Want to Take You Higher’ then bursts in at track 3, with each member being given prominent lead vocal moments. This song is just effortlessly cool, sounds as much like a scorching hot 60s summer as any psych rock song. The punchy horns and the soulful harmonica are excellent, and it’s hard to find better “boom-laka–laka”s anywhere quite frankly. There is the obvious way to interpret this as a drugs reference, but I’d suggest it’s more about music as a drug, and the positive effects they can have on people. That’s probably the most literal way to interpret the lyrics, but I’m sure Sly was also sneakily making cheeky drug references too.

Then comes my beloved, ‘Somebody’s Watching You’, my sleeper pick of the album. Sure, it’s pretty playful and nowhere near as socially conscious as the first three tracks, but it’s just so catchy and fun, and comes as a welcome release of tension after the relentless funk jams of the previous two songs. The members sound sharp and excellent in harmony with each other, and even though it could be called lightweight, the chorus where the title is repeated does have an eerie quality. This is another song that is punctuated perfectly by just superb rhythm guitar, great strumming patterns and that organ flies in during the chorus to be the perfect cherry on top. Also, my favourite guitar solo on the album comes here, the use of delay is so purposeful and tasteful. I can’t help it, this song puts a smile on my face and the high harmonies especially just sound so pristine, and I for one see no issue in breaking up the album with a cheery little pop gem.

‘Sing a Simple Song’ absolutely follows one of my personal favourites up with some force. An absolutely infectious guitar riff once again supported by the evergreen horn section. The vocals on this song feel particularly passionate and fired up, making it work well as a side closer. I love when the rest cuts out and all that is left are the trumpets and the drums before the riff flies back in.

Then… ‘Everyday People’. Oh, ‘Everyday People’, what is there left to say about you? Clocking in at 2:22, this is by far the shortest song on the album, and it wastes absolutely no time in getting going. It just kicks in immediately with that piano chord (which isn’t changing, so you better get used to it) supported by that pounding bass and the ever-reliable drums. Sly once again does what he always does, and commands the listener as if he is on a soapbox. He never comes across as desperate for your attention, but that’s probably because he knows we all aught to be listening. He cries “I am everyday people!”, before his sister, Rose, mockingly sings in a nursery rhyme tune about hateful people before proclaiming the powerful and lasting line “different strokes for different folks”, which is then followed by Sly shouting a line like he’d never sung anything before “WE GOT TO LIVE TOGETHER!” The power of their social commentary and political messages are in their simplicity. The use of the nursery rhyme tune here and the repetition of the slurs in the second track on the album paints racism as childish, and Sly is almost screaming out of desperation that people understand that yes, we have to live together, and not only is this hate hindering minorities, but it’s not really helping anybody at all. This all seems obvious, but that’s the beauty of it, Sly was all boiling it down to as basic as it gets, taking his words away from social conventions and looking at the world as if he were an outsider, and seeing racism and hatred for as ridiculous as it truly is. His decloration that “I am no better and neither are you” is equally powerful, and while the song is packed with all these lines that could easily be thrown straight onto cards for protests, the song is STILL one of the most easy on the ear, melodic songs the band would ever put out. This thing was a #1 hit, and it didn’t get that far just for its simple, to-the-point social commentary. The song absolutely rules from start to finish, with so many melodic twists and turns and three big hooks packed into two and a half minutes, over the top of ONE chord. Truly one of the most miraculously perfect songs ever written, and even with the top shelf quality of this entire album, it’s a cut above.

Of course, there is some irony that I spent all that time talking about a song just over 2 minutes long and will spend far less time talking about a song nearing the 14 minute mark. The epic ‘Sex Machine’ divides opinion for sure, and it is far from my favourite on the album, but the groove is infectious and the guitar is wild. The song is pretty psychedelic and recalls a lot of what the early psych rock bands were doing in the previous few years. Cool song but not something I’m ever excited to put on outside the album’s context. At around 8:30 you get a really really awesome fuzz guitar part, with some filthy tone, it’s just impossible not to get into the groove of the song and bop your head even though it’s so long.

Once you’ve been beaten into submission and forced to move your body to ‘Sex Machine’, the album calms back down for its closing song. The punchy horns return the listener to the familiar pop songs of earlier in the album. Again, it is deceptively simple and the vocals are shared around nicely. Pretty nice way to go out, and I do think the album is pretty well sequenced, with each statement leading nicely into the other. This almost feels like a sister song to the opener, reflecting Sly’s optimistic side which would soon dissipate. Can you blame him? The guy wrote some of the greatest ever protest songs AND they were incredibly popular, but the social change was still not coming to the extent that it should. It makes you wonder what Stone thinks of the sociopolitical outlook today, not just in America but worldwide, as it seems while steps have been made in the years since 1969, there is still the sense that more could be done.

But perhaps the failure to have the world realise that “we got to live together” is part of the reason ‘Stand!”s legacy is as strong as it is. The messages of these songs still ring true today, and through their simplicity, honesty and sincerity, will remain sources of hope. There is a boundless sense of optimism amongst the call to protest that this album is, and perhaps that is something we need today. It’s so easy to look at where our world is and have a grim outlook in so many ways, but I think the takeaway should be that yes, we have come a long way since 1969, but the job isn’t done. There is certainly hope that people in a younger generation are growing to be more accepting of their fellow human, and the collective outrage and frustration at the treatment of certain groups of people can be a source of hope. But I could go on and on, and never put it as well as Sly Stone did, all those years ago:

“Stand for the things you know are right

It’s the truth that the truth makes them so uptight.”