#1 Marvin Gaye, 'What's Going On' (1971)

“Mother, mother/There's too many of you crying/Brother, brother, brother/There's far too many of you dying.” “Ah, things ain't what they used to be (ain't what they used to be)/Where did all the blue skies go?/Poison is the wind that blows.” If I presented those lyrics to you in 2021, you might believe they were recently written. One about the deaths of African-American men at the hands of the police, the other about climate change. How can an album written and recorded 50 years ago, be as relevant today as it was back then? This new incarnation of the list was created in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement. With that in mind, it makes sense why an album dealing with that very subject matter would make it to the #1 spot.