The room › Artists › Sly & The Family Stone
Where to start with Sly & The Family Stone
Start with Simple Song — Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970, 1969. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 11 Sly & The Family Stone tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 11 Sly & The Family Stone tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 11 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The tracks are filed across 4 genres, most often soul, classic soul and eclectic, so the room does not treat this as a single-shelf artist.
The mood knob swings 62 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Simple Song — Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970, 1969. Of the 11 Sly & The Family Stone tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Spaced Cowboy — There's a Riot Goin' On, 1971. The lowest mood reading of any Sly & The Family Stone track in the room (30 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
Thankful n' Thoughtful — Fresh, 1973. The highest mood reading here, at 92 out of 100 — a 62-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Sly & The Family Stone sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Sly & The Family Stone's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| There's a Riot Goin' On | 1971 | 3 |
| Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970 | 1970 | 3 |
| 7“ | 1973 | 1 |
| Stand | 1969 | 1 |
| SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) | — | 1 |
| Fresh | 1973 | 1 |
Every Sly & The Family Stone track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Simple Song | Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970 | 1969 |
| I Want To Take You Higher | Stand | 1969 |
| M'Lady | Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970 | 1970 |
| Thank You Fallentime Be Mice Elf | Piknik Kasteel Groeneveld Baarn September 10 1970 | 1970 |
| (You Caught Me) Smilin' - Single Version | There's a Riot Goin' On | 1971 |
| Spaced Cowboy | There's a Riot Goin' On | 1971 |
| If You Want Me To Stay | 7“ | 1973 |
| Thankful n' Thoughtful | Fresh | 1973 |
| Running Away | There's a Riot Goin' On | 2004 |
| (You Caught Me) Smilin’ | — | — |
| Family Affair (Questlove Rhythm King Edit) | SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Sly & The Family Stone's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Stevie Wonder — soul, 16 tracks
- Where to start with Shuggie Otis — soul, 18 tracks
- Where to start with Gil Scott-Heron — soul, 18 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Sly & The Family Stone as a group, from San Francisco, the United States and formed in 1967. Its contributors tag the artist funk, soul, psychedelic soul and pop soul. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Sly & The Family Stone tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 11, across 6 albums. 9 of them carry a date, running from 1969 to 2004. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 11 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 11 of these 11 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.