It’s funny to think that the road which led from the songwriter-gone-singer debut Presenting Isaac Hayes all the way to the precipice of Shaft ran so heavily through cover-version turf — as if Hayes hadn’t quite come to grips with the idea that “singer-songwriter” wasn’t a mutually exclusive position. But who needs to write your own songs when you can absolutely repossess others’? As he worked towards being Stax/Enterprise’s superstar standardbearer on every side of the equation, Hayes thrived on the writerly ability to recognize the craft that goes into, say, a Bacharach/David number or a Righteous Brothers standard, and the supreme confidence to inhabit it in an entirely new and charismatic way. …To Be Continued was the last of the albums in this phase before he cut his legendary soundtrack the following year, and everything he set into motion on Hot Buttered Soul — the savvy border-blurring mixture of Southern soul, cosmopolitan psychedelia, and easy-listening-gone-supernova orchestration — reached something of a delirious conclusion on the retrospectively ironically-titled …To Be Continued. He sings with an intensity and showiness of a man in love with his own voice, and the chops and emotional breadth that make it easy for everyone else to love his voice, too — a bass-baritone that could sound more welcoming, wounded, and vulnerable than anyone else in his timbre. And while it probably clicks more easily on a musical level if you’re willing to toss aside your soul should be unremittingly raw biases and soak up all those gloriously treacly strings and horns, there’s a reason Hova and DOOM rocked the mic over this stuff (“The Look of Love” and “Our Day Will Come” respectively — and they’re every bit as headnod worthy in their original forms). It’s attainable luxury, the sound of symphonic pop’s golden gates finally being opened to a wider world.

– Nate Patrin