Aqualung by Jethro Tull

Aqualung, Jethro Tull's fourth album, landed on Chrysalis on 19 March 1971, and it's where Ian Anderson's flute-toting blues outfit turned into a heavyweight. Anderson produced it himself at Island's brand-new Basing Street studio in London, a room so riddled with technical gremlins that he feared the band's whole future hung on the outcome.

It swings between crunching riff rock and hushed acoustic confessions, and Martin Barre's grimy riff on the title track is the hook that parked Tull on FM radio for good. Anderson's words go after organized religion and take in society's castoffs, the homeless and prostitutes among them, which had critics calling it a concept album, a tag the band has always swatted away. John Evan joined full time on keys, Jeffrey Hammond came in on bass, and Clive Bunker played his last Tull drums here. "Hymn 43" and "Locomotive Breath" went out as singles, and the album became their biggest seller, past seven million copies.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.