Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart

Every Picture Tells a Story, Rod Stewart's third solo album, came out on Mercury in May 1971 while he was still fronting Faces, and it's the one that made him a star. He produced it himself, and the sound is loose, ragged and gloriously alive: hard rock swagger, folk strumming and a good slug of the blues, all tied together by that sandpaper rasp of a voice.

"Maggie May" broke it wide open, and single and album both went to the top in Britain, America, Canada and Australia. The title track barrels along like a singalong at closing time that's had one too many, and the whole record has the easy, rumpled confidence of a man who knows the band is cooking. The critics came along too: it finished third in the Jazz & Pop critics' poll for the best album of 1971, and its standing has held up ever since.

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