WAR Celebrate 50th Anniversary With Five Album Set For RSD 2021
WAR celebrate their 50th anniversary with the release of a limited-edition five-album box set for Record Store Day 2021 on 17 July. The 70s hitmakers have also shared newly restored, high-definition music videos for some of their biggest hits on their official YouTube channel.
WAR burst onto the scene 50 years ago, capturing the heart and soul of America’s streets with its righteous, multicultural sound on hits like Why Can’t We Be Friends?, Low Rider and The Cisco Kid. Arriving hot on the heels of the sold-out Greatest Hits album – released for last year’s Record Store Day Black Friday – Avenue/Rhino will showcase one of the group’s most-prolific periods with a new box set, including five LPs pressed on coloured vinyl: War (1971); All Day Music (1971); The World Is A Ghetto (1972); Deliver The Word (1973); and Why Can’t We Be Friends? (1975) and will be limited to 5,000 copies. WAR – THE VINYL 1971-1975 will be released on 17 July exclusively for Record Store Day 2021 at participating retailers.
“Our music came from the street and the challenges that everyday people struggle with, says founding member Lonnie Jordan. “We expressed the pleasures and pains of those experiences which we are still confronting all these years later.”
The collection brings together some of WAR’s most-popular records, including its three consecutive No 1’s on the US R&B album chart: The World Is A Ghetto (Billboard’s best-selling album of 1973), Deliver The Word, and Why Can’t We Be Friends?. To date, the group has earned 17 gold, platinum, or multi-platinum albums and is reaching new milestones across all digital streaming platforms.
Among the 35 tracks are gold-certified singles like Slipping Into Darkness, The World Is A Ghetto, and The Cisco Kid. Another gold single – Why Can’t We Be Friends? – stayed on the US charts for 31 weeks and became the soundtrack to the US-Soviet space mission in which astronauts and cosmonauts linked up in the spirit of friendship. It has now been streamed more than 100 million times. Also included in the set is the US No 1 R&B smash, Low Rider, which was inducted into the Grammy® Hall of Fame in 2014.