Open Our Eyes was Earth, Wind & Fire’s first #1 album and spawned three amazing hit singles, but more than that it has an aura of strength and completeness. By this time, EW&F had mastered its airy, sweet sound, but at the same time, Open Our Eyes is arguably their funkiest album. “Mighty Mighty,” “Fair But So Uncool” and “Kalimba Song” are not just groovy—they’re hard, even tough. Simultaneously, the band was perfecting a certain kind of hypnotic, swirling, smooth pop song, exemplified by “Devotion,” “Feelin’ Blue” and “Open Our Eyes.” This era brought a wealth of great funk bands and great sweet soul vocal groups, but EW&F was one of the few that could do both with expertise and originality. In the end, the album’s most essential songs might be the ones that are hardest to categorize: “Caribou” and “Drum Song.” The expanded 2001 reissue adds four bonus tracks to the original running order. Of the bonus songs, “Ain’t No Harm to Moan (Slave Song)” and “Dreams” are as important to understanding the band’s personality as anything included in the original track listing.