Burnin'

Burnin’ is Bob Marley & The Wailers’ 1973 roots‑reggae album and the last studio record to feature the original vocal trio of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer before Tosh and Bunny left for solo careers. Recorded in Jamaica with the Barrett brothers and Earl “Wire” Lindo and finished in London while the band was touring Catch a Fire, it captures a tougher, more militant side of the group, pairing raw live‑band energy with Island Records’ growing international push. The 10‑track set opens with the rallying cry “Get Up, Stand Up” and continues through “Hallelujah Time,” “I Shot the Sheriff,” “Burnin’ and Lootin’,” “Put It On,” “Small Axe,” “Pass It On,” “Duppy Conqueror,” “One Foundation,” and the Nyabinghi‑driven “Rastaman Chant.”

Lyrically and tonally, Burnin’ is more confrontational than its predecessor: songs like “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Burnin’ and Lootin’” frame resistance and urban unrest in stark, first‑person terms, while “Get Up, Stand Up” distills Marley and Tosh’s Rastafarian worldview into a global protest anthem. Several tracks—“Duppy Conqueror,” “Small Axe,” “Put It On,” “Pass It On”—are re‑recordings of earlier Wailers songs, now given heavier rhythms and a more cohesive album context. Though only a modest chart success at the time, Burnin’ went Gold in the U.S., has been added to the U.S. National Recording Registry, and regularly appears in “greatest albums” lists, praised as a seminal fusion of spiritual conviction, political fire, and band interplay at the peak of the original Wailers’ powers.