Amir “Questlove” Thompson, in Rolling Stone in 2015, called Bill Withers the “last African-American Everyman … the closest thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen.”

Withers’ Just As I Am was once referred to as “middlebrow soul.” That is to say, it was easily accessible at a time when music was becoming increasingly complex.

In this episode, we find out what it means to be a populist musician when popular music was quickly turning its eye to more complicated compositions.