In the end, Charles didn’t just fit in; he revolutionized the genre by sparking a rush of Nashville/pop crossover acts. This music remains a tribute to and rejoinder of the futile divisions we so often take for granted.

Years removed from its source, its impact is multiplied tenfold. In 1996, it was a path towards adult-contemporary pop radio; today, it’s an exquisitely faded Polaroid.

The influence of Pinkerton led to hundreds of mostly regrettable bands, but what ultimately distinguishes Weezer is how they sonically mirror the unhinged and private mental terror of its narrator.

A quarter-century after its first release, London Calling is still the concentrate essence of The Clash's unparalleled fervor.

For die-hards, the most alluring part of the package may be the second compact disc, which features 18 mostly instrumental demos recorded in Gaye's post-What's Going On honeymoon period, when his vast artistic ambitions and abilities were being embraced by the greater public. These somewhat experimental demos--deep, in-the-pocket funk in the vein of Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Jimi Hendrix--clearly laid the groundwork for much of his subsequent 70s material.

They were called the World's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Band for entirely too long, but if that designation ever applied it was here.

The rare record that has come to define its era while also existing outside of it, a masterpiece that immediately precedes the albums Prince fashioned, conspicuously, as masterpieces.

As good as the remaster sounds, the primary attraction of this edition is its second disc, 11 tracks from Prince’s vault of unreleased songs, all cut between 1983 to 1984. ... The vault tracks sound like fully-formed Prince songs—animated, vibrant, reflexive, fluid, almost vehicular in their design and velocity.

What remains so great about Tim, and is emphasized over and over again on this new remix, is how Westerberg delivers each song as if it’s the last thing he’s ever going to do.

It's a colossus of an album, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be.

Morrissey’s words and delivery were never more deftly idiosyncratic or grandly moving; Johnny Marr’s guitar overflows with sparkling melody while his arrangements sustain a balance between spareness and intricacy. Rhythm section Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce supply foundation and frolic, proving once again how indispensable they were to the group’s magic. ... The demos contain differences that will interest the diehards.

It’s an overwhelming amount of material. ... The Dream Factory songs unearthed from the vault are staggering.

At its heart, jazz thrives on bold, sensitive interaction in the moment, and Live in Europe 1967 represents the pinnacle of that practice.

[The “Underdubbed” version is] not a finished product but a working mix, one that nevertheless captures how Wings interacted as a band. .... Paul McCartney is surely the driving spirit behind Band on the Run—it distills his gifts as well as any album could—but the peculiarly warm, loving camaraderie of Wings is the reason it’s endured over the decades.

Ranging from the tightly wound “Brown Earth” to the sprawling “Christmas in My Soul,” it is the album of hers I would recommend to newcomers. The surrounding records are also strong.

It’s sexy like the Stones, and, in moments, unbearably tender. But it’s also funnier than anything the Stones ever did, and infinitely more self-deprecating.

As one of classic rock's foundational albums, it holds up better than any other commercial smash of that ilk.

This super deluxe edition—complete with a 49-minute album pressed as a double-LP at 45rpm--encourages exploration of the original album, because even with the bright, discordant new remix, there remains a mysterious core that can not be explained but only experienced.

The Cutting Edge is music of the present, but not the '60s present, an eternal present; the songs are about observation and they exist in a place where it's always now, in sound and word.

If anything, the elucidating peek behind the curtain that Bangs’ documentary provides makes the album feel like an even more singular, remarkable achievement.

Metal Box stands up. It stands for all time.

The Velvet Underground's stunning simplicity and unflinching honesty presented an even more accessible model of DIY aspiration, free of Warholian conceptualism and Cale’s classically schooled chaos.

Frankly [add-ons would] just be a distraction from the underlying theme that becomes clear once you get absorbed into the music, which is that Blue Lines is still Blue Lines, and most of the world is still trying to catch up to it.

[Graceland] was unique in its total, and totally natural, synthesis of musical strains that turned out to be not nearly as different from each other as its listeners might have expected, and the result resonated strongly around the world and across generations.

Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a wildstyle symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it.

III is, indirectly, Led Zeppelin’s own version of Pink Floyd's Meddle--the folky, pretty early record that was never too popular and hence a favorite of indie types skeptical of such a massive mainstream band.... III has easily the best bonus material too.

Physical Graffiti is Zeppelin's best album ultimately because it felt like a culmination.

Picture of Bunny Rabbit offers the chill of encountering more of a beloved artist’s classic work in the moment they made it. There’s something near-holy about overhearing Russell in this magic half-light again.