With her tragic early death (though hardly surprising given Amy Winehouse's lifestyle) a truly unique voice of contemporary soul stopped singing on July 23, 2011. She has a voice that should never be overshadowed either by her chaotic life covering the pages of British tabloids, or by her struggles with alcohol and drugs, or even the hundreds of videos of failed concerts on YouTube... When the Winehouse phenomenon exploded with this second album, the sublime Back To Black being far superior to her first record Frank, soul music was going through a slump with hollow, syrupy R&B singers and sanitized productions flooding the scene. Few people tried to develop the path established by Aretha Franklin, Ann Peebles, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Dinah Washington and Marlena Shaw. But then along came Amy Winehouse, with her incredible timbre, her genuine songs (which she wrote herself, unlike 90% of her peers), her vintage-tinged productions (which were never passé) and brass-filled instrumentation. To top it all off, even her image was distinctive: 50’s beehive, biker tattoos and a cheeky attitude. Back To Black topped the charts for months all over the world, and it's still a real masterpiece of soul music and R&B. When critical opinion meets popular opinion – something relatively rare that’s worth underlining - the enjoyment is only tenfold. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album is a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something very non-"Levels." It's a strange jumble that works, but even more surprising is the seductive "Addicted to You," where Oklahoma singer/songwriter Audra Mae gets sultry on a song co-written by country and pop legend Mac Davis, and don't wonder long about how the results ended up sounding so Nina Simone, because the curve balls keep coming. Adam Lambert reins in his glam tactics on the Nile Rodgers-assisted "Lay Me Down" for a disco and Daft Punk swerve, while the kinetic down-on-the-farm "Shame on Me" offers a knee-slapping, EDM-meets-country rave-up that threatens to go hambone with a solo on the spoons. Country music and bluegrass keep winding their way into the album, and while it rarely smacks of a gimmick, these rustic numbers often evolve into EDM around their drum machine-introducing choruses, as if True was a remix album commission Avicii picked up while vacationing in Appalachia. In the end, it's an admirable and interesting effort where the highs offset the lows, but those with molly in hand and dancing shoes on feet should just cool their jets and get ready to sit a spell.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Having started at 15, Cherry Glazerr frontwoman and anchor Clementine Creevy—now 26—has tried on a few (always heavy) styles as she has grown and evolved. Gone is the delicious howl of 2017's "I Told You I'd Be with the Guys" and the nasty shoegaze of 2019's "Wasted Nun." For her fourth album, with producer Yves Rothman (Blondshell, Yves Tumor) applying his gritty take on slickness, Creevy has made a twisted dance record.  But this is not the shiny disco of Dua Lipa; it's the fuel of a dark, slightly dangerous underground club at 3 a.m. At first it's a little unnerving to hear Creevy's breathy upper register mixed against full-on disco chic—funk rhythms and winking synths—on songs like "Bad Habit" or the goth-ish dance-floor elixir that is "Wild Times," grooving Depeche Mode-style synth. But it works. Creevy has called "Soft Like a Flower" her "Evanescence moment," and she really lets loose, both in what she says and how she says it. "Gave up my tricks/ I'll be your dog…" she wails along with her guitar. "My head out your car/ Cuz I like you killing me. "It's a real 'losing your fucking shit' kind of vibe … Completely exposed," she has said. "It's also a little bit about loving the anguish and toxicity that comes with being ruined by another person. Letting go and submitting to them but then catching yourself becoming too much like them." Indeed, the album explores relationship struggles from all sides, turning over rocks and looking under blankets and, most of all, probing herself. "I'm so embarrassed all the time/ Wish I could meet you with my eyes/ Ah-ha, wish I was ready for you," Creevy sings on "Ready For You," her voice like a swath of gauze being stretched to the breaking point, until the song explodes open, bottom heavy and thumping, working itself up into a tumultuous storm. The rhythm—bass by Sami Perez, drums by Tabor Allen—is so important here: brewing a dark, low cloud for "Addicted to Your Love" and a monstrous, big foot stomp on "I Don't Want You Anymore." "Touched You With My Chaos" is absolute grunge thunder, complete with drama-pitch strings. And "Sugar" sounds like a youthful descendent of Nirvana's "Something in the Way," Creevy wallowing in her … dependence? Co-dependence? Addiction? Worship? "You make me wanna crawl away/ I'm so ashamed I'm not this way … Break my heart, I don't care/ Fortune told me that no one's there/ I'm buried deep in your mess." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Coming on the heels of the massive success of the Power Station, Riptide packages Robert Palmer's voice and suave personality into a commercial series of mostly rocking songs that seem custom-tailored to be chart hits. The Power Station connection threatens to overpower Palmer's usually more eclectic musical interest, but with that band's producer/member Bernard Edwards handling production duties and members Andy Taylor and Tony Thompson contributing as well, stylistic similarities were inevitable. "Flesh Wound," though, sounds like a retread of "Some Like It Hot," with its squelching staccato guitars and tribal drums mimicking the hit single. "Hyperactive" adds a bit of a pop veneer to the formula, with its bright keyboards dating the song to the Miami Vice era; that's not to say it doesn't hold nostalgic charm. "Addicted to Love" shares some of the same punch, somewhat slowing down the Power Station's bombast into slinkier, blues territory, while maintaining a heavy rock crunch. The song skyrocketed to the top of the U.S. charts and sold more than a million copies as a single worldwide. A music video for the song, featuring sexy models gyrating blankly, no doubt helped sales and launched a new phase of Palmer's career, where music videos would nearly overshadow his songwriting. Equally catchy and almost as successful is the brilliant take on the Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis song "I Didn't Mean to Turn You On." It is perhaps Riptide's most daring track, with its fractured jittery notes, funky basslines, and pounding drums matching Palmer's bothered, sweaty vocals to create a yearning song that drips with passion. Also not to be missed is Earl King's "Trick Bag," which Palmer translates into a fun Clues-style minimalist modern blues song. Even if Riptide uses the Power Station as a blueprint, its only true faults reside in the cheesy album-opening and album-closing refrains of "Riptide," which seemingly satisfy Palmer's tropical proclivities. They might be relaxing and humorous as elevator music, but they are sharply at odds with the tone of the album and Palmer's usually impeccable musical taste. Cheesy opening and ending aside, Riptide has some truly addictive moments and it set him firmly on course, for better or worse, for the even harder-rocking Heavy Nova. © Tim DiGravina /TiVo

The story of Back to Black is one in which celebrity and the potential of commercial success threaten to ruin Amy Winehouse, since the same insouciance and playfulness that made her sound so special when she debuted could easily have been whitewashed right out of existence for this breakout record. (That fact may help to explain why fans were so scared by press allegations that Winehouse had deliberately lost weight in order to present a slimmer appearance.) Although Back to Black does see her deserting jazz and wholly embracing contemporary R&B, all the best parts of her musical character emerge intact, and actually, are all the better for the transformation from jazz vocalist to soul siren. With producer Salaam Remi returning from Frank, plus the welcome addition of Mark Ronson (fresh off successes producing for Christina Aguilera and Robbie Williams), Back to Black has a similar sound to Frank but much more flair and spark to it. Winehouse was inspired by girl group soul of the '60s, and fortunately Ronson and Remi are two of the most facile and organic R&B producers active. (They certainly know how to evoke the era too; Remi's "Tears Dry on Their Own" is a sparkling homage to the Motown chestnut "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and Ronson summons a host of Brill Building touchstones on his tracks.) As before, Winehouse writes all of the songs from her experiences, most of which involve the occasionally riotous and often bittersweet vagaries of love. Also in similar fashion to Frank, her eye for details and her way of relating them are delightful. She states her case against "Rehab" on the knockout first single with some great lines: "They tried to make me go to rehab I won't go go go, I'd rather be at home with Ray" (Charles, that is). As often as not, though, the songs on Back to Black are universal, songs that anyone, even Joss Stone, could take to the top of the charts, such as "Love Is a Losing Game" or the title song ("We only said good bye with words, I died a hundred times/You go back to her, and I go back to black").© John Bush /TiVo

In between his 2012 debut album Clarity and this sophomore release, dance music producer Anton Zaslavski, aka Zedd, went from a mere EDM superstar to tabloid fodder thanks to a brief relationship with Selena Gomez. Sounding not at all shaken by it, his 2015 album True Colors is further proof that he's the most level-headed DJ ever to headline a festival. This crafted and cool LP repeats most of what was good with his debut, plus it is confident enough to have exes over, as Gomez appears on the highlight and single "I Want You to Know" belting out romantic words co-written by Ryan Tedder ("I want you to know, that I'm all yours/You and me run the same course"). "Done with Love" featuring Jacob Luttrell is the obvious post-relationship number included here, with the bass-drops being heavier than the heartache, but the wistful and subtle "Papercuts" with Troye Sivan is an even better choice, as Zedd surrounds this ode to disappointment with swirling melodies and shuffling house beats. Tracks come and go like on a pop album, with only a handful of numbers passing the five-minute mark, and yet, the production is in line with the EDM aesthetic, as the stuttering, the stopping, and the twisting comes from club culture and not mainstream radio. Odd that "Beautiful Now" goes from horny ("I see what you're wearing/There's nothing beneath it") to Maroon 5-esque (the cloying "ba, ba, ba-ba, bah!" chorus), but otherwise the slick and skillful True Colors is built for fans of Zedd's music rather than his social media followers.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Released as a tie-in to Tina Turner's fall 2008 tour of North America, Tina! follows her last greatest-hits album All the Best: The Hits by a mere three years and it has the same number of tracks as its predecessor, six of which are songs shared between the two compilations. This makes Tina! feel similar to All the Best but it's a different compilation in many ways, with a broader scope, reaching back for "River Deep Mountain High" and "The Acid Queen," neither of which were on the 2005 comp, and containing two previously unreleased bonus tracks. It also contains a hefty dose of live tracks -- "Let's Stay Together," "I Can't Stand the Rain," and "The Best," are all present in live versions -- her James Bond theme "Goldeneye" and a 1993 re-recording of "Proud Mary." So, Tina! covers a lot of ground and gives a pretty good indication of Turner's far-reaching talents and long-ranging career, but it's also a bit of a mess, jumping between eras, overlooking some big hits, and substituting live versions when the studio is superior. So don't think of Tina! as a definitive comp, something that has yet to be assembled on Tina, but rather as a sampler that contains some, but not nearly all, of her best.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Mike Skinner has a problem, and from the sound of it, it's life-threatening. He opens his second Streets full-length by moaning "It was supposed to be so easy..." as though he's about to deliver his deathbed confession, the classic tale of a crime gone wrong. Instead, three minutes later, it's clear what the "it" was: walking down to bring back a DVD rental, taking some money out of the machine, and calling his mother, who he'd just left at home, to tell her he wouldn't be back for tea. Believe it or not, but that's just another day in the life of Britain's favorite bedsit producer cum singer/songwriter. Although listeners may not wonder where he finds his material, they'll quickly realize that A Grand Don't Come for Free is just as immediately striking as Skinner's career-making full-length debut, Original Pirate Material. It succeeds, despite a clear lack of comparable singles, because of its paradoxical concept (and yes, it is a concept album) that a record can be tremendously ambitious even though it charts a very unambitious personality. Skinner's urban British youth persona is even more fully drawn than before, and this time he delivers a complete narrative in LP form, with characters, conflicts, themes, and post-modern resolution on the closer. He's sheepish about his utter lack of knowledge about football (and the heavy gambling losses that result from it), unreservedly enthusiastic about his girlfriend early on but later totally disgusted with her (in a blow-up that rivals Dizzee Rascal's "I Luv U"), not so easily dismissive of a gorgeous show-off in front of him at the kebab shop, and willing to confront anyone who criticizes him for drinking at home until he can set up a row of empty Tennent's Super cans. Fortunately, he hasn't reduced the Streets to a comedy act in the process. There is as much tragedy and heartbreak here as there is slapstick comedy. "Blinded by the Lights," driven at half-speed by a shadowy trance line and Skinner's disoriented delivery, transmits perfectly the intense loneliness that can flood you in a club full of people and the utter disenchantment of being stranded in the middle of euphoria. Skinner drives these tracks with a mere skeleton of productions and delivers some cruelly off-key harmonies on the choruses; only the single, a rockabilly buster named "Fit but You Know It," makes any attempt to connect the dots from beats to melody to production. Confronting doubts about his seriousness and squashing whispers about his talent, Skinner has made a sophomore record that expands on what distinguishes the Streets from any other act in music.© John Bush /TiVo

With her tragic early death (though hardly surprising given Amy Winehouse's lifestyle) a truly unique voice of contemporary soul stopped singing on July 23, 2011. She has a voice that should never be overshadowed either by her chaotic life covering the pages of British tabloids, or by her struggles with alcohol and drugs, or even the hundreds of videos of failed concerts on YouTube... When the Winehouse phenomenon exploded with this second album, the sublime Back To Black being far superior to her first record Frank, soul music was going through a slump with hollow, syrupy R&B singers and sanitized productions flooding the scene. Few people tried to develop the path established by Aretha Franklin, Ann Peebles, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Dinah Washington and Marlena Shaw. But then along came Amy Winehouse, with her incredible timbre, her genuine songs (which she wrote herself, unlike 90% of her peers), her vintage-tinged productions (which were never passé) and brass-filled instrumentation. To top it all off, even her image was distinctive: 50’s beehive, biker tattoos and a cheeky attitude. Back To Black topped the charts for months all over the world, and it's still a real masterpiece of soul music and R&B. When critical opinion meets popular opinion – something relatively rare that’s worth underlining - the enjoyment is only tenfold. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

This 2007 concert, twice postponed, took place at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire, and reminds us of the singer's flamboyant energy. This live recording was entitled I Told You I Was Trouble, as Amy Winehouse was unpredictable and many of her appearances were punctuated by incidents and accompanied by permanent chaos. This is fortunately not the case for this recording where we find brilliant performances of such worldwide hits as Rehab or Back to Black, as well as a cover of Valerie by the Zutons, recorded by the star with producer Mark Ronson on his album Version, released in 2007. Of the sixteen tracks that make up this live record, note three other covers, Doo Wop (That Thing) by Lauryn Hill, which Amy Winehouse follows up with her very own He Can Only Hold Her, and two covers of numbers by the legendary ska group led by the no-less-legendary Jerry Dammers: the Specials. Winehouse offers a beautiful version of Hey Little Rich Girl and chooses to end her concert with a perfectly festive, very spirited version of their Monkey Man... This London performance has lost nothing of its freshness and immortalises an hour from the life of this exceptional artist with an exceptional voice and unforgettable charisma. Unfortunately she passed away in 2011 at the age of twenty-seven, joining the likes of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain in the 27 Club... But the one they called “Trouble” has left some of her very best here for us to hold onto forever. © Yan Céh/Qobuz

Following the staggering success of their debut album under their own name, 1999's First Love, the biggest-selling album in Japanese recording history was preceded by four number one singles. To say that Utada Hikaru's 2001 follow-up, Distance, was hotly anticipated would be a huge understatement. Their debut's R&B-influenced sound evolved with little significant stylistic change, yet Distance stands out from other Japanese pop albums of the period with its rich production providing stark contrast to the cheap, tinny sound that characterized much Japanese pop of the previous decade, with "Wait & See" and "Addicted to You" both featuring the production talents of Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Elsewhere, "Can You Keep a Secret?" remains a landmark in Japanese R&B both in terms of the sophistication of its songwriting and in its production, "Drama" shifts slightly from that template by introducing heavy, multilayered guitars and a darker, more rock-influenced sound, and "Kettobase!" mixes Hikaru's usual R&B with more rock guitar and a techno-influenced sequencer pattern. Despite arriving relatively early in their career, Distance stands as one of Hikaru's most consistent and inventive albums, and comes across as a far more convincing example of R&B by a Japanese artist than their later attempts to crack the U.S. market.© Ian Martin /TiVo

With the hypnotic and bright Grammy-nominated track "Levels," Swedish EDM DJ/producer Tim Bergling aka Avicii unleashed a global dance hit the size of "Beachball," "Blue Monday," "Starships," and maybe even "The Hokey Pokey." If the masses leave the dancefloor, "Levels" brings them back with sunshine and light, but Avicii's debut album is a sharp left turn, kicking off with the acoustic guitar strum of "Wake Me Up," a pleasant, well-written heritage pop track where "I Need a Dollar" vocalist Aloe Blacc gets thrown in a synthetic Mumford & Sons surrounding for something very non-"Levels." It's a strange jumble that works, but even more surprising is the seductive "Addicted to You," where Oklahoma singer/songwriter Audra Mae gets sultry on a song co-written by country and pop legend Mac Davis, and don't wonder long about how the results ended up sounding so Nina Simone, because the curve balls keep coming. Adam Lambert reins in his glam tactics on the Nile Rodgers-assisted "Lay Me Down" for a disco and Daft Punk swerve, while the kinetic down-on-the-farm "Shame on Me" offers a knee-slapping, EDM-meets-country rave-up that threatens to go hambone with a solo on the spoons. Country music and bluegrass keep winding their way into the album, and while it rarely smacks of a gimmick, these rustic numbers often evolve into EDM around their drum machine-introducing choruses, as if True was a remix album commission Avicii picked up while vacationing in Appalachia. In the end, it's an admirable and interesting effort where the highs offset the lows, but those with molly in hand and dancing shoes on feet should just cool their jets and get ready to sit a spell.© David Jeffries /TiVo

"Their creativity and effort on the album shines....Regardless if you’re a newer jazz fan or someone who owns every single Miles Davis and John Coltrane album, this is a record that is designed for the old school music connoisseur." © TiVo

A scorching album of funky grooves from Maceo Parker, assisted by the rest of the JB's on backing horns. The album was recorded in concert at a club called Stadtgarten in Cologne, Germany, and the crowd seems just as responsive in most ways as any Atlanta mob. Along with the JB horns, Vincent Henry accompanies on bass throughout the album/concert. The album starts out with an original Maceo composition, then moves into a pair from his old boss James Brown. After that, there's another Maceo number, a cover of "Addictive Love," a rendition of "Georgia on My Mind," and a composition undertaken by a veritable army of funk veterans. This is probably just about the best solo Maceo Parker album there is, at least until the release of Funkoverload. If you're a funk fan, or a soul-jazz fan, this album might just provide what you need. Maceo on his own always provides a nice collection of soul and funk, and this one is no exception.© Adam Greenberg /TiVo