More than a quarter-century after Tom Petty's Wildflowers was first released, it can finally be heard the way the singer-songwriter intended. When he turned in 25 songs, hoping for a double album, Warner Bros. asked him to pare it down to one. But just three years past his death, his family and Heartbreakers bandmates Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell (technically a solo release, Wildflowers features most of the band) have restored the record to its original glory and added in a trove of home demos, alternate takes and live tracks—some 70 songs in all. Produced by Rick Rubin while Petty's decades-old marriage was crumbling and he was reportedly battling heroin addiction, the 1994 release remains one of the all-time great break-up records; heard all together, the extended LP (the All The Rest part is produced Petty's longtime engineer Ryan Ulyate) Petty is a deeper devastating beauty. "New" tracks like the Byrds-y "Leave Virginia Alone," tender "Something Could Happen" and psychedelic Beatles-meets-Wall of Sound "Somewhere Under Heaven" are a comfortable coda to classics such as "You Don't Know How It Feels" and "It's Good to Be King." Extra track "Hope You Never" is a gorgeous, direct complement to old favorite "Only a Broken Heart." As perfect as the original album has always played, it's hard to imagine not including the swaying After the Gold Rush-esque "Hung Up & Overdue" (with backing vocals by Beach Boy Carl Wilson) or sunny, jangling "California" (which also shows up in a demo version, with a telling extra verse: "Don’t forgive my past/ I forgive my enemy/ Don’t know if it lasts/ Gotta just wait and see"). Dig into the home recordings, and it's an even bigger mystery why the harmonica-inflected "There Goes Angela" and plaintive "There's a Break in the Rain (Have Love Will Travel)" weren't contenders over, say, the Celtic-flavored "Don't Fade on Me." Chalk part of that first-listen awe up to the intimacy of these solo demos, which also cast a new, revelatory light on the gently folksy title track and "You Don't Know How It Feels." Live non-album favorites "Girl on LSD" and "Drivin' Down to Georgia" are captured here, along with a blistering "Honey Bee" and lovely takes on "You Wreck Me" and "Crawling Back to You." Tench has recalled Petty calling Wildflowers "the best record we ever made." Now it's even better. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

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Little Girl Blue, released in 1957, was Nina Simone's first recording, originally issued on the Bethlehem label. Backed by bassist Jimmy Bond and Albert "Tootie" Heath, it showcases her ballad voice as one of mystery and sensuality and showcases her uptempo jazz style with authority and an enigmatic down-home feel that is nonetheless elegant. The album also introduced a fine jazz pianist. Simone was a solid improviser who never strayed far from the blues. Check the opener, her reading of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo," which finger-pops and swings while keeping the phrasing deep-blue. It is contrasted immediately with one of the -- if not the -- definitive reads of Willard Robison's steamy leave-your-lover ballad "Don't Smoke in Bed." The title track, written by Rodgers & Hart, features "Good King Wenceslas" as a classical prelude to one of the most beautiful pop ballads ever written. It is followed immediately by the funky swing in "Love Me or Leave Me" with a smoking little piano solo in the bridge where Bach meets Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons. It's also interesting to note that while this was her first recording, the record's grooves evidence an artist who arrives fully formed; many of the traits Simone displayed throughout her career as not only a vocalist and pianist but as an arranger are put on first notice here. "My Baby Just Cares for Me" has a stride shuffle that is extrapolated on in the piano break. Her instrumental and improvising skills are put to good use on Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait," which is transformed into something classical from its original bebop intent. "You'll Never Walk Alone" feels more like some regal gospel song than the Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune it was. Of course, one of Simone's signature tunes was her version of "I Loves You, Porgy," which appears here for the first time and was released as a single. Her own "Central Park Blues" is one of the finest jazz tunes here, and it is followed with yet another side of Simone's diversity in her beautiful take on the folk-gospel tune "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," with quiet and determined dignity and drama. Another of her instrumentals compositions, "African Mailman," struts proud with deep Afro-Caribbean roots and rhythms.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Extreme's third album was lost in the thunder of grunge, selling far below expectations. The group fought back with Waiting for the Punchline, blasting out at the new wave of hard rockers by saying they'll be "Hip Today" and, presumably, gone tomorrow. Such proclamations would carry greater weight if they were supported by music that didn't replicate the soft melodic crunch of '80s pop-metal. Nuno Bettencourt remains a stunningly accomplished guitarist, but as a composer he's stuck in an increasingly restrictive formula.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Expectations for Natalie Imbruglia's debut album, Left of the Middle, were high because of the runaway success of the pre-album single "Torn" during 1997-1998. Fans of the single will be pleased to hear that the album is quite similar in approach and sound to the breakthrough single: laid-back alt-pop with sweetly melodic vocals. Admittedly, some of the material will be seen as pop fluff by certain listeners, but fans of popular latter-day female artists like Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, and Meredith Brooks will find Imbruglia's debut most enjoyable. What separates Imbruglia from the aforementioned artists is her willingness to experiment with electronic sounds, no doubt courtesy of mixer Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame), which can be heard on such tracks as "Smoke." "Torn" proves to be the best song on the album, with its bouncy acoustic feel, but the pop/rocker "Big Mistake" is almost as good. Not all of the material on Left of the Middle fares as well, however, such as the Alanis Morissette sound-alike "Intuition," but Imbruglia need not worry about being lumped into the copycat category; for the most part, she has a style all her own.© Greg Prato /TiVo

The sophomore effort from Georgia-raised, Britain-based vocalist Kristina Train, 2012's Dark Black is a brooding, atmospheric collection of slow-burn pop songs that put her burnished, sultry croon at the fore. Picking up where 2009's Spilt Milk left off, Dark Black finds Train once again working with British singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt, as well as songwriter/producer Martin Craft. Together, they've come up with an album that builds upon Train's twangy Southern roots layered with a baroque, cinematic aesthetic. Train's vocals are often drenched in an echo-chamber sound, often backed with boomy, resonant percussion, languid piano parts, eerie orchestral sections, shimmering baritone guitar lines, and even some light electronic flourishes. In that sense, the album brings to mind the work of such similarly minded contemporaries as singer/guitarist Richard Hawley and neo-soft rock singer Rumer as much as it does the classic soul-inflected '60s sound of Dusty Springfield. While the songs here are deeply romantic and memorable, they take their time to unfold before giving up any big, melodic hooks -- which they certainly have. Mood setting is clearly a large part of Train's dramatic style, and cuts like the yearning, Roy Orbison-sounding "Dream of Me" and the Jacques Brel-esque ballad "Saturdays Are the Greatest" envelope you with a kind of late-afternoon melancholy, long before they level you with their heartbreaking lyrical poignancy. Ultimately, on Dark Black, Train is a master at keeping us on the edge of our seats, and by the time she presents a song's big pop reveal, as she does on the title track's darkly ironic reappropriation of Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale," she already has us hooked.© Matt Collar /TiVo

This album marked the formal debut of the psychedelic-era Moody Blues; though they'd made a pair of singles featuring new (as of 1966) members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, Days of Future Passed was a lot bolder and more ambitious. What surprises first-time listeners -- and delighted them at the time -- is the degree to which the group shares the spotlight with the London Festival Orchestra without compromising their sound or getting lost in the lush mix of sounds. That's mostly because they came to this album with the strongest, most cohesive body of songs in their history, having spent the previous year working up a new stage act and a new body of material (and working the bugs out of it on-stage), the best of which ended up here. Decca Records had wanted a rock version of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" to showcase its enhanced stereo-sound technology, but at the behest of the band, producer Tony Clarke (with engineer Derek Varnals aiding and abetting) hijacked the project and instead cut the group's new repertory, with conductor/arranger Peter Knight adding the orchestral accompaniment and devising the bridge sections between the songs' and the album's grandiose opening and closing sections. The record company didn't know what to do with the resulting album, which was neither classical nor pop, but following its release in December of 1967, audiences found their way to it as one of the first pieces of heavily orchestrated, album-length psychedelic rock to come out of England in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour albums. What's more, it was refreshingly original, rather than an attempt to mimic the Beatles; sandwiched among the playful lyricism of "Another Morning" and the mysticism of "The Sunset," songs like "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Twilight Time" (which remained in their concert repertory for three years) were pounding rockers within the British psychedelic milieu, and the harmony singing (another new attribute for the group) made the band's sound unique. With "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin" to drive sales, Days of Future Passed became one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era, and one of the most enduringly popular albums of its era.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Expectations for Natalie Imbruglia's debut album, Left of the Middle, were high because of the runaway success of the pre-album single "Torn" during 1997-1998. Fans of the single will be pleased to hear that the album is quite similar in approach and sound to the breakthrough single: laid-back alt-pop with sweetly melodic vocals. Admittedly, some of the material will be seen as pop fluff by certain listeners, but fans of popular latter-day female artists like Paula Cole, Sheryl Crow, and Meredith Brooks will find Imbruglia's debut most enjoyable. What separates Imbruglia from the aforementioned artists is her willingness to experiment with electronic sounds, no doubt courtesy of mixer Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame), which can be heard on such tracks as "Smoke." "Torn" proves to be the best song on the album, with its bouncy acoustic feel, but the pop/rocker "Big Mistake" is almost as good. Not all of the material on Left of the Middle fares as well, however, such as the Alanis Morissette sound-alike "Intuition," but Imbruglia need not worry about being lumped into the copycat category; for the most part, she has a style all her own.© Greg Prato /TiVo

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This album marked the formal debut of the psychedelic-era Moody Blues; though they'd made a pair of singles featuring new (as of 1966) members Justin Hayward and John Lodge, Days of Future Passed was a lot bolder and more ambitious. What surprises first-time listeners -- and delighted them at the time -- is the degree to which the group shares the spotlight with the London Festival Orchestra without compromising their sound or getting lost in the lush mix of sounds. That's mostly because they came to this album with the strongest, most cohesive body of songs in their history, having spent the previous year working up a new stage act and a new body of material (and working the bugs out of it on-stage), the best of which ended up here. Decca Records had wanted a rock version of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" to showcase its enhanced stereo-sound technology, but at the behest of the band, producer Tony Clarke (with engineer Derek Varnals aiding and abetting) hijacked the project and instead cut the group's new repertory, with conductor/arranger Peter Knight adding the orchestral accompaniment and devising the bridge sections between the songs' and the album's grandiose opening and closing sections. The record company didn't know what to do with the resulting album, which was neither classical nor pop, but following its release in December of 1967, audiences found their way to it as one of the first pieces of heavily orchestrated, album-length psychedelic rock to come out of England in the wake of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour albums. What's more, it was refreshingly original, rather than an attempt to mimic the Beatles; sandwiched among the playful lyricism of "Another Morning" and the mysticism of "The Sunset," songs like "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Twilight Time" (which remained in their concert repertory for three years) were pounding rockers within the British psychedelic milieu, and the harmony singing (another new attribute for the group) made the band's sound unique. With "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin" to drive sales, Days of Future Passed became one of the defining documents of the blossoming psychedelic era, and one of the most enduringly popular albums of its era.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

White Lion's Mane Attraction was a commercial disappointment; none of the singles or videos garnered much radio or MTV airplay, and the album's sales dropped off rather quickly. The overall level of songcraft is not quite up to the band's two previous releases, although there are some decent songs here. The cream of the album is gathered on The Best of White Lion, making Mane Attraction necessary only for completists.© Steve Huey /TiVo

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Nate Dogg was ahead of his time, which is severely unfortunate due to mishaps with record company delays and bungled mismanagement. Had the record company in question used their intuition, they could have easily made him one of the biggest stars in their stable. His extremely slick production and smooth vocal delivery were a benchmark in the development of the G-funk sound and fueled many imitators within months of his arrival on the scene. To say Essential is the essential Nate Dogg collection is somewhat accurate, as it takes almost every well-known hit he's ever been on and compiles them all on to one disc. However, curiously absent are the centerpieces of his career to date: the Warren G collaboration that turned into the G-funk anthem "Regulate" and selections from his 2001 release Music & Me. Had these two things been included, Essential would be a more well-rounded representation of the man's career thus far. Instead, it's more for the die-hard fans and those looking to get a deeper picture of Nate Dogg beyond the major-label releases. © Rob Theakston /TiVo

Hooker bounced around between label affiliations like crazy in the 1950s, recording under almost as many fake names as he did labels during that decade. His two lasting record company hookups occurred with Chess in the early 1950s and Vee-Jay later on in the decade. All of Hooker's Chess masters from that decade (he would later record in the '60s for them as well) are here on this two-disc, 31-track collection. Unlike other Chess artists, Hooker did little of his recording in Chicago, preferring to work out of his Detroit home base, where he continued to record for other labels under a variety of pseudonyms. His 1951 Chicago session excepted, the rest of the tracks emanate from Detroit sessions that also saw issuance on the local Gone, H-Q and Fortune labels. This is early John Lee at his solo-guitar, foot-stomping best, featuring boogies and introspective, slow blues that rival his best work. Some of the Detroit tracks reveal inbred distortion that can't be overcome even with modern day noise reduction techniques, but don't let that deter you from sampling some of the best John Lee Hooker available on compact disc for a second. © Cub Koda /TiVo