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

How to better a record like Revolver? Sign off another by the name of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. For many, this is truly the greatest pop and rock music of all time, if not one of the most significant works of art in popular culture from the second half of the twentieth century... After discovering the endless possibilities offered to them in the recording studio, John, Paul, George and Ringo continue their crazy musical experiments. More than ever considered as the ‘fifth Beatle’, producer George Martin runs out a magic carpet of discoveries that would go on to influence the future of pop. When this eighth studio album is released in June 1967, the era is one that has embraced the all-out psychedelic, and this concept album is a true hallucinatory trip (not only for Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds). Like the patchwork of his mythical pocket, Sergeant Pepper's journeys through pure pop, manly rock'n'roll, totally trippy sequences (to near worldly scales), retro songs of nursery rhymes, animal noises and even classical music! On the composition side, the duo of Lennon/McCartney is at the top of its game, delivering new songs that are still influential today. © MZ/Qobuz, Translation/BM

With Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, Christine And The Queens embarks on a long spiritual journey, with Madonna as their guiding high priestess. The two artists met in 2015 during a concert by the American, when Madonna had invited him to go on stage to choreograph a few dance steps. For this album, Christine And the Queens called on her to speak instead of sing. Seduced by the sheer madness of the project, Madonna agreed to take part in three songs (Angels Crying in My Bed, I Met an Angel and Lick the Light Out). Christine And The Queens wanted to salute this iconic voice "which speaks with all the facets inscribed in our consciousness, taking on multiple forms and roles, from the maternal figure to the dominatrix". As for the second feature of the album, the American singer and rapper 070 Shake, who can be heard on True Love and Let Me Touch You Once, makes an appearance. The spiritual form of Paranoïa, Angels, True Love owes a lot to the music produced by Mike Dean (who works with Jay-Z and Beyoncé). Often coated with a trip hop colour that reflects the multiple influences of Christine And The Queens, the tracks cede the place of honour to spectrally high strings and ecstatic electric guitar solos. We also hear a mystical cover of Canon de Pachelbel (Full of Life). Finally, this album is a way for Christine and the Queens to showcase the full range of their voice, which has never been so mixed and reverberated, for it to have maximum effect (A Day in the Water). Paranoia, Angels, True Love can be perceived as the singer's tribute to a highly determined English-speaking pop, but the air of strange musical comedy shows that this resolutely atypical object belongs only to them. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Kacey Musgraves' sixth album, Deeper Well feels like a rewind—not just to her own earlier work, but to a folk-scene era from well before she was born. There are shades of the Mamas and the Papas and the early 1960s Cafe Wha? scene (the album was recorded blocks away, at Greenwich Village’s Electric Lady Studios). It’s not not country, but it’s also far from cowboy-hatted Nashville. Musgraves has described her last record—her "divorce album"—2021's Star-Crossed, as "more dramatic and acerbic, there were a lot more electronic instruments." This time, she's tuning into the world around her, but also trying to figure out the secrets of the cosmos. "My saturn has returned," she sings on the title track—a bit of classic singer-songwriter acoustic pluck that gently tumbles like water over creek rocks—before metaphorically shuddering at someone's "dark energy." Folk-naif "Heart of the Woods" marvels at nature "communicating through the roots of the trees." "I saw a sign or an omen," she declares on "Cardinal," a Hollies-esque number with 12-string guitar and a round-robin bridge. Musgraves has said it's about a real-life pattern of seeing birds and wondering if they were a sign from friend John Prine after the legend passed away in 2020. The bulk of the songs are written with her co-producers Ian Fitchuk, who worked on her last few records, and Daniel Tashian, who also helped out on 2018’s excellent Golden Hour. (It’s no stretch to imagine Star-Crossed never having happened and Deeper Well being the natural progression from Golden Hour.) "The Architect" is the only song here penned with her longtime writing partner Shane McAnally; and yes, it feels a bit more countrified than the others. Musgraves' Texas twang is strong as she questions "are there blueprints or plans?" to life. She adopts a particularly velvet timbre on moody cautionary tale "Lonely Millionaire," which interpolates the song "Kody Blu 31" by Atlanta rapper JID. "Too Good To Be True" borrows from Anna Nalick's "Breathe (2AM)," while "Heaven Is" reimagines a Scottish folk traditional. And Musgraves hasn't abandoned the rebel spirit that got her "Follow Your Arrow" banned from country radio in 2013. "Dinner With Friends" is a dreamy, free-floating gratitude list—"The feeling you feel when you're looking at something you made/ The layers and ruffles in my favorite pink champagne cake"—that calls out "My home state of Texas/ The sky there, the horses and dogs/ But none of their laws." There's not much dynamic range on Deeper Well; Musgraves is in a pleasantly pretty, low-key mood throughout. But there is one stand-out "what was that?!" moment at the bridge of "Anime Eyes," when the love song explodes in a whirlwind psychedelic bridge, as Musgraves breathlessly lets loose with a torrent of sensory emotion: "Ridiculous hazy, crazy, rainbow, explosions of ecstasy ... Happy tears overflowing, lightning bolts so overwhelming!" It's wild and free and DGAF. The album ends, tellingly, on a line from the song of the same name: "Nothing to be scared of." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Could Feist, the Canadian singer, have read Marcel Aymé? Nothing could be less certain, and yet the concept of this sixth album by the Canadian singer has false airs of Les Sabines, one of the most famous short stories by the Montmartre author, published in 1943. Sabine “could, at will, multiply herself and exist simultaneously, in both body and mind, in as many places as she pleased.” In the aptly named Multitudes, Feist realises Marcel Aymé's fantasy, by displaying vocal layering in some of the album’s songs, in particular in Become The Earth. This original concept is also applied in the project visuals (see the Hiding Out In The Open clip). It was during concerts performed after the Covid pandemic that the artist wrote the Multitudes songs, a recording characterised by a wide gap between minimalist folk ballads (Forever Before, Love Who We Are Meant To) and more powerful and exalted tracks like Borrow Trouble. The themes of the songs revolve around a struggle for the search for truth. According to Feist, by digging into the past we can begin to find answers, undoubtedly illustrating why certain pieces have an ancestral flavour: David Ralicke’s traditional flute in Martyr Moves, the questions posed to her ancestors in Calling All The Gods (in which she quotes Homer's Odyssey). Produced by Mocky and Robbie Lackritz, Multitudes is, ultimately, a vocal feat: whether alone facing the microphone or in multiple layers, Feist's timbre has lost none of its original charm, even six years after his previous opus, Pleasure. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz  

Four years after the release of her previous album -- an eternity in her discography -- Ariana Grande made a graceful return to the spotlight with her revealing seventh set, Eternal Sunshine. Mostly a response to the headline-grabbing details of her relationships, as usual, the conceptual journey takes listeners through the dissolution of one union (which ended in divorce) and the slow healing that was aided along by the sparks of another (which generated no small amount of controversy). The bulk of the lyrics are a direct reference to the drama, with Grande taking the high road with poise and class, while leaning into any negative perceptions with a wink and some sass. Those tabloid-fodder moments (like "The Boy Is Mine" and "True Story") add some fuel to the flames; however, Grande makes a concerted effort to maintain focus on personal growth through introspection on tracks like the reflective "I Wish I Hated You" and "Don't Wanna Break Up Again," which humanize her into an everywoman promoting healthy self-care tactics like self-soothing and therapy. For those who had been expecting a full-on, house-influenced raver, an album packed with "Yes, And?" style bops won't be found here. Instead, Grande strikes a balance between the warm, lush R&B tones of Positions and Thank U, Next with the lighter, feel-good fare found on Sweetener. "Yes, And?" is indeed the energetic centerpiece of this album, a blissful dose of dancefloor magic that follows the "Express Yourself"/"Born This Way" lineage of ballroom-inspired empowerment anthems. Though not as buoyant, the shimmering "We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)" is a Robyn-esque slice of neon synths, twinkling production, and throbbing groove, which boosts the bittersweet vulnerability of her lyrics, while the sparkling kiss-off "Bye" keeps the disco revival train chugging along as Grande dances her woes away. Beyond that, Eternal Sunshine sticks close to impeccably produced midtempo songs that highlight her vocal range and the mountain of thoughts she has to get off her chest at such a pivotal stage in her life. It's anything but boring; rather, these tracks hypnotize (the reawakening of "Supernatural"), comfort ("Eternal Sunshine"), and nourish the soul like the titular rays of light ("Imperfect for You"). Closing with the horn-swelled "Ordinary Things," Grande calls on her grandmother Marjorie for some sweet, sage advice about making a relationship last, a touching bit of wisdom to frame the young artist's very adult breakup and the healing, however messy, that followed. After the late-2010s blitz that saw her conquering the charts on an annual basis with output of steadily decreasing quality, the years spent re-centering and growing up were clearly fruitful, resulting in one of her strongest, most cohesive efforts to date. Eternal Sunshine is Grande in peak form, a magical maturation that is elevated, resilient, and confidently restrained.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Ella and Louis is an inspired collaboration, masterminded by producer Norman Granz. Both artists were riding high at this stage in their careers, and Granz assembled a stellar quartet of Oscar Peterson (piano), Buddy Rich (drums), Herb Ellis (guitar) and Ray Brown (bass). Equally inspired was the choice of material, with the gruffness of Armstrong's voice blending like magic with Fitzgerald's stunningly silky delivery. Outstanding are Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek" and "Isn't This a Lovely Day," and everything else works like a dream, with the golden star going to the Gershwin brothers' "They Can't Take That Away from Me." Gentle and sincere, this is deserving of a place in every home.© TiVo

"Blinding Lights" artistically and commercially was so optimal for Abel Tesfaye that it quickly became his signature song, and was only two years old when Billboard announced that it had rocketed past Chubby Checker's "The Twist" to claim the title of all-time number one hit. For the follow-up to "Blinding Lights" parent album After Hours, Tesfaye delves deeper into the early- to mid-'80s pop aesthetic. He resurfaces with a conceptual sequel designed as a broadcast heard by a motorist stuck in a purgatorial tunnel. The primary collaborators are "Blinding Lights" co-producers Max Martin and Oscar Holter, plus fellow After Hours cohort Daniel Lopatin, whose airwaves-themed 2020 LP Magic Oneohtrix Point Never was executive produced by Tesfaye. Instead of scrambled voices like those heard on the OPN album, Dawn FM features recurrent announcements from Jim Carrey as a serene and faintly creepy character, or maybe himself, intonating end-of-life entertainment and counsel. The other unlikely appearances -- Quincy Jones with a spoken autobiographical interlude, Beach Boy Bruce Johnston somewhere in the cocksure "how it's going" outlier "Here We Go...Again" -- are ostentatious. In the main, this is a space for Tesfaye to fully indulge his frantic romantic side as his co-conspirators whip up fluorescent throwback Euro-pop with muscle and nuance. Tesfaye's almost fathomless vocal facility elevates even the most rudimentary expressions of co-dependency, despair, regret, and obsession, and he helps it all go down easier with station ID jingles and an amusingly hyped-up ad for "a compelling work of science fiction" called (the) "After Life." The set peaks early with a sequence of dejected post-disco jams that writhe, percolate, and chug. Most of these songs surpass the bulk of Daft Punk's similarly backward-gazing Random Access Memories, projecting the same lust for life with underlying existential doom as Italo disco nuggets such as Ryan Paris' "Dolce Vita." Toward the end of that first-half stretch, Tesfaye reaffirms his R&B roots and affinity for Michael Jackson with a cut built from Alicia Myers' 1981 gospel boogie classic "I Want to Thank You." After that, it slows down and stretches out a bit to varying effect, dipping into Japanese city pop for the bittersweet and remorseful "Out of Time" and edging ever so achingly toward Latin freestyle with "Don't Break My Heart." Just before Carrey's epilogue, Tesfaye and company pick up the pace with "Less Than Zero." Rather than use the title as a prompt to sink back into detailing debauchery, Tesfaye makes the song this album's "Scared to Live," a sentimental ballad that's hard to resist. © Andy Kellman /TiVo

Hailed for songwriting skill and an unironic embrace of outlaw country, Chris Stapleton, on his fourth album, puts his vocal versatility on impressive display. Supported by a moody, shadowy string section, he unfurls a torch-singer side on "Cold," a heartbreaker that lives up to its name in feel and lyrics—"Why you got to be so cold/ Why you got to go and cut me like a knife/ Put our love on ice." The lowdown-and-dirty guitar of "Whiskey Sunrise" is matched for power by a wailing blues delivery from Stapleton. And he cuts loose with a Southern-rock howl on the Tom Petty-esque swamp stomp "Devil Always Made Me Think Twice." An early Petty influence is alive and present across Starting Over, with Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench guesting on guitar and Hammond B3, respectively. Stapleton co-wrote the simmer-to-fury "Watch You Burn" with Campbell, and the guitarist's signature style is front-and-center on "Arkansas," a heavy Southern-rock blues burner celebrating the underrated beauty of the Ozarks. The ghost of Guy Clark also blesses the sessions, as Stapleton covers a back-to-back shot of the songwriter's "Worry B Gone" and "Old Friends" and former with a velocity that makes Willie Nelson's gentle version sound cute. (A flow-like-the-creek cover of John Fogerty's "Joy of My Life" is more faithful.) As on previous releases, Stapleton's wife and collaborator Morgane Stapleton lends angelic vocal harmonies, sweetening the sobering, Kristofferson-sounding ballad "When I'm With You," which find her husband taking stock of middle age and where it goes from there: "I'm 40 years old/ And it looks like the end of the rainbow ain't no pot of gold." She also shows up on that song's spiritual flip side and the album's title track, an optimistic, stripped-down guitar jangle: "I can be your lucky penny/ You can be my four-leaf clover.” Indeed, for all his tough-guy appearance, there's always been a tender side to Stapleton, and he shows every bit of it on "Maggie's Song," an absolute tearjerker about a found dog's life and death that's teed up and ready for a pickup truck commercial. (Nothing wrong with that.) And lest anyone ever doubt his outlaw tendencies, Stapleton ends on an absolutely gorgeous kiss-off to the country capital: "So long Nashville, Tennessee/ You can't have what's left of me." © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Dido’s fifth studio album Still on My Mind was produced with her elder brother and long-time partner in crime Rollo Armstrong (who is also co-founder of the electronic group, Faithless). “It was made in such an easy way, all the vocals recorded on the sofa, a lot of it recorded at home”, the famous performer of the hits Thank You and Here With Me explained. Over the course of 12 songs the two artists tried to encapsulate all the musical styles they loved, from 90’s dance and dream pop to folk and hip-hop. Putting the finishing touches to this colourful array of genres are stunning background vocals (Give You Up) and a melancholic piano (Walking By). The lyrics of the album generally revolve around the theme of love, whether in a positive light relating to the power of music (You Don’t Need a God) or being hurt by someone (Give You Up). Dido (whose real name is Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong), dedicated this collection of songs to her young son which is perhaps the reason why these tracks almost seem like lullabies, especially Still on My Mind and the beautiful melody in Some Kind of Love. Accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar, her gentle voice performs wonders. © Nicolas Magenham/Qobuz

Not as well-known as his frequent duet partner (and former employer) Emmylou Harris, nor as renowned as other Texas troubadours like Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell remains a vitally creative forefather in the Americana scene. Crowell, who was also once Johnny Cash's son-in-law, found himself to be an ill fit for the mainstream country machine in the 1970s, but has remained open to new paths to creativity as evidenced by this collaboration with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. Recorded at the Loft, the band's Chicago studio, these sessions are based on Crowell, who at 72 retains an expressive voice, playing it straight, most conspicuously on a lovely, respectful voice-and-acoustic guitar cover of Townes Van Zandt's "No Place to Fall." In the bluesy "Oh Miss Claudia" Crowell leans on his Houston heritage in a salute to his wife, singer Claudia Church. A collaboration with Ashley McBryde keeps Crowell in touch with the work of younger artists. And thanks to buzzy guitar, "Ever the Dark" lives in a convincing rock groove. Raised in the school of classic singer-songwriters, Crowell ends the album with "Ready to Move On," a summation of his current state of mind. As for Tweedy's influence, the melding of talents here works; he's a light but perceptible presence throughout and Crowell is too established as an artist to let anything change him or his art that dramatically. The recording is sharp, clear, and well-mixed. While their songwriting collaboration "Everything at Once," in which they swap vocal choruses is likable enough, it's in the version of "You're Supposed To Be Feeling Good" that the producer's influence is most audible.  Written by Crowell and featured on Emmylou Harris' 1976 Luxury Liner album when he was a member of her band, this "Wilco-ized" version features changed phrasings and chorus chords, and a more abrupt ending that gives it an overall sunnier hue.  None of these updates are outlandish or in bad taste but they do change the song's trajectory. It's a brave experiment many songwriters would never have had the confidence to try, and a nod to Crowell's continued relevance in the Americana conversation. © Robert Baird/Qobuz