Like everybody else, Lana Del Rey is playing hide-and-seek with quarantine. For her seventh album, the New Yorker based in Los Angeles has opted for hushed intimacy, bedroom melodies and confessional arrangements. With Chemtrails Over the Country Club, her pop is folkier than ever, although the echo and reverb in which her exquisite, sensual and hypnotic voice basks set her high above the clouds. This folk idiom fascinates her to the point that she closes out this record (with some help from Natalie Mering aka Weyes Blood and Zella Day) with a magnificent cover of Joni Mitchell's For Free, taken from her album Ladies of the Canyon (1970). There are also those guitars with an air of the Laurel Canyon 70's scene about them on Not All Who Wander Are Lost, and the equally pure guitar sounds that open Yosemite. As usual, Lana Del Rey takes out her pen to decry the torments of celebrity and the star system, starting with White Dress which opens the album, regretting the good old days when she was a barmaid, unknown and listening to Sun Ra, Kings Of Leon and the White Stripes "when they were white hot". Further on, she offers up more references to the music history as on Breaking Up Slowly (a duet with Nikki Lane) where she addresses the marital storms between those two legends of country music, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. On song after song, this solitary amazon soldiers on, not battling for any particular cause, just doing what is right by her own lights ("Well, I don't care what they think. Drag racing my little red sports car. I'm not unhinged or unhappy, I'm just wild"). Chemtrails Over the Country Club shows above all that she excels in the art of storytelling, wielding her tweezers to fine-tune every detail of her lyrics. At 35, Lana Del Rey has arguably released her freest and most accomplished album. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

On Be Yourself Tonight, Eurythmics' most commercially successful and hit-laden album, the duo meticulously blended the new wave electronic elements that dominated their previous sets with the harder straight-edged rock and soul that would dominate later sets to come up with a near-perfect pop album. This disc scored no less than four hit singles and kept them a mainstay on MTV's play lists during the channel's heyday. Fusing pop, soul, rock, electronic beats, and even gospel, this is arguably the duo's finest moment. The first hit, "Would I Lie to You," is a straight-forward rocker, complete with great guitar licks, a soulful horn section, and Annie Lennox sounding as vicious and vivacious as ever. The second single, which was a huge chart topper in Europe, "There Must Be an Angel," is nothing short of shimmering beauty, with Lennox providing truly angelic vocals and Stevie Wonder lending an enchanting harmonica solo. Aretha Franklin lends her powerhouse pipes for the duet "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves," which has gone on to become an immortal feminist anthem. From the soulful electronic beats (a rarity) in "It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)" to the beauty of the Elvis Costello duet "Adrian" to the pain and longing of the sorrowful rocker "Better to Have Lost in Love (Than Never to Have Loved at All)," this album runs a wide array of musical styles, each song standing tall on its own two feet. This disc is, without a doubt, one of the best rock/pop albums from the 1980s and one of the grandest, most creative albums delivered by the ever-appealing and innovative duo of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. A true classic.© Jose Promis /TiVo

With the confidence and determination of a seasoned vet, English-Albanian singer/songwriter Dua Lipa crafted a delightful collection of catchy pop gems where the songs only serve to highlight her vocal prowess. Lithe enough to avoid production overkill and containing just enough substance to nourish, Dua Lipa arrived after years of studio time and six big singles (three of which became U.K. Top 40 hits). The album is front-loaded with those highlights, creating a rush of dancefloor intensity with "Hotter Than Hell," "Be the One," "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)," and the duet with Miguel, "Lost in Your Light." The second half of the LP shines an extra spotlight on Lipa's voice, which, to some extent, can echo the control and power of Adele and Sia. "Garden" is a sweeping, soulful number that does just that, combining the dramatics of a slow-burning Sia ballad with Adele's delivery. "No Goodbyes" is another emotional journey, one of the handful of absolutely yearning and pained confessions from Lipa's broken heart. The acoustic R&B "Thinking 'Bout You" smolders, a lovelorn lament that finds Lipa exhausting her chemical outlets in an attempt to forget a past romance. In a similar vein, "New Rules" is all house-inflected shine, a cautionary list that cleverly warns "if you're under him, you're not over him." In addition to Miguel, a pair of other guests contribute additional highlights. The MNEK-produced kiss-off "IDGAF" is a cheeky, Ed Sheeran-esque singalong that provides a perfect anthem for anyone who has ever been burned by love. "Homesick" -- written by Chris Martin -- could be a direct sequel to Coldplay's 2016 single "Everglow." The delicate ballad reveals Lipa's vulnerability and softness, the defenses of studio production stripped away, leaving only Lipa, Martin, and a twinkling piano. Such exposure isn't found elsewhere on the rest of the album, which is mostly concerned with self-empowerment and Lipa's refreshingly defiant attitude. It's moments like this one that strike such a satisfying balance on Dua Lipa, an excellent first effort from a budding pop star.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

It wasn't noted much at the time, but founding keyboardist Jesse Carmichael sat out Maroon 5's 2012 album Overexposed -- a circumstance that just happened to coincide with Adam Levine capitalizing on his Voice-fueled stardom. Overexposed and over-filled with guest producers and songwriters drafted to compensate for the absent Carmichael, rapper Wiz Khalifa, reliable Swedish hitmakers Max Martin & Shellback, and icy OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder gave the group a steely sleekness to suit contemporary charts. Some of this is retained on V, the 2014 record that marks Carmichael's return to the group, partially because all those guests save Khalifa return for a second helping. The absence of the rapper suggests Maroon 5 aren't quite as concerned with sounding youthful as they were last time around, which is generally true. Some tracks maintain the glossy veneer that overwhelmed Overexposed -- not entirely a surprise with Martin billed as the record's executive producer -- and, despite some unnecessary vocal processing on Levine scattered throughout the record, these are largely the ones featuring returning guests: Tedder co-writes and co-produces the album's lead single, "Maps," a song where Levine's Sting mannerisms steamroll the hooks," while Shellback helms "Animals," "In Your Pocket," and "Feelings," with all but the last placing emphasis on brittle beats. Elsewhere, the vibe shifts slightly back to the soulful pop that's remained at Maroon 5's core since the beginning, here given an ever so slight maturation to balance the modern moves heard on the rest of the record. Sometimes, the group achieves a delicate balance between the two extremes -- "It Was Always You," "New Love," and the aforementioned "Feelings" -- but the best moments on V are when Maroon 5 embrace the tuneful, slightly soulful adult contemporary pop band they've always been, as they do on "Sugar," "Coming Back for You," and the Gwen Stefani duet "My Heart Is Open."© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

As Mehldau explains in his liner note for the album, "Although it totals around 300 minutes, the order of songs is not arbitrary, and I have tried to tell a story from beginning to end in the way I've sequenced it." He continues, "There is a theme and character given to each four-side set."Of the Dark/Light theme, he says, "In concerts, I find that I contrast dark and light emotional energies and highlight the way they depend on each other. Sides 1–4 focus on this dichotomy in pairs, beginning with the dark energy of Jeff Buckley's 'Dream Brother,' which is followed by the grace of Lennon/McCartney's 'Blackbird.'" He further says, "Although the songs on Sides 5–8 (The Concert) come from different concerts, on this set, I arranged them in a sequence similar to that I would perform in a single concert in 2010–11," he continues."The third set could be thought of as Intermezzo and Rückblick–like in character. I'm thinking of the penultimate movement of Brahms's Third Piano Sonata with that title. Rückblick means a look backward, perhaps a reappraisal. Brahms's Intermezzo movement was a look back at what had taken place in his Sonata before moving to the final movement. Here, the listener is invited to look back to music that was recorded 10 or more years ago, in 2004 and 2005." Mehldau explains that his approach to the sequence of the fourth set "is to focus on the rub between the keys of E minor and E major. I return to the theme of dark and light from the first set, now allowing the listener to focus on how 'dark' and 'light' might manifest in tonality."Brad Mehldau played in a number of different ensembles, including label mate Joshua Redman's quartet, before becoming a bandleader himself in the 1990s. The Brad Mehldau Trio made eight recordings for Warner Bros., including the five Art of the Trio albums with former drummer Jorge Rossy (released as a boxed set by Nonesuch in 2011). The pianist's years with Nonesuch have been equally productive, beginning in 2004 with the solo disc Live in Tokyo and including five trio records— Day is Done, House on Hill, Live, Ode, and Where Do You Start—as well as a collaboration with soprano Renée Fleming, Love Sublime; a chamber ensemble album, Highway Rider; two collaborations with label mate Pat Metheny, Metheny Mehldau and Quartet; a CD/DVD set of live solo performances, Live in Marciac; and collaborations with Kevin Hays and Patrick Zimmerli on Modern Music. Last year, Nonesuch released the debut from Mehldau's electric duo with Mark Guiliana, Mehliana: Taming the Dragon. He also produced Redman's 2013 release Walking Shadows.Mehldau has performed around the world at a steady pace for 25 years, with his trio, with other collaborators, and as a solo pianist, building a large and loyal audience. "It is actually strange, this whole business of performance. It is a direct, intense kind of empathy with a group of total strangers that lasts around 90 minutes. And then, it's over, and everyone goes home. I go back to a hotel room and go to bed," the pianist says in his 10 Years Solo Live note. "Something happened, but what was most vital about it can't really be put in words. It is sweet, kind of bittersweet. In any case, it is not enough to say that the different audiences were important for the creation of this music. They were absolutely necessary; they were pivotal. Without those audiences, this music would not exist in the way it does."

Arguably one of Sparks' best albums, 1974's Kimono My House finds the brothers Mael (Ron wrote most the songs and played keyboards, while Russell was the singing frontman) ingeniously playing their guitar- and keyboard-heavy pop mix on 12 consistently fine tracks. Adding a touch of bubblegum, and even some of Zappa's own song-centric experimentalism to the menu, the Maels spruce up a sleazy Sunset Strip with a bevy of Broadway-worthy performances here: as the band expertly revs up the glam rock-meets-Andrew Lloyd Webber backdrops, Russell sends things into space with his operatic vocals and ever-clever lyrics. And besides two of their breakthrough hits (the English chart-toppers "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" and "Amateur Hour"), the album features one of their often-overlooked stunners, "Here in Heaven." Essential.© Stephen Cook /TiVo

Dirty Loops' full-length debut album, 2014's Loopified, showcases the Swedish trio's ambitious jazz, prog rock, R&B, and electronic dance-inflected pop music. Formed in 2008, Dirty Loops feature the talents of vocalist/keyboardist Jonah Nilsson, bassist Henrik Linder, and drummer Aaron Mellergårdh. All three members studied jazz and classical music in college and spent several years working as session musicians before forming Dirty Loops as an outlet to express their own eclectic, far-reaching musical vision. Working with manager/producer Andreas Carlsson (as well as executive producer David Foster), the group has put together an album that's one part jazz fusion trio, one part electronic dance outfit, and one part contemporary pop act. Impressively, it also ends up being much more than the sum of its parts. Dirty Loops certainly have chops to spare and layer each track with enough jazz-informed chord progressions, arpeggiated six-string basslines, frenetic drum fills, and melismatic vocal breakdowns to fill any number of Stevie Wonder albums (to name-drop an obvious influence). Thankfully, they also don't forget to bring the pop melody, and cuts like the leadoff "Hit Me," the energetic club anthem "Sexy Girls," and the buoyant "Take on the World" grab you with immediately infectious hooks built largely around Nilsson's highly resonant, charismatic croon. In reality, the tracks on Loopified aren't really all that dissimilar to any number of modern pop hits from Justin Timberlake or Bruno Mars. The difference is primarily in Dirty Loops' high level of technical skill and jazz-infused progressions that lend a deeper harmonic nuance and maturity to their songs, even when they are singing about "sexy girls in the club." Ironically, besides a few cheeky lyrical asides, there's not too much that's very dirty or even musically messy about Dirty Loops here. On the contrary, Loopified is an innovative, pure musical vision of jazzy, infectious, crystalline-produced, club-ready pop.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Like any Ryan Adams album, Love Is Hell comes with a back-story, one that is carefully calculated to construct the enfant terrible's self-myth. Love Is Hell was intended to be the official follow-up to 2001's Gold -- the album that was not a collection of demos (that was 2002's Demolition), or the recorded-but-shelved albums 48 Hours or The Suicide Handbook, or even his alleged song-by-song cover of the Strokes' Is This It. Longtime Smiths fan that he is, Adams teamed up with John Porter -- the man who produced The Smiths, Meat Is Murder, and part of The Queen Is Dead -- with the intention of creating his own mope-rock album, hence the title Love Is Hell. Americana label that it is, Lost Highway balked at releasing a stylized tribute to Mancunian rainy-day bedsit music and didn't release it, encouraging Adams to record a different album, presumably one more in line with the label's taste. In the press and on the web, our hero spread stories about how the label claimed it was "too depressing" and "dark," thereby cultivating the myth that he's a maverick genius, while the label cheerfully countered with the defense that it just knew that our boy could do better. Eventually, a compromise was arranged: Adams kicked out a new album, the self-descriptive Rock N Roll, while releasing the equally self-descriptive Love Is Hell as two EPs, the first hitting the streets the same day as the "official" album, the second arriving a month later. Five months after that, the full-length Love Is Hell, containing both EPs plus "Anybody Wanna Take Me Home" from Rock N Roll, was released, negating the worth of the individual EPs (which were, after all, merely two halves of one album) and likely irritating legions of fans who bought both EPs.While it took longer than necessary to have the whole bloody affair of Love Is Hell released as its own entity, it's hard not to view it as a companion piece to Rock N Roll, particularly because they're two sides of the same coin. In effect, both Rock N Roll and Love Is Hell are tribute albums, each a conscious aping of a style and sound, both designed to showcase how versatile and masterful Adams is. But since he's a synthesist more than a stylist, Adams, for all his bluster, winds up as a Zelig-styled character, taking on the characteristics of the artists he's emulating -- something that can be sonically pleasurable, but far from being the substantive work of mad genius that he relentlessly sells himself as. If Love Is Hell has the edge over Rock N Roll, it's because it's more carefully considered in its production and writing, and he manages to hide his allusions better than he does on Rock, where every title and chord progression plays like an homage. Here, he shoots for the Smiths and winds up in Jeff Buckley territory tempered with a dash of Radiohead circa The Bends. To claim that it is a dark affair is to criticize its milieu more than its substance, because the songs have the form and feel of brooding, atmospheric mope-rock, not the blood and guts of the music. Adams is fairly adept at crafting that mood -- anybody who's such a fan of rock history should be -- sometimes relying more on a blend of attitude and atmosphere instead of songwriting. Such is the fate of a stylized tribute to a style with specific sonic attributes, but Adams also does come up with a clutch of effective songs: the epic sprawl of "Political Scientist," which captures him at his best Buckley; the title track, which is nearly anthemic with its ringing guitars; the understated "World War 24"; the gently propulsive "This House Is Not for Sale," which would fit nicely between a Julian Cope and Morrissey track on a college radio show from the late '80s. "English Girls Approximately" is an effective Bob Dylan and Paul Westerberg fusion, and the closer, "Hotel Chelsea Nights," is one of his best songs, a mildly anthemic soulful anthem with vague overtones of "Purple Rain." Nevertheless, it's telling that the best song here is a cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall." It's a well-done cover but not much of a reinvention -- Adams uses Noel Gallagher's solo acoustic version of the song as a template, replacing strumming with fingerpicked guitars and altering the phrasing slightly -- which is why the song itself shines through so strongly: it resonates how the other songs are intended to, but don't. While it doesn't fatally hurt Love Is Hell, since it is an effective mood piece, it does undercut it, revealing how Adams delivers the sizzle but not the steak.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

With Back for the Attack, Dokken's fourth album, they continued to allow their catchy guitar melodies to highlight the record, rather than any of the lyrics and/or songwriting. The band sounds tighter than they ever have before, and Don Dokken and George Lynch remain at the top of their game. While the songs on the album fail to be as catchy as "In My Dreams" or "Just Got Lucky," they remain fun and enjoyable. Back for the Attack certainly isn't Dokken's greatest album, yet it remains a worthwhile listen -- unfortunately, however, it was their last enjoyable studio release.© Barry Weber /TiVo

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Five years separate Beautiful Trauma from its predecessor, 2012's The Truth About Love -- a half-decade P!nk generally acknowledges in lyrical themes, not musical terms. Chalk this up to a general maturation -- the singer/songwriter is a happily married mother of two, creeping up on her 40th birthday -- but her decision to do little more than nod at contemporary musical trends is deliberate, a reflection of how her hits and audience have crept toward the adult contemporary charts. P!nk isn't entirely ready to enter Adele territory: She's still as liable to curse as croon, she makes the occasional feint toward EDM pop, and has the sense to hire Jack Antonoff, the hitmaker du jour of 2017, as a collaborator. These modern moments are bunched up at the beginning of the record, coalescing around "Revenge" -- a catchy bit of clean funk mussed up by a wildly inappropriate Eminem verse that seems culled from outtakes of The Eminem Show -- giving the false impression that Beautiful Trauma is a livelier album than it is, but once the record slides into the piano-anchored ballad "But We Lost It," it enters an extended stretch where diva showstoppers alternate with delicate folk tunes and icy midtempo pop. Every one of these styles is executed well -- the productions are crisp, not chilly, they're undergirded with genuine feeling that P!nk conveys with her measured performances -- but the cumulative feel is somewhat less than the individual parts. Maybe the culprit is that Beautiful Trauma feels too controlled, with every element in its right place. There's none of the emotional mess that has enlivened some of P!nk's best work, and while this sense of calm may be well earned, it does result in a tamer record.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

With the confidence and determination of a seasoned vet, English-Albanian singer/songwriter Dua Lipa crafted a delightful collection of catchy pop gems where the songs only serve to highlight her vocal prowess. Lithe enough to avoid production overkill and containing just enough substance to nourish, Dua Lipa arrived after years of studio time and six big singles (three of which became U.K. Top 40 hits). The album is front-loaded with those highlights, creating a rush of dancefloor intensity with "Hotter Than Hell," "Be the One," "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)," and the duet with Miguel, "Lost in Your Light." The second half of the LP shines an extra spotlight on Lipa's voice, which, to some extent, can echo the control and power of Adele and Sia. "Garden" is a sweeping, soulful number that does just that, combining the dramatics of a slow-burning Sia ballad with Adele's delivery. "No Goodbyes" is another emotional journey, one of the handful of absolutely yearning and pained confessions from Lipa's broken heart. The acoustic R&B "Thinking 'Bout You" smolders, a lovelorn lament that finds Lipa exhausting her chemical outlets in an attempt to forget a past romance. In a similar vein, "New Rules" is all house-inflected shine, a cautionary list that cleverly warns "if you're under him, you're not over him." In addition to Miguel, a pair of other guests contribute additional highlights. The MNEK-produced kiss-off "IDGAF" is a cheeky, Ed Sheeran-esque singalong that provides a perfect anthem for anyone who has ever been burned by love. "Homesick" -- written by Chris Martin -- could be a direct sequel to Coldplay's 2016 single "Everglow." The delicate ballad reveals Lipa's vulnerability and softness, the defenses of studio production stripped away, leaving only Lipa, Martin, and a twinkling piano. Such exposure isn't found elsewhere on the rest of the album, which is mostly concerned with self-empowerment and Lipa's refreshingly defiant attitude. It's moments like this one that strike such a satisfying balance on Dua Lipa, an excellent first effort from a budding pop star.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

A duet classic, and perhaps the most popular album Roberta Flack made. Their single "Where Is the Love" dominated urban contemporary radio for almost the entire year, while "You've Got a Friend" was just as influential and was later covered by numerous artists (of course they didn't write it, but a lot of folks thought they did). It did so well that Flack eventually did other duet material and also became very close to Hathaway.© Ron Wynn /TiVo