Joss Stone launched her career by singing soul standards so when it came time for a reboot she went back to the beginning, dusting off the old blueprint for The Soul Sessions and following it to a T, right down to replicating its title and giving a contemporary alt-rock hit a soul makeover. First time around, the intent was to prove that teenage Joss had soul bona fides, but in 2012 the purpose of The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2 is to signal how she's done messing around with fleeting fashions and is getting back down to the real business. Stone doesn't dig deep into the crates this time around, nor does she stick to deep soul; she chooses to mine hits from the early '70s, favoring songs by the Dells, the Chi-Lites, and Sylvia, giving these smooth tunes a bit of a polished Southern spin. And "professional" is the operative word here: this is the work of seasoned veterans who play with every note falling neatly into place, stretching just enough to show off their chops but never enough to alter the DNA of a song. The exception to the rule is, of course, "The High Road," a Broken Bells song refashioned to sound old, thereby occupying the same space as Joss' White Stripes "Fell in Love with a Boy" cover did on the first Soul Sessions. This is the song to prove that Stone isn't living in the past but rather she's seeing the future through a retro prism that turns everything into something that feels classic. That Stone remains a bit too theatrical a singer, overemphasizing every phrase, is almost besides the point, as she's a diva and is expected to sing with more gusto than the song requires just as long as the overall package feels right. And, for the most part, The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2 does feel right: it has the form and sound of classic soul while never acknowledging that R&B continued to develop past, say, 1972. For an audience that agrees with that thesis, this is fun.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Joss Stone launched her career by singing soul standards so when it came time for a reboot she went back to the beginning, dusting off the old blueprint for The Soul Sessions and following it to a T, right down to replicating its title and giving a contemporary alt-rock hit a soul makeover. First time around, the intent was to prove that teenage Joss had soul bona fides, but in 2012 the purpose of The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2 is to signal how she's done messing around with fleeting fashions and is getting back down to the real business. Stone doesn't dig deep into the crates this time around, nor does she stick to deep soul; she chooses to mine hits from the early '70s, favoring songs by the Dells, the Chi-Lites, and Sylvia, giving these smooth tunes a bit of a polished Southern spin. And "professional" is the operative word here: this is the work of seasoned veterans who play with every note falling neatly into place, stretching just enough to show off their chops but never enough to alter the DNA of a song. The exception to the rule is, of course, "The High Road," a Broken Bells song refashioned to sound old, thereby occupying the same space as Joss' White Stripes "Fell in Love with a Boy" cover did on the first Soul Sessions. This is the song to prove that Stone isn't living in the past but rather she's seeing the future through a retro prism that turns everything into something that feels classic. That Stone remains a bit too theatrical a singer, overemphasizing every phrase, is almost besides the point, as she's a diva and is expected to sing with more gusto than the song requires just as long as the overall package feels right. And, for the most part, The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2 does feel right: it has the form and sound of classic soul while never acknowledging that R&B continued to develop past, say, 1972. For an audience that agrees with that thesis, this is fun.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

French DJ David Guetta’s R&B-meets-house formula had topped the charts around the globe by the time his 2011 effort, Nothing But the Beat, saw release, so it shouldn’t be surprising that this star-studded collection of big-room tunes plays like a hits collection. His previous album, One Love, felt the same way, with every track a potential single, but the differences are in each album’s appropriate title. This one plays like Now That’s What I Call Guetta 2, with Snoop Dogg acting as an avenging disco Doggfather on the Auto-Tuned “Sweat,” while Nicki Minaj does a pole dance on the operating table for “Turn Me On,” which turns a doctor visit into double entendre overflow. Jennifer Hudson guests on the cut “Night of Your Life,” making it the diva uplift track you’d expect from such a title, and Sia’s “Titanium” is a decent stab at Coldplay-for-the-house-music set. But something’s missing, something along the lines of “When Love Takes Over.” Without that soulful kind of anchor, Nothing But the Beat offers the same experience as one of Guetta’s numerous remix sets, which is a compliment if you’re a dancefloor and a caution if you’re a pair of headphones.© David Jeffries /TiVo

One year after ...But Seriously, England's best-selling album in the year of its release, Phil Collins followed up with a live worldwide tour. The former Genesis drummer was at the height of his fame, and this Berlin concert on July 15th, 1990, perfectly documents his impressive performances from that time. Surrounded by four virtuosos (Leland Sklar on bass, Daryl Stuermer on guitar, Chester Thompson on drums and Brad Cole on keyboards), here Phil Collins reveals a kind of ‘best of’ album with the hits Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now), One More Night, In the Air Tonight as well as a rather muscular cover of You Can't Hurry Love by The Supremes. Everything here is XL! Brass, rhythm and melodies! And the remastered edition of this live album in 24-Bit Hi-Res quality makes the experience even more powerful. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

Phil Collins certainly has enough hits to fill out a double-disc compilation -- in the U.K. he had 25 Top 40 singles and he reached the Billboard Top 40 21 times in the U.S., with many of them overlapping -- but the 2016 set The Singles doesn't march through these hits in chronological order. Opening with "Easy Lover," his 1985 duet with Earth, Wind & Fire's Philip Bailey, this 33-track compilation happily hopscotches through the years. Such non-chronological sequencing does mean certain hits are saved for the greatest emotional impact -- naturally, "Take Me Home" closes out the proceedings -- but it also focuses attention on songs that weren't blockbusters, whether it's such meditative turn-of-the-'90s adult contemporary hits as "That's Just the Way It Is" or the brooding early single "Thru These Walls." Ultimately, this forced perspective is why The Singles is something more than just a collection of big hits: it helps illustrate that Collins' solo catalog ran deeper than "In the Air Tonight," "You Can't Hurry Love," "Sussudio," "One More Night," "Against All Odds," and "Another Day in Paradise."© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

It is indeed satisfying to see the music of Eric Coates on classical best-seller charts, where this one landed in the late spring of 2023. For so many decades, Coates was neglected, but championing by the conductor John Wilson, here with the BBC Philharmonic in fine form, has begun to change the situation. One thing that distinguishes Coates from most of his fellow composers of light music is that he undertook compositions in larger forms, and this album includes several splendid examples. Much of it is given over to Cinderella in 11 concise but hugely evocative sections illustrating episodes in the famous tale. Consider "The Clock Strikes Twelve," with not bells but timpani strokes. Coates' abilities as a musical portraitist are in evidence not once but twice, with the broad types of The Three Men ("The Man from the Country," "The Man About Town," and "The Man from the Sea," a riot of chantey-like music), and then at the end with The Three Elizabeths ("Queen Elizabeth I," "Elizabeth of Glamis," and, in 1944, "Princess Elizabeth"). There are also short pieces including, to raise the curtain, The Television March. There is not a dull moment on the album, and the next step for this delightful music would be its inclusion in a broad range of symphonic programs. © James Manheim /TiVo

Repeating their treatment of California country music icons Merle Haggard and Buck Owens on 2013's Bakersfield, singer and guitarist Vince Gill and pedal steel player Paul Franklin now pay eloquent tribute to Ray Price. Born in Texas with a passionate baritone voice, Price was a huge presence in country music by the early 1970s. Along the way he roomed with Hank Williams and led a band, The Cherokee Cowboys, that became a launching pad for talents like Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck and Roger Miller. On Sweet Memories: The Music Of Ray Price & The Cherokee Cowboys, Gill decided to avoid Price's best-known hits like "City Lights," "Crazy Arms," and "For the Good Times" in favor of deeper tracks. Bereft country weepers were a Price specialty, and the opener "One More Time," sets the tone as the narrator inevitably tries and fails to do right: "And I make a vow each time you leave that this will draw the line/ Then you come back and just like now I'm falling one more time." At the heart of Sweet Memories is the always amazing instrument that is Vince Gill's voice. Debuting with Pure Prairie League in 1979, Gill spent time with Rodney Crowell's Cherry Bombs and Emmylou Harris's Hot Band before going solo. A triple threat who besides his pure high tenor voice is also a virtuoso guitar player and an accomplished songwriter, Gill has won 21 Grammy Awards and over the last several decades has become one of the most respected elders in the genre. With a band that includes Stuart Duncan on fiddle, John Jarvis on piano and Andrea Zonn on harmony vocals, Gill shows off his lesser-heard lower range on "You Wouldn't Know Love" as Frankin's pedal steel weeps behind them. While a rendition of "Danny Boy"—the Irish lament that became one of Price's signature hits in 1967—predictably becomes a Gill vocal showpiece, it's the title track that provides this set's most moving moments. Written by fellow Texan Mickey Newbury and recorded by Price in 1971, this version soars with Gill singing his own harmonies and includes low-key but imaginative solos by both principals. Another high-class look back from a current country hero with a welcome passion for the music's glorious past.  © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Its title might lead one to think this was a compilation, but it wasn't -- rather, More Hits by the Supremes is merely a valid presumption of its worth. It was also the original group's third highest charting album of their five years on Motown, and came not a moment too soon. The Supremes were doing incredibly well as a singles act, but not since Where Did Our Love Go had any of their LPs done particularly well on the pop charts; even a well-intentioned Sam Cooke-tribute album recorded early in 1965, which ought to have done better, had only reached number 75 (though it had gotten to number five on the R&B LP charts). "Stop! In the Name of Love" and "Back in My Arms Again" helped drive the sales, but those singles had been out six and three months earlier at the time this album surfaced -- listeners were delighted to find those singles surrounded by their ethereal rendition of the ballad "Whisper You Love Me Boy" with its exquisitely harmonized middle chorus; the gently soulful, sing-song-y "The Only Time I'm Happy"; and the sweetly dramatic "He Holds His Own" (with a gorgeous and very prominent piano accompaniment). The material dated across six months of work, from late 1964 through the spring of 1965 (apart from "Ask Any Girl," the B-side of "Baby Love," which was cut in the spring of 1964), and showed that Motown could put a Supremes album together piecemeal around the Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team and place the trio right up at the top reaches of the charts, in the company of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, et al. Its release also opened a floodgate of killer albums by the trio -- overlooking their 1965 LP of Christmas songs, they were destined to issue three more long-players that delighted audiences a dozen songs at a time over the next two years, which was a lot of good work.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Legend has it that by the late 1980s Emmylou Harris was growing tired of singing over an electric band, which she'd been doing since the early '70s. She dissolved her crack electric outfit, collectively known as The Hot Band (which initially included the likes of guitarist James Burton and pianist Glen Hardin—both from Elvis Presley's TCB band—and Rodney Crowell), and formed the acoustic backing band the Nash Ramblers (Sam Bush, Jon Randall Stewart, Roy Huskey, Jr., Al Perkins, Larry Atamanuik). In 1991, Harris and her new band recorded At the Ryman, at the historic, original home of the Grand Ole Opry, which hadn't hosted a public performance since 1974. Released in 1992, the live album captured their evolution into a supremely tight and musical unit and also led to the Ryman's much needed renovation. Turns out an even earlier show, at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, was captured, too. Both are well-recorded, with the Ryman set flatter and closer-miked and The Lost Concert incorporating more of the sound of the room. The biggest difference between the two sets—but what also makes them a matched set of sorts—is that while the Ryman show concentrated on material that had not appeared on any Harris studio records, Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert is a stroll down memory lane for both Harris and longtime fans alike as she digs into familiar repertoire from her time on Reprise and Warner Bros records (1975-1990). She and the Ramblers—who even this early have obviously gelled—run through classic Harris covers like "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "Amarillo," "Blue Kentucky Girl," "Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight" and the closer, "Boulder to Birmingham" from her still potent Reprise debut, Pieces of the Sky. A rhythmic, chunka chunk version of Delbert McClinton's "Two More Bottles of Wine" (from her Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town album) equals or exceeds the studio version. And Harris again shows her special way with Paul Simon's "The Boxer." Having Jon Randall Stewart and his high tenor on harmony vocals was hugely key to the Nash Ramblers success, along with the fleet string skills of Bush, Randall and the late Roy Huskey, Jr. The group's musical camaraderie is most obvious on a version of "Mystery Train" whose pace is pure rock 'n' roll. The band stretches out on the instrumental jam, "Remington Ride" and benefitting from the lower volumes, Harris gives a particularly tender and feathery version of the Jesse Winchester ballad, "My Songbird." Best of all, the band seem to be enjoying themselves throughout. Superb from start to finish, The Lost Concert is a wonderful surprise from the inestimable James Austin who rediscovered the tapes, unheard for 30 years, of a terrific show by Harris' other hot band. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

Prince's post-Warner catalog -- the records he made for NPG and elsewhere, beginning with 1995's The Gold Experience -- was a mess while he was alive, due to his tendency to hop from label to label, along with his aversion to digital downloads and streaming. Two years after his tragic death in 2016, his catalog began to take shape in the digital realm, thanks to a deal Sony Legacy struck with the Prince Estate. In August 2018, 23 albums Prince released between 1995 and 2010 appeared on all services, and along with them came the double-disc compilation Anthology: 1995-2010. Frankly, this kind of compilation was badly needed. Once he freed himself from Warner, Prince recorded so prolifically that even diehards had a hard time keeping track. Anthology: 1995-2010 provides a way to navigate this vast catalog. Even at 37 tracks, Anthology can't help but miss excellent moments, such as the supple '70s soul covers he scattered throughout his albums and, sadly, his last big hit, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," which is absent due to legal reasons. Set this aside, and Anthology shows how Prince turned himself into a clever stylist in the last act of his career, often returning to the funk, pop, and especially soul that he used as primary sources during his glory days in the '80s. Instead of splicing this all together, Prince preferred to jump from style to style during his NPG recordings, but having these sprawling recordings condensed to a compilation highlights not just his versatility, but how his sense of craft never failed him. This is invaluable for the curious, but even the dedicated who listened to the albums upon release but never revisited them should find this enlightening.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo