On their debut album, Mötley Crüe essentially comes across as a bash-'em-out bar band, making up in enthusiasm what they lack in technical skill. Yet that's part of the appeal of Too Fast for Love, a chance to hear the band without the glossy production of their later, most popular work, showcasing their down-and-dirty roots. The fact that pop-metal songwriting was not really a consideration helps the album come off as more genuinely trashy and sleazy, celebrating its own grime with exuberant zest. This is the Crüe playing it lean and mean, effortlessly capturing the tough swagger that often came off a bit more calculated in later years, and it's one of their most invigorating records. [In 1999, the Crüe remastered and reissued Too Fast for Love on their own Motley/Beyond label with four bonus tracks: three interesting previously unreleased songs and a version of the title track with a different intro.]© Steve Huey /TiVo

Chrissie Hynde took a long, hard road to rock & roll stardom, but when her band, the Pretenders, finally broke through in 1979, they wasted no time, growing from promising newcomers on the British music scene to major international stardom with a pair of smash albums to their credit in a mere three years. But the Pretenders' meteoric rise came to a crashing halt in 1982, when drug abuse claimed the life of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and forced Hynde and drummer Martin Chambers to dump bassist Pete Farndon, who would also succumb to an OD in April 1983. Hynde was forced by circumstance to reinvent the Pretenders for their third album, 1984's Learning to Crawl, but if the new edition of the group lacked some of the spark of the band that made the first two LPs, through sheer force of will Hynde created a masterpiece. While Hynde hardly held back in her emotionally potent songwriting in the Pretenders' early work, on Learning to Crawl there's a gravity to her lyrics that blended with her tough but wiry melodic sense and streetwise intelligence to create a set of truly remarkable tunes. "Back on the Chain Gang" is a touching tribute to her fallen comrades that still sounds bitterly rueful, "Middle of the Road" is a furious rocker that explores the emotional and physical toll of a musician's life, "Time the Avenger" is a taut, literate examination of a businessman's adulterous relationship, "My City Was Gone" deals with the economic and cultural decay of the Midwest in a manner both pithy and genuinely heartfelt, and "2000 Miles" is a Christmas number that demonstrates Hynde can be warm without getting sappy. As a guitarist, Robbie McIntosh brought a simpler and more elemental style to the Pretenders than James Honeyman-Scott, but his tough, muscular leads fit these songs well, and bassist Malcolm Foster's solid punch fits Chambers' drumming perfectly. Three albums into her recording career, Chrissie Hynde found herself having to put the past to bed and carve out a new beginning for herself with Learning to Crawl, but she pulled it off with a striking mixture of courage, strength, and great rock & roll; with the exception of the instant-classic debut album, it's the Pretenders' finest work.© Mark Deming /TiVo

The original Broadway cast recording of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's musical, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, about the relationship between an elocutionist and a flower girl. This is one of the great musical scores, including "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," "I Could Have Danced All Night," and "On the Street Where You Live," sung by a cast that includes Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Stanley Holloway. The album spent 15 weeks at #1 in the charts.© TiVo

3 Feet High and Rising was almost universally acclaimed, but De La Soul still felt a bit misunderstood—and even a bit defensive about it. So while the title De La Soul is Dead is just as much a hyperbolic "wouldn't this be a funny title for a second album" gag as it is an actual mission statement, it's also a way of reining in the debut's we-can-do-anything sprawl to focus a bit more on some of the things people didn't necessarily expect of them. De La Soul is Dead refines the known quantities of their style: Pos and Dave are still every bit the kind of MCs who will sound approachably conversational and unpredictably complex in their flows, Maseo and Prince Paul's DJ/production flourishes are still hilariously tongue-in-cheek and filled with inspired post-genre juxtapositions (the first bassline on the album, in "Oodles of O's," comes from an early Tom Waits song), and the humor is still frenetic and idiosyncratic and crammed with elaborate inside jokes. But the mood's soured noticeably, and in ways that add a quickly-earned cynicism to the mix. That's clear from the framing skits where a bunch of teens roast the album for not being "hardcore" enough, the fame-fatigued stories of getting into fistfights on tour ("Pease Porridge") and dealing with people fiending for a co-sign foot in the door ("Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)"), and a handful of highlights that draw on the bleaker moments of their real-world experience—molestation victim revenge story "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa" chief amongst them. But that these moments are expertly mixed in with some of their most upbeat material—the comedic dozens in "Bitties in the BK Lounge," the euphoric roller-disco nostalgia of "A Roller Skating Jam Named 'Saturdays,'" a three-song run at the end ("Shwingalokate," "Fanatic of the B Word," and "Keepin' the Faith") which leaves an outwardly bitter album on a glorious high note of funky boom-bap party jams—that leave an unspoken long live De La Soul lingering at the end of that title. De La Soul is Dead might've cast a pall on the day-glo rep burnished by their debut but another facet to the group was revealed that would not only sustain them but gave them even more freedom to be who they wanted. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

On their debut album, Mötley Crüe essentially comes across as a bash-'em-out bar band, making up in enthusiasm what they lack in technical skill. Yet that's part of the appeal of Too Fast for Love, a chance to hear the band without the glossy production of their later, most popular work, showcasing their down-and-dirty roots. The fact that pop-metal songwriting was not really a consideration helps the album come off as more genuinely trashy and sleazy, celebrating its own grime with exuberant zest. This is the Crüe playing it lean and mean, effortlessly capturing the tough swagger that often came off a bit more calculated in later years, and it's one of their most invigorating records. [In 1999, the Crüe remastered and reissued Too Fast for Love on their own Motley/Beyond label with four bonus tracks: three interesting previously unreleased songs and a version of the title track with a different intro.]© Steve Huey /TiVo

Inevitably, the original soundtrack to My Fair Lady is remembered, like the film, for the absence of Julie Andrews, who starred in the Broadway and London stage productions, but was deemed, at least at the time when the casting decision had to be made, not enough of a star to carry the movie. (Embarrassingly, by the time the movie opened, Mary Poppins had made her more than enough of a star to do so.) Instead, Audrey Hepburn stepped into the role of the pre-World War I London flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who aspires to a better accent and the social advantages that will come with it. Ironically, Hepburn's voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon when it came to singing. (Nixon was an accomplished Hollywood voice ghost, having previously sung for Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, among other assignments.) Rex Harrison re-created his stage role as the elocutionist, Professor Henry Higgins (he had also appeared in the film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, the source for My Fair Lady), as did Stanley Holloway, as Eliza's flamboyant Cockney father. It was good that Harrison and Holloway got to immortalize their performances on film, but since both were making their third recordings of the score, they didn't have much to add. Nixon (no doubt with bits of Hepburn here and there) was fine, but the composite performance lacked the flair that Andrews would have given it. The result was an acceptable recording that did not surpass the Broadway or London cast albums. [The 1994 CD reissue adds a number of choral and orchestral interludes, as well as reprises of a few songs.]© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

This mega-hit moved into the Drury Lane Theatre in London in April of 1958 with the British stars of the Broadway version intact; hence the original London cast recording is very similar to its more familiar American counterpart. At present this album in CD form is often rather less expensive than the original-Broadway-cast CD, and it is far better to have this My Fair Lady than none at all. Columbia/Legacy's 1998 CD reissue of the Original London Cast Recording of My Fair Lady contains "The Embassy Waltz" as a bonus track, plus extensive liner notes featuring memorabilia and previously unpublished photos.© TiVo

It's crazy what one man's charisma can do. As the world was being shaken by an out-of-control virus, for which no vaccine yet existed, and while France was preparing for its first lockdown, Till Lindemann (and his friend Peter Tägtgren, and their musicians) were set to sell out Moscow's VTB Arena, twice over. The German singer who first found fame with Rammstein, had been going solo for five years, with only the Swedish artist/producer (founder of Pain and Hypocrisy) for company. With two albums out, the duo rode their growing success and started performing in larger and larger venues thanks to their industrial metal whose contours evoke the music of Rammstein.On 15 March 2020, Lindemann really pulled out the big guns. The concert was choreographed down to the millimetre, complete with synchronised projections and a light show. The group deployed more than 4000 cameras and a whole battery of audio equipment to immortalise the event. The result was deeply impressive. Drawing on their two studio albums, the band delivered a performance which may have been short on surprises but was executed impeccably. What Lindemann lacks in spontaneity he makes up for in minute preparation. But at events like these, you come for the show as much as for the rock'n'roll. All of this outfit's singles were on display, from Praise Abort and Fish On from Skills in Pills (2015) to the unmissable Steh Auf and Platz Eins (which has the whiff of Tägtgren's Pain about it) taken from 2019's F & M.The excellent sound quality fills up your ears as if you were there yourself. The production on this album pushes at the boundaries of what's possible: it's no stretch to say that this is a perfect compilation that conveys the impact and energy of the live performance. Live in Moscow is an album to mark the end of an era. A few months after the concert, Tägtgren announced that he was ceasing his collaboration with the German singer. Till Lindemann never spelled out that this amicable divorce meant the end of the whole project. In time, a new chapter will surely begin. In fact, that may already be in the works, as the former frontman has already released a string of singles.  © Chief Brody/Qobuz

Download not available
Ridiculous and overwhelmingly loud, Skills in Pills is the debut album from Lindemann, a humorous and grand side project of Rammstein's Till Lindemann and Hypocrisy's Peter Tägtgren. Why Lindemann gets whole billing is up for debate, but his convincing singing in English, instead of the usual German, is a good argument, although the punch lines still land with proper German oomph. Take the brilliant "Ladyboy" ("I got shot with the sweetest gun"), a miniature industrial-metal opera that asks the burning question "Why should I fall in love when I can't have fun with my ladyboy?" "Golden Shower" stands proud as Caligula would as it chugs along like Ministry while begging for bedroom "watersports," then "Fish On" uses Devo-styled melodies and a story of hot aquatic sex that doubles as a metaphor for racial harmony. Just like Rammstein and Hypocrisy, Lindemann is extreme with an ultra sheen as everything here sounds cinematic and orchestra big, and comes packaged in the kind of monied production that is usually reserved for the mainstream. Swing a beer and split an eardrum because deviant sex acts and other dark depravity haven't fueled a work this worthy since Carmina Burana.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Download not available