Annie Lennox's 2014 covers collection, Nostalgia, finds the former Eurythmics vocalist soulfully interpreting various pop, jazz, and R&B standards. In many ways, Nostalgia works as a companion piece to her similarly inventive 2010 album, the holiday-themed Christmas Cornucopia. As with that album, Lennox eschews predictability by picking an unexpected set of songs and producing them with detailed care. While Nostalgia certainly fits nicely next to any number of other standards albums by veteran pop stars, it does nothing to diminish Lennox's distinctive style. On the contrary, working with producer Mike Stevens, Lennox has crafted an album that brings to mind the sophisticated, contemporary sound of her original studio releases while allowing her to revel in the grand popular song tradition. Moving between evocative piano accompaniment, orchestral numbers, moody synthesizer arrangements, and even some rollicking small-group swing, Lennox takes a theatrical -- yet always personal -- approach to each song, finding endlessly interesting juxtapositions and stylistic combinations to explore. She references Miles Davis' plaintive take on the Porgy and Bess classic "Summertime," tenderly evinces a combination of Billie Holiday and Sade on "Strange Fruit," and draws on both Aretha Franklin and Screamin' Jay Hawkins for "I Put a Spell on You." Elsewhere, tracks like "I Cover the Waterfront" and "Mood Indigo" bring to mind similar recordings from Carole King and Bryan Ferry. Ultimately, even without Nostalgia's impeccable production, in the end it's Lennox's burnished, resonant vocals that steal the focus here, and just like the songs she's picked, their beauty will likely stand the test of time.© Matt Collar /TiVo

Her mentor Prince said her voice could melt snow. A gift confirmed on The Women Who Raised Me, Kandace Springs' third album, which is quietly earning the artist a place at the heart of the vast family of contemporary jazz'n'soul singers. As the title of her 2020 release suggests, the Nashville native living in New York pays tribute to all those who influenced and inspired her, from Ella Fitzgerald to Roberta Flack, Astrud Gilberto, Lauryn Hill, Billie Holiday, Diana Krall, Carmen McRae, Bonnie Raitt, Sade, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield and especially Norah Jones, one of her idols, who features on a track (Angel Eyes). Produced, like Soul Eyes, (her first album of 2016) by the expert in ultra-slick sound Larry Klein, The Women Who Raised Me also brings on board the saxophonists David Sanborn (I Put a Spell on You) and Chris Potter (Gentle Rain, Loneliness), trumpeter Avishai Cohen (I Can't Make You Love Me and Pearls), bassist Christian McBride (Devil May Care) and the flautist Elena Pinderhughes (Ex-Factor and Killing Me Softly With His Song). They bring virtuoso refinement to this album's collection of well-chosen covers. Special mention must go to Sade's Pearls, spurred on by a purring Avishai Cohen, and Lauryn Hill's Ex-Factor. This album also confirms the instrumental talents of Kandace Springs, who is just as comfortable at the piano as at the Fender Rhodes. A restrained virtuoso helped by the reserved trio of Steve Cardenas on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Clarence Penn on drums. It is this ocean of subtlety and finely-measured power that makes these covers, sung with sensuality but above all conviction, very endearing. © Clotilde Maréchal / Qobuz

If this is blues, it's blues in the Billie Holiday sense, not the Muddy Waters one. This is one of Nina Simone's more subdued mid-'60s LPs, putting the emphasis on her piano rather than band arrangements. It's rather slanted toward torch-blues ballads like "Strange Fruit," "Trouble in Mind," Billie Holiday's own composition "Tell Me More and More and Then Some," and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." Simone's then-husband, Andy Stroud, wrote "Be My Husband," an effective adaptation of a traditional blues chant. By far the most impressive track is her frantic ten-minute rendition of the traditional "Sinnerman," an explosive tour de force that dwarfs everything else on the album.© Richie Unterberger /TiVo

Singer Bettye LaVette has made a career of overcoming adversity, bad timing and cruel music business vagaries. And so who better, at a time when America is reckoning with privilege and inequality, to bring fresh pathos and pique to the ever-powerful anti-lynching call, "Strange Fruit." On Blackbirds, she slowly climbs the mountain that is Billie Holiday's most famous number in a spare rendition—just piano chords, electric guitar notes and brushes on the snare—that allows her to linger on every word. The socially relevant timing of her latest collection is sustained by the title track, LaVette's very personalized interpretation of Paul McCartney's folk hymn to America's racial infamy that she first unveiled in 2010 at the Hollywood Bowl. Once advised that learning to sing standards would make her eternally employable—and unaware that her song selection on Blackbirds would meet the current moment with such force—LaVette, whose career was relaunched in the aughts with a series of albums on the Anti label, decided with this album to tackle tunes from the Great American Songbook most closely associated with great African-American female singers like Ruth Brown, Nancy Wilson and the aforementioned Billie Holiday. She wastes no time laying out her guiding principles in the opener, "I Hold No Grudge," a number first heard on Nina Simone's High Priestess of Soul album: "I hold no grudge/ Deep inside me there's no regrets/ But a gal who's been forgotten may forgive/ But never once forget." With a vocal instrument that's grown creakier but also wiser with age, LaVette adds layers of stylized reflection—as well as bursts of rascally spirit—to this cabaret-like set of mostly downbeat ballads. Produced by drummer Steve Jordan (who helmed her previous album Things Have Changed), and working with a quintet that features multi-talented guitarist Smokey Hormel (Beck, Johnny Cash, Tom Waits), Blackbirds was recorded at Brooklyn Recording by engineer Dave O'Donnell who unerringly captures the timbre and subtle inflections of LaVette's emphatic singing. The mood lightens for a moment in a keyboard-led version of Lil' Green's sexy "Romance in the Dark," before easing into the unavoidably heart-wrenching "Drinking Again," one of Dinah Washington's signature numbers where the sharp rasp of LaVette's voice accentuates the song's poignance. A shrewd stylist climbing inside songs to discover, decry and universalize. © Robert Baird/Qobuz

This double disc is an exact replication of a concert vocalist Beth Hart and guitarist Joe Bonamassa performed in Amsterdam in support of their studio album Seesaw. What you hear is what was played: there are no overdubs or digital studio fixes. They replicate all but one track from the studio album ("Sunday Kind of Love") and five more from their 2011 offering Don't Explain, and play some other covers and a long band jam called "Antwerp Jam" as a finale. Hart and Bonamassa are backed by a killer band to boot, including a full horn section, drummer Anton Fig, bassist Carmine Rojas, rhythm guitarist Blondie Chaplin, and keyboardist Arlan Schierbaum. Highlights include their reading of Delaney Bramlett's "Well, Well," Ike Turner's "Nutbush City Limits," "Sinner's Prayer," "Something's Got a Hold on Me," "Chocolate Jesus," "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know," and, of course, Ms. Hart's devastating reading of Etta James' "I'd Rather Go Blind." Given her considerable power and ability to convey a wide range of emotions, this is not merely a set for guitar god worshipers -- though there's plenty for them here, too. [There are also packages that pair these discs with Blu-ray and DVD.] © Thom Jurek /TiVo

Taken from a pair of sessions taped during 1955-1956, Lady Sings the Blues finds Holiday in top form and backed by the sympathetic likes of tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette, trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Harry Edison, pianist Wynton Kelly, and guitarists Kenny Burrell and Barney Kessel. And while these autumnal sides bear some of the frayed vocal moments often heard on Holiday's '50s Verve sides, the majority here still ranks with her best material. This is especially true of the cuts from the June 1956 date, which produced unparalleled versions of "No Good Man," "Some Other Spring," and "Lady Sings the Blues." See why many fans prefer the "worn out" Holiday heard here to the more chipper singer featured on those classic Columbia records from the '30s.© Stephen Cook /TiVo

Recorded at the same sessions that resulted in the more commercial Big Bad Jug, this LP (whose contents have not yet been reissued on CD) is the better of the two thanks to the inclusion of four Billie Holiday-associated songs. Ammons (even with the electric rhythm section) is in strong form on "Lady Sings the Blues," "God Bless the Child," "Strange Fruit" and "Fine and Mellow." The other three pieces (which include the theme from Ben and a Neal Diamond tune) are not as inspiring but Ammons's huge sound makes the music worthwhile.© Scott Yanow /TiVo

Rokia Traoré is probably one of the most beautiful voices that Mali has sent us in recent years. Beautiful, but also inhabited and above all, engaged. With Né So, an album she has once again put together with John Parrish, the official producer of PJ Harvey, Rokia Traoré sings in revolt agains the uprooting of people. A combat song she leads with a host of prestigious artists at her side, like John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, writer Toni Morrison or even the folk singer Devendra Banhart. Of a rare and tangible power. ©CM/Qobuz

Following Tinderbox's success but still not working as well with John Valentine Carruthers as they could have, Siouxsie and the Banshees kept him on for one further album -- a covers collection, much in the vein of band inspiration David Bowie's Pin-Ups. Through the Looking Glass is more than a time killer but less than a total success -- if anything it's seen more now as a chance for the band to refocus before ditching Carruthers and creating the stunning Peepshow. But there have been far worse efforts from other performers in this vein, and there's a cool, giddy fun at work throughout that makes it a fine listen. The inspired range of covers reaches from glam-era landmarks (Roxy Music's "Sea Breezes," John Cale's "Gun") to Billie Holiday's sorrowful touchstone "Strange Fruit" to, in one of the best such efforts ever (and a year before Hal Willner's Stay Awake project), a Disney classic -- namely the slinky "Trust in Me," originally from The Jungle Book and given a spare, mostly-Budgie backing that could almost be a sparkling Creatures outtake. Some takes are more or less direct clones without much to add -- Sparks' "This Town Isn't Big Enough for Both of Us" misses the sheer hysteria that Russell Mael brought to the original, but Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" adds a bit of horn-section punch and lets Siouxsie demonstrate her ability with calm, dismissive cool. Turning Kraftwerk's empty, haunted "Hall of Mirrors" into a much more propulsive, Morricone guitar-tinged number makes for a fine reinvention, though, while Bob Dylan-via-Julie Driscoll's "This Wheel's on Fire" made for an enjoyable, string-touched single from the album. And if anyone needed proof that the Banshees were obsessive fan types when they started, the concluding cover of Television's debut obscurity "Little Johnny Jewel" would provide it.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

The Church with One Bell is an interesting covers album, finding John Martyn tackling songs that are both ideal and absolutely ill-fitting. Since Martyn is such an idiosyncratic talent, maybe it shouldn't be surprising that he succeeds on "Strange Fruit" and not with Randy Newman's signature craftmanship on "God's Song," but there's still a bit of shock that the former works. Furthermore, the choice of material is often puzzling, but he makes songs like Ben Harper's "Excuse Me Mister" work through committed performances. Ultimately, The Church with One Bell is too uneven to qualify as even a minor gem in his catalog, but there are enough interesting moments to make it a worthwhile listen for long-term followers. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Singer/songwriter Beth Hart continues to explore her blues and soul roots via 11 cover versions of her favorite tracks on Seesaw, her second album with blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa. Following the same path as their first collaboration, the 2011 all-covers release Don't Explain, the pair hooked up again with producer Kevin Shirley, who has previously worked with Led Zeppelin, Journey, Black Crowes, Joe Bonamassa, and numerous others. The 11 tunes kick off with a jump blues rendition of "Them There Eyes," a rock blues take on Ike & Tina Turner's "Nutbush City Limits"; punchy horns accentuate the Buddy Miles penned "Miss Lady," and they give a straightforward soul treatment to the Don Covay/Steve Cropper tune "See Saw" recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1968. The influence of Janis Joplin and Etta James is evident on the powerful ballads "If I Tell You I Love You" and "A Sunday Kind of Love." The album closes with an eerie version of the anti-lynching poem from 1937 associated with Billie Holiday, "Strange Fruit." Also returning from the Don't Explain album are Bonamassa's assembled backing band: Anton Fig (drums and percussion), Blondie Chaplin (guitar), Carmine Rojas (bass), Arlan Schierbaum (keyboards), Lenny Castro (percussion), and Michael Rhodes (bass on "I'll Love You More Than You'll Ever Know").© Al Campbell /TiVo

This compilation of early-'80s singles includes some of Wyatt's finest work. Aside from "Born Again Cretin" (whose vocals recall the Beach Boys at their most experimental), all of it's non-original material that Wyatt makes his own with his sad, haunting vocals. You could hardly ask for a more diverse assortment of covers: Chic's "At Last I Am Free" (given an eerie treatment with especially mysterious, spacy keyboards), the a cappella gospel of "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'," political commentary with "Trade Union," the Billie Holiday standard "Strange Fruit," Ivor Cutler's "Grass," and a couple of songs in Spanish. The tracks have since been reissued a few times, with bonus tracks such as the "Shipbuilding" single; the best option for U.S. consumers is Compilation, which pairs Nothing Can Stop Us with Old Rottenhat. © Richie Unterberger /TiVo

So ubiquitous was UB40's grip on the pop-reggae market that it may have been difficult for younger fans to comprehend just how their arrival shook up the British musical scene. They appeared just as 2 Tone had peaked and was beginning its slide towards oblivion. Not that it mattered, as few would try to shoehorn the band into that suit. However, the group was no more comfortable within the U.K. reggae axis of Steel Pulse, Aswad, and Matumbi. Their rhythms may have been reggae-based, their music Jamaican-inspired, but UB40 had such an original take on the genre that all comparisons were moot. Even their attack on the singles chart was unusual, as they smacked three double-A-sided singles into the Top Ten in swift succession. By rights, the second 45 should have acted as a taster for their album (it didn't, coming several months too soon), while the third should have been a spinoff (it wasn't, boasting two new songs entirely). Regardless, both sides of their debut single -- the roots-rocking indictment of politicians' refusal to relieve famine on "Food for Thought" and the dreamy tribute to Martin Luther "King" -- were included, as well as their phenomenal cover of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" off their second single. The new material was equally strong. The moody roots-fired "Tyler," which kicks off the set, is a potent condemnation of the U.S. judicial system, while its stellar dub, "25%," appears later in the set. The smoky Far Eastern-flavored "Burden" explores the dual tugs of national pride and shame over Britain's oppressive past (and present). If that was a thoughtful number, "Little by Little" was a blatant call for class warfare. Of course, Ali Campbell never raised his voice -- he didn't need to. His words were his sword, and the creamier and sweeter his delivery, the deeper they cut. Their music was just as revolutionary, their sound unlike anything else on either island, from deep dubs shot through with jazzy sax to the bright and breezy instrumental "12 Bar," with its splendid loose groove transmuted later in the set to the jazzier and smokier "Adella." Meanwhile, "Food" slams into the dance clubs, and "King" floats to the heavens. It's hard to believe this is the same UB40 that later topped the U.K. charts with the likes of "Red Red Wine" and "I've Got You Babe." Their fire was dampened quickly, but on Signing Off it blazed high, still accessible to the pop market, but so edgy that even those who are sure there's nothing about the group to admire will change their tune instantly.© Jo-Ann Greene /TiVo

Jeff Buckley resented being called a folk singer, but he made his name playing solo sets like this one on the New York coffee circuit. Sony released this live EP before his first fully produced rock album, Grace, perhaps to attract attention to the raw power of Buckley's greatest gift, his voice. These four songs certainly accomplished that end. Buckley hurdles seemingly unreachable octaves, suspends notes for what seems like minutes, and belts out his falsetto without a scintilla of restraint. That's a positive inasmuch as it allowed him to show off his considerable talent; it's a negative when it sounded like he was showing off. But his ten-minute cover of Van Morrison's "The Way Young Lovers Do" is a tour de force of strumming and scatting, and his acoustic "Eternal Life" has an electricity that is paradoxically lacking on the plugged-in album version. [A deluxe edition released after his death added dozens of additional live tracks.]© Darryl Cater /TiVo

Rene Marie's second CD for MaxJazz is, for the most part, a very enjoyable CD. This extremely gifted singer has a very appealing voice and is a talented arranger as well. Her playful arrangement of "Them There Eyes," with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, is very refreshing, with some fine scat singing, too. Her unusually deliberate and rather sexy take of "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top" adds pianist Mulgrew Miller and also has some fine scat singing, too. Her Latin chart for "I Only Have Eyes for You" proves catchy, with some tasty guitar playing from John Hart. "It's All Right With Me" is slowed to a snail's pace with Chris Potter's noodling bass clarinet and Hurst's brooding bass backing her powerful vocal. "Vertigo," another Marie original, is easily the most exciting piece on the session. The only occasion when she follows anything resembling an expected path is her lush treatment of the ballad "Detour Ahead" in a memorable duet with Miller. There are some weak spots. The original "Don't Look at Me Like That" is monotonous filler; while the Beatles' "Blackbird" is drastically rewritten with a tedious vamp that gives the song a somewhat ominous sound, but it grows tiresome quickly. The medley of "Dixie" (a song reviled by most African-Americans) and "Strange Fruit" (with its dramatic description of lynching) invites controversy. She sings "Dixie" a cappella with a possible touch of sarcasm, then the band is added for the shift into the piece that was first put on the map by Billie Holiday, introduced with almost a funeral march-like cadence. Somehow Rene Marie's lovely voice seems inappropriate for this song, as she doesn't reflect the anguish of its lyrics very consistently. Even with these reservations, this is a highly recommended CD.© Ken Dryden /TiVo