1989 is the record on which the onetime country star fully embraced electro-pop—vocal reverb, ice-cold drums and all. Excitable opener "Welcome to New York" is as big and shiny as the city's skyscrapers on a summer morning. It has zero chill, but Taylor Swift insists she's in on the joke with the haters-be-damned "Shake It Off," a spinning cartwheel of horn skronk, drum splashes and Motown backing vocals. That self-awareness continues on the slinkily baroque "Blank Space" (which cheekily addresses the singer's man-eater reputation) and "Bad Blood" ("still got scars in my back from your knives," she slings at a rival). But at a certain point, it's better to stop analyzing and dance. "Style" and "All You Had to Do Was Stay" sparkle with disco-ball shimmer. With its Minimoog hum and vocal loops, "Out of the Woods" could be an '80s movie soundtrack gem. The last few tracks wind down like the end of a long night, and it's closer "Clean," that offers the biggest surprise of 1989 with its lush, Roxy Music sprawl. The deluxe version adds three new originals and three voice memos of Swift discussing her songwriting process. © Qobuz

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

2018's Time & Space saw Turnstile breach the headwaters of the mainstream with a bracing set of songs that were delivered with gusto and peppered with creative funk and hip-hop interludes. The Baltimore hardcore enthusiasts go all-in on their dizzying third long-player, Glow On, bringing in Dr. Dre protégé Mike Elizondo (Mastodon, Twenty One Pilots, 50 Cent) to helm the production and delivering a 15-track set that stays true to their punk roots while carving out an impressive swathe of old, new, borrowed, and blue sonic real estate. Commencing with a billowing synth arpeggio, triumphant opener "Mystery" sets the table with an earworm-heavy blast of punchy '90s alt-rock that pulls the choicest pieces of meat from the carcasses of Fugazi, Jane's Addiction, and Nirvana. "Blackout," "Holiday," and "T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection)" go big as well, with the former administering lethal amounts of taut, Helmet-worthy riffage over a mix of analog and triggered beats -- replete with Latin drum flourishes -- and the latter two cuts looking to consolidate the mosh pit and the dancefloor into a sweaty, earthbound murmuration. The interstitial moments of Time & Space have been folded in rather than tacked on this time around, which helps otherwise sonic outliers like the languid indie rocker "Alien Love" (one of two tracks to feature Devonté Hyne, aka Blood Orange) and the bubbly and aptly named dance-pop gem "Underwater Boi" find some equilibrium with the rest of the album. Turnstile's predilection for genre-hopping never tempers their enthusiasm, and the concise and inclusive hardcore anthems that have been their forte since emerging in 2010 still make up the bulwark of their sound. Both vital and respective of the listener's time at just under 35 minutes, Glow On rolls in like a violent, late-summer storm and pummels the power grid but mercifully leaves the lights on.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

In 1999, Wilco willingly abdicated their position as one of the leading acts in the alt-country movement to dive head-first into the challenging waters of experimental pop with their album Summerteeth, and moved even further away from their rootsy origins with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, winning the group a new and enthusiastic audience along the way. So it might amuse a number of the band's earlier fans that in many respects Wilco's sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, sounds like the long-awaited follow-up to 1996's Being There -- while it lacks the ramshackle shape-shifting and broad twang of that earlier album, Sky Blue Sky represents a shift back to an organic sound and approach that suggests the influence of Neil Young's Harvest and the more polished avenues of '70s soft rock. Sky Blue Sky also marks Wilco's first studio recordings since Nels Cline and Pat Sansone joined the group, and they certainly make their presence felt -- with Cline, Wilco has its strongest guitarist to date, and while his interplay with Sansone on numbers like "Impossible Germany" and "Walken" lacks the skronky muscle of his more avant-garde work of the past, it's never less than inspired and he works real wonders with Jeff Tweedy's lovely melodies. Sansone's keyboard work also shines, adding soulful accents to "Side with the Seeds" and Mellotron on "Leave Me (Like You Found Me)," as does Mikael Jorgensen's piano and organ, and overall this is Wilco's strongest album as an ensemble to date. Tweedy's vocals boast a clarity and nuance that reveals he's grown in confidence and skill as a singer, and the songs recall Summerteeth's beautiful but unsettling mix of lovely tunes and lyrics that focus on troubled souls and crumbling relationships. Between the pensive "Be Patient with Me," the lovelorn "Hate It Here," and "On and On and On"'s pledge that "we'll stay together" squared off against the resignation of "Please don't cry/We're designed to die," Sky Blue Sky isn't afraid to go to the dark places, but Tweedy and his bandmates also find plenty of beauty, inspiration, and real joy along the way, and the album's open, natural sound is an ideal match for the material. Sky Blue Sky may find Wilco dipping their toes into roots rock again, but this doesn't feel like a step back so much as another fresh path for one of America's most consistently interesting bands.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

The titular "Mimi" of The Emancipation of Mimi is, by all accounts, an alter ego of Mariah, a persona that captures Carey's true feelings and emotions. In case you didn't know what "emancipation" means, Mariah helpfully provides a dictionary definition of the word in the opening pages of the liner notes for her eighth proper album: it means "to free from restraint, control, oppression, or the power of another" or "to free from any controlling influence" or "to free somebody from restrictions or conventions." So, on The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah frees herself from the constraints of being herself, revealing herself to be -- well, somebody that looks startlingly like Beyoncé, if the cover art is any indication. Mimi, or at least the sound of her emancipation, sounds remarkably like Beyoncé, too, working a similarly sultry, low-key, polished club groove. And that's the main story of The Emancipation of Mimi: since the reserved, tasteful adult contemporary pop of 2002's Charmbracelet failed to revive her career, she's done a 180 and returned to R&B, in hopes that maybe this will create some excitement. It's not a bad idea, particularly because Mariah could use any change at this point, and it's not executed all that badly either, as all 14 tracks -- heavy on mid-tempo cuts and big ballads, with a few harder dance tunes featuring big-name guest rappers scattered along the way -- all follow the same deliberately smoky, late-night template. While the Neptunes provide the best dance cut here with "Say Somethin'" (featuring a cameo by Snoop Dogg), especially welcome are some nice old-school '70s smooth soul flourishes, best heard on James Poyser's deliciously sleek "Mine Again" and such "Big Jim" Wright productions as "I Wish You Knew" and "Fly Like a Bird." As good as those Wright-helmed cuts are, they are also the times that the mixes slip and don't hide the flaws in Mariah's voice, and it sounds as airy, thin, and damaged as it did on Charmbracelet, where her ragged vocals dealt a fatal blow to an already weak album. Here, apart from those Wright tracks, the producers camouflage her voice in a number of ways, usually involving putting the groove and the sound of the production in front of the vocals. While the tunes aren't always memorable, it does make for a consistent album, one that's head and shoulders above the other LPs she's released in the 2000s, even if it doesn't compare with her glory days of the '90s. Ironically enough, a big reason why The Emancipation of Mimi doesn't sound as good as those '90s albums is that Mariah never sounds like herself on this record. When she's not sounding like Beyoncé, she sounds desperate to be part of the waning bling era, dropping product placements for Bacardi, Calgon, and Louis Vuitton, or bragging about her house in Capri and her own G4, all of which sounds a little tired and awkward coming from a 35-year-old woman in her 15th year of superstardom. Disregarding these two rather sizeable problems, The Emancipation of Mimi still works, at least as a slick, highly crafted piece of dance-pop -- it might not be as hip as it thinks it is, nor is it as catchy as it should be, but it's smooth and listenable, which is enough to have it qualify as a relative comeback for "Mimi" Carey. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

It's easy to forget, in the wake of a decade of bizarre behavior, rumors, and innuendo surrounding Michael Jackson that the Jacksons were once known solely for being a major music franchise. This live album, which was pretty obscure in its original double-LP vinyl version, is a reminder of how great an act they were, and captures what was just about the end of Michael Jackson's work with the family group, all of it very much on a high-note. Live opens with a pounding, powerful rendition of "Can You Feel It" and, with one exception, never lets up, pushing on through a high-velocity and high-articulation version of "Things I Do for You," and a soaring "Off the Wall." There's an unfortunate lag where Michael Jackson slows things down for "Ben" (arguably the nadir of his Motown career), but "This Place Hotel" and the far more effective ballad "She's Out of My Life" make up for that lapse. The last section of the album, commencing with Off the Wall's "Rock With You," is practically a live rendition of that album, and so bracing as to almost exhaust the listener; and the preceding medley of their early Motown hits is just about worth the asking price of the disc by itself. On the down side, there are no notes and barely any credits, and the volume is set a bit low, but it pumps up beautifully with virtually no excess noise. The album is worth tracking down as an artifact of a simpler, more unabashedly joyous time in music, as well as the family's history.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

Dark and glistening. Like a cave on the French Riviera. That’s where Jagger and Richards' band – living as tax exiles - recorded the immense Exile on Main Street, a musical feast with dishes served as country (Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia), gospel (Shine a Light), blues (Shake Your Hips) and visceral rock'n'roll (the opening of Rocks Off and the cult track Happy with Keith Richards on vocals). The Rolling Stones may have been at the height of fame, but this masterpiece came from the heart and soul, with a dark and dirty sound and a sincere and raw style. American roots music (country, blues, folk) had rarely sounded so original. Jagger sings like an inspired old sage. Richards unleashes sharp, sublime guitar riffs. After all these years, we still can’t find the slightest flaw in this double album which many consider to be The Rolling Stones’ best... © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

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