Taylor Swift left her longtime home of Big Machine in 2018, setting up shop at Republic Records. Usually, such changes in label are only of interest to trainspotters, but once Swift departed Big Machine, the label was acquired by a group owned by Scooter Braun, a nemesis of Taylor's. The singer attempted to regain rights to her original recordings to no avail, leaving her with one option: she could re-record her records, thereby undercutting the value of her catalog in terms of syncs, placements, and licensing. Swift carried through on the promise in April 2021, releasing Fearless (Taylor's Version), a brand-new version of her 2008 breakthrough. Swift recorded all 19 songs from the 2009 Platinum Edition of Fearless, adding a new version of "Today Was a Fairytale" from the Valentine's Day soundtrack, then six additional songs ("From The Vault") -- songs that were written around the time of Fearless but not released. These tracks are of greatest interest, as they certainly have a younger, dewy-eyed perspective but were recorded with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, the producers of Swift's mature work. The blend of youth and experience is appealing, and it can also be heard in the newer renditions of the Fearless material. Swift largely re-creates the arrangements and feel of the original 2008 album, yet her voice and phrasing has aged, giving the music a hint of bittersweet gravity. That said, it's only a hint; Fearless (Taylor's Version) serves the purpose of offering new versions that could be substituted for the originals for licensing purposes. It's to Swift's credit that the album is an absorbing (if long) listen anyway.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Long-running melodic metalcore institution Atreyu's eighth studio effort marks the amicable departure of vocalist Alex Varkatzas and the debut of frontman/clean singer Brandon Saller, who previously sat behind the kit. Producer John Feldmann, who helmed 2018's like-minded In Our Wake, makes certain that the transition feels relatively seamless, allowing ample room for the band to flex their arena-rock muscles. If the slickness of its predecessor was a turn-off for longtime fans, then Baptize is sure to disappoint, as it plays out like a sizzle reel for modern rock production. The playing is strong throughout, but Feldmann's fondness for boa constrictor-like compression renders the album as a whole strangely inert. That said, Saller is a far more robust and versatile vocalist than Varkatzas, and he embraces the group's more mainstream proclivities with a zeal that often helps to elevate tracks that would have otherwise been headed for a future B-sides and rarities compilation. After commencing with the stirring, a cappella "Strange Powers of Prophecy," Baptize hits hard early on with a trio of nosebleed section-aimed sonic missiles: the pummeling title cut and its equally unrelenting successors "Save Us" and "Underrated." Therein lies the rub. What follows is no better or worse, just largely the same, with Saller delivering post-hardcore banalities with gusto and the band peppering those surface-level maxims with blazing riffage and fist-pumping gang vocals, ad nauseam.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Following the drug-fueled implosion of the Heartbreakers, Johnny Thunders bounced back with his first solo outing, So Alone. Featuring a veritable who's who of '70s punk and hard rock -- Chrissie Hynde, Phil Lynott, Peter Perrett, Steve Marriott, Paul Cook, and Steve Jones, among others -- the record was a testament to what the former New York Dolls guitarist could accomplish with a little focus. Much like Thunders' best work with the Dolls and Heartbreakers, So Alone is a gloriously sloppy amalgam of R&B, doo wop, and three-chord rock & roll. Despite the inevitable excesses that plagued every Thunders recording session, Steve Lillywhite's solid engineering job and a superb set of songs hold everything together. A cover of the Chantays' classic instrumental "Pipeline" leads things off, and is a teasing reminder of what a great guitarist Thunders could be when he put his mind to it. The record's indisputable masterpiece is "You Can't Put Your Arms Round a Memory," a wrenching, surprisingly literate ballad in which Thunders seems to acknowledge that his junkie lifestyle has doomed him to the abyss. Songs like "Leave Me Alone," "Hurtin'," and the chilling title track continue the theme of life inside the heroin balloon. Fortunately, all this back-alley gloom is leavened by some memorably animated moments. "London Boys" is a scathing reply to the Sex Pistols' indictment of the New York punk scene, "New York." The funky "Daddy Rolling Stone" features the inimitable Lynott on background vocals, while the rave-ups "Great Big Kiss" and "(She's So) Untouchable" are terrific examples of Thunders' raunchy take on classic R&B. Sadly, Johnny Thunders never followed up on the promise of his solo debut. His subsequent records were a frustrating mix of drug-addled mediocrity and downright laziness. But for one brief moment, he seemed to put it all together. That moment is So Alone.© Andy Claps /TiVo

The commemorative compilation Ten doesn't contain all the singles featured on Girls Aloud's previous anthology, 2006's The Sound of Girls Aloud, but it functions as an update. There is an eight-song overlap between the releases, including the number one U.K. singles "Sound of the Underground" and "I'll Stand by You." With the exception of "Walk This Way," all of the group's post-Sound of Girls Aloud singles, such as "The Promise" -- yet another U.K. number one -- are here. Four of the songs are new recordings: the almost harsh, Xenomania-produced "Something New" and "Every Now and Then," along with the relatively sleek and speedy "On the Metro" (co-written by Nicola Roberts) and the decent ballad "Beautiful Cause You Love Me." Despite the amount of new material, some of which is not up to par with the earlier smashes and certain album cuts, this is a handy sampling of Girls Aloud's biggest moments.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

A teaser for an upcoming album, Pusha T's 2015 effort is uneven, odd, and hard to navigate, but like his cohort Kanye West, this rapper remains an unstoppable artist, even when presented in shards and strange experiments. King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude comes with plenty of examples of both, but the MC pushes out honest and riveting lyrics like "They call him a 'crack dealer'/I am like Warhol/Gonna paint a picture of a bullet for all y'all" ("Keep Dealing") at an amazing rate, so navigating even his more "difficult" releases yields plenty of gold. He's also a Warhol who is more proud of his cocaine-dealing days than his current status of revered rapper plus CEO of Kanye West's GOOD Music label, an attitude fleshed out on "M.F.T.R.," which stands for "More Famous Than Rich." A Notorious B.I.G. sample and an infectious Timbaland beat make "Untouchable" an approachable single, then Timbaland returns for a wonderfully weird number dubbed "Retribution." The biggest surprise from the production department has to be "Harlem Shake" man Baauer constructing a Michael Bay-worthy, cinematic soundtrack for the closing "Sunshine" with Jill Scott. The album just doesn't flow as well as his monolithic 2013 effort My Name Is My Name, but as a mere "prelude" to the next LP, it's miles above "throwaway" and comes with the quality control that would put it in the top tiers of both the mixtape and street release formats. © David Jeffries /TiVo

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Remaining relevant fifteen years after reaching the top of the pyramid is not an easy feat… Now 45 years old, Eminem is well aware that he’s not the king of hip-hop anymore, but he remains particularly impressive when doing what he does best: Eminem! Four years after The Marshall Mathers LP 2, the rapper concludes his Re trilogy with Revival, following Relapse (2009) and Recovery (2010). Produced by his faithful duo made up of Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin, Eminem unleashes his sharp punchlines, directed both against himself and the President of the United States. A little introspection, social analysis and political criticism: his flow, still agile and overly powerful, hits the nail right on the head. Most importantly, Eminem doesn’t try to sound young, and doesn’t try to ride the current trends. Eminem even seems to distance himself more and more from the fundamentals of rap. Pop-rock hints, which have always been present in his previous works, are more prominent than ever. Like on In Your Head, for which he sampled The Cranberries’ famous Zombie… Finally, in terms of featuring artists, he obviously pulled out his cheque book, as well as his address book, inviting Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Alicia Keys and Pink − an impressive list of heavyweights! © CM/Qobuz

It's often said that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and that maxim certainly holds true for the self-professed Grand Champ of canines, DMX, on his album of the same name. For his fifth album in six years, the veteran rapper reprises many of the same themes and motifs that had made his previous efforts so popular among hardcore rap fans and influential among his East Coast peers. As usual, he barks at his unnamed adversaries over hard-hitting Ruff Ryder beats, flexes his rhetorical muscle with his ever-confrontational rhyme style, advocates valor and faith while disdaining materialism, and frames his world within a polarized context, drawing a bold line between "dogs" and "cats." By this point, the scenario should be familiar to those who've followed DMX this far into his career; in many ways, his albums are mirror images of each other, in terms of drama, production, ideology, sequencing, and thankfully, to an extent, quality. However, the initial impact that DMX made with his tremendous and industry-changing debut, It's Dark and Hell Is Hot (1998), lessened with each successive follow-up, and Grand Champ is no exception. It's a well-crafted and thought-out album but feels like a sequel, and as such, it serves its purpose: to satisfy fans and move units. The anthemic lead single, "Where the Hood At," is precisely modeled after previous DMX rallying calls like "Ruff Rider Anthem," "What's My Name?," and "Who We Be." Likewise, "Get It on the Floor" is a trademark Swizz Beatz club-banger -- and a remarkable one at that, perhaps one-upping even "Party Up (Up in Here)." Grand Champ closes sentimentally: "Don't Gotta Go Home" is a fractured-relationship duet with Monica that's prime urban crossover material; "A'Yo Kato" is a heartfelt ode to a lost dog with a shuffling, almost Latin beat by Swizz Beatz; and "Thank You" is a rousing gospel-rap tune featuring Patti LaBelle that's surprisingly effective and closes the album with magnificent flair (if not for the obligatory bonus track). Yet it's a long road to this sentimental closing run; for every one of the aforementioned highlights, there's at least one, if not two, run-of-the-mill tracks that warrant no more than a couple listens. Not quite the big comeback DMX needed at this point in his quietly sagging rap career, Grand Champ regardless has its share of highlights. Longtime fans may decide to drop off at about this point, if they hadn't already, while those content with the usual -- or new to DMX -- should find plenty to savor on Grand Champ.© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo

More prolific dead than alive (well, not really, but the amount of records issued by the Californian rapper after September 13, 1996, far outweigh the number issued before), 2Pac has -- mostly thanks to his mother, Afeni Shakur -- come out with another release, ten years after his death. Despite the fact that Pac's Life claims to be comprised of all (minus one verse) previously unheard material, most of the rhymes on the album have been floating around the Internet or on unofficial (and possibly illegal) bootlegs for some time now, which makes listening a little anticlimactic. This isn't to say that there is not some great material on Pac's Life, because there is ("Watch and bear witness to the pleasures of participation/Separation and self-destruction, what's needed is unification," he spits in "Whatz Next"), but the power of 2Pac's words is often lost behind the modern production (from Sha Money XL and L.T. Hutton, among others) and new verses from artists like Ludacris, Lil Scrappy, Ashanti, and Young Buck. It's understandable that Ms. Shakur and her collaborators want to continue to promote 2Pac and his music in the world, and that one way of going about this could be by modernizing the beats, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work here, and everything ends up sounding a bit commercialized, and a bit dull. There are still some bright spots on Pac's Life -- he was too talented, and recorded so much to have it be otherwise -- that could be of some interest to fans, and keep the album from being a total loss: "Don't Sleep" has a nice soft intensity, while the single "Untouchable" (produced and remixed by Swizz Beatz and featuring Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) has a great, catchy hook, and "Soon as I Get Home" is fantastic, probably the best track on the album, mostly because the original production by QDIII hasn't been changed at all; but still, this isn't enough to make the album good. All in all, Pac's Life is a nice attempt, but it comes nowhere close to showing off his talent as something like All Eyez on Me or Me Against the World does, and ends up being kind of disappointing because of that.© Marisa Brown /TiVo

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"Am I lucky to be around this long?"Eminem wonders this on "Walk on Water," the first track on his 2017 album, Revival, which arrives when the 20th anniversary of his 1999 debut, The Slim Shady LP, is just 14 months away. Aging is never easy for a star but it may be harder for Marshall Mathers, since his earliest records were equal parts rage and pranks -- emotions that tend to mellow as the years stack up. Underneath all that attention-grabbing bluster lay Eminem's boundless technical proficiency, which was the real reason he scored a monumental breakthrough in 1999 and sustained a career. Put it simply, he didn't sound like anybody else when he started, and now that he's conceivably halfway through his journey he doesn't sound like anybody else either, a quality that can make Revival compelling, albeit only intermittently. Provocative and muddled, Revival percolates with ambition but doesn't lack in laziness either: not only can Eminem not resist recycling the templates for "Stan" and "Love the Way You Lie," he stumbles through a loop as dull as Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll" on "Remind Me," a sample that not only plays as leaden but is laden in nostalgia. Then again, the past isn't far from Em's mind, particularly his long, tortured relationship with his on-and-off love Kim, who is the subject of "Remind Me" and "Bad Husband." The latter finds Eminem holding himself accountable for his past misdeeds, an emotional candidness that finds a counterpart in his increased political consciousness, a shift sparked by his deep disgust for President Donald J. Trump. Reckoning with Trump has the same effect as grappling with his own middle age: it forces Eminem out of his comfort zone, pushing him to sharpen his lyrics. When he sticks to familiar territory, he shifts his focus to his flow and the results can still startle, whether he's playing with legato shifts of phrase or speeding through "Offended." Listening to Eminem challenge himself on a sheer technical level -- and the absence of any major guest rappers suggests he thinks he's in a class of his own -- can still be a wonder but the overall effect of Revival can be a bit grim, and that can't be chalked up to the dark currents sweeping through America in 2017. No, Revival feels like a slog because the music is heavy-footed, reliant on obvious samples (the Cranberries' "Zombie" for "In Your Head"), and doused in minor keys, and most importantly, the beats are never in competition with Eminem. And that's to be expected: he has a gift that deserves a showcase. It's just that the gift might be better served if it were complemented by music as worthy and deft as the rhymes.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo