To the thousands of questions raised about themselves, the Arctic Monkeys answer Whatever People Say I Am, I Am Not. Their success story, born in bars and on the Internet, is as huge as it is dazzling. Smashing the British sales record – over 360,000 albums sold in a week −, they receive this memorable accolade from the Times: Bigger than the Beatles! In Great Britain, ever since the Libertines have burnt out, the horizon had turned dull grey. All until this fluorescent-adolescent quartet from Sheffield. Led by the timid Alex Turner, the Monkeys concocted for this perfect first album thirteen frantic tracks bordering on genius, that the NME ranked 19th in its 500 Greatest albums of all time list. It featured everything that had been missing from the rock landscape. Incisive guitar riffs for Turner’s scruffy compositions (The View From The Afternoon, I Bet You Look Better On The Dancefloor, Dancing Shoes) and Matt Helders’ cheeky drums. Andy Nicholson on the bass for the last time. They play, hard and fast. The whole thing is overflowing with extensive lyrics about the daily life of the English working class. Shiny but not polished, youthful but well formed. Recorded in the country side, in the Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, this opus draws from the Strokes’ nonchalance (Riot Van), Franz Ferdinand’s dancing energy (Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured) and the Libertines’ phlegm (Mardy Bum), while also drawing inspiration from their idols, the Jam, the Smiths, and Oasis, already putting down their very own trademarks for years to come. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

In the year of his 90th birthday (which he would have celebrated on the 23rd of September 2020 had he not died in 2004), Ray Charles is honoured with a new 90-track compilation box set. Just another compilation like all the rest? Yes and no. Ray Charles is undoubtedly one of the most-compiled artists in the history of music. Published by Tangerine, the label that the musician set up at the end of the 50s to keep the rights to his songs, this box set starts out like all the others: with the post-Atlantic hits, Georgia On My Mind, Hit The Road Jack, One Mint Julep, Busted... These are timeless treasures of proto-soul, but there doesn't seem to be much novelty here. The rest is much more interesting, and much rarer: tracks recorded between the second half of the 1960s and the 2000s, many of which were only released on vinyl, never reissued on CD and until now unavailable on digital. This is the first time that Ray Charles' lesser-known years have been given the compilation treatment in this way, and it is a revelation. In the 90s and 2000s, the production of his songs had a synthetic feel, and they did not age too well. These rarer songs are often hidden gems of southern soul, flavoured with country and wrapped in sumptuous symphonic orchestrations. Whether he is singing the Muppets (It's Ain't Easy Being Green) or Gershwin (Summertime, a duet with Cleo Laine), Ray Charles is always deeply moving. Now, the dream is to hear reissues of all these albums in their entirety. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz

A companion album to the 2022 documentary Not Just a Girl, this is a tight, no-nonsense collection of Shania Twain songs that's heavy on the hits. Some of these hits, such as 1996's "You Win My Love," have been eclipsed by Twain's blockbusters, so it's notable that they're here and "That Don't Impress Me Much" isn't, but that platinum hit is the only titanic number missing in action: "You're Still the One," "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!," "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under," and "Any Man of Mine" are all here. That makes for a satisfying, if not quite definitive, listen.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

A companion album to the 2022 documentary Not Just a Girl, this is a tight, no-nonsense collection of Shania Twain songs that's heavy on the hits. Some of these hits, such as 1996's "You Win My Love," have been eclipsed by Twain's blockbusters, so it's notable that they're here and "That Don't Impress Me Much" isn't, but that platinum hit is the only titanic number missing in action: "You're Still the One," "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!," "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under," and "Any Man of Mine" are all here. That makes for a satisfying, if not quite definitive, listen.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Download not available
It's all about the title. First time around, Eminem established his alter ego, Slim Shady -- the character who deliberately shocked and offended millions, turning Eminem into a star. Second time at bat, he turned out The Marshall Mathers LP, delving deeper into his past while revealing complexity as an artist and a personality that helped bring him an even greater audience and much, much more controversy. Third time around, it's The Eminem Show -- a title that signals that Eminem's public persona is front and center, for the very first time. And it is, as he spends much of the album commenting on the media circus that dominated on his life ever since the release of Marshall Mathers. This, of course, encompasses many, many familiar subjects -- his troubled childhood; his hatred of his parents; his turbulent relationship with his ex-wife, Kim (including the notorious incident when he assaulted a guy who allegedly kissed her -- the event that led to their divorce); his love of his daughter, Hailie; and, of course, all the controversy he generated, notably the furor over his alleged homophobia and his scolding from Lynne Cheney, which leads to furious criticism about the hypocrisy of America and its government. All this is married to a production very similar to that of its predecessor -- spare, funky, fluid, and vibrant, punctuated with a couple of ballads along the way. So, that means The Eminem Show is essentially a holding pattern, but it's a glorious one -- one that proves Eminem is the gold standard in pop music in 2002, delivering stylish, catchy, dense, funny, political music that rarely panders (apart from a power ballad "Dream On" rewrite on "Sing for the Moment" and maybe the sex rap "Drips," that is). Even if there is little new ground broken, the presentation is exceptional -- Dre never sounds better as a producer than when Eminem pushes him forward (witness the stunning oddity "Square Dance," a left-field classic with an ominous waltz beat) and, with three albums under his belt, Eminem has proven himself to be one of the all-time classic MCs, surprising as much with his delivery as with what he says. Plus, the undercurrent of political anger -- not just attacking Lynne Cheney, but raising questions about the Bush administration -- gives depth to his typical topics, adding a new, spirited dimension to his shock tactics as notable as the deep sentimental streak he reveals on his odes to his daughter. Perhaps the album runs a little too long at 20 songs and 80 minutes and would have flowed better if trimmed by 25 minutes, but that's a typical complaint about modern hip-hop records. Fact is, it still delivers more great music than most of its peers in rock or rap, and is further proof that Eminem is an artist of considerable range and dimension.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Eleven returned from a five-year hiatus (during which the band's leaders, Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider, produced and performed on Chris Cornell's Euphoria Morning, then joined Cornell on the ensuing tour) with the satisfying Avantgardedog. Taking the band into more esoteric and richly textured territory, the self-produced Avantgardedog tones down the behemoth guitars of its predecessors but expands the group's tonal palette with a wider array of acoustic and electric instrumentation and a greatly evolved production acumen. New drummer Greg Upchurch complements Eleven's highly articulate, prog-influenced instrumental attack with more detail than previous skinsman Jack Irons (who departed to join Pearl Jam in 1995), while ornate drum loops and other slices of electronica augment the album's rhythmic tapestries. As always, co-lead vocalists Johannes and Shneider use their rich pipes to deliver memorable hooks on "Cool Cruel Baby," "Verb," and especially "It's Okay," with its delightfully bouncy, Beatlesque vocal counterpoint. Elsewhere, the band's dark, brooding tendencies are more effective than ever, particularly on the album-closing "Watergun," the tense and exotic "Lucky One," and Shneider's beautiful, haunting "Strands of Rain." Eleven's curse is that its music -- while focused and accessible -- is simply too unusual to pigeonhole, and therefore doesn't fit into easy marketing categories; consequently, Eleven remains a highly cherished and well-kept secret to its fans.© Andy Hinds /TiVo

Brown's Polydor debut, Hot Pants, was nothing more than an inferior remake of the title track baited with a batch of half-baked vamps. There It Is, his second Polydor studio album, was a marked improvement. Not that he put much into it, either. This 1972 effort collected five of his best early-'70s tracks and mixed in minimal filler. "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing" and "There It Is (Pts. 1 & 2)," with its bebop-style horns, were both innovative and hard driving to a fault. The hilarious "I'm a Greedy Man," with its hypnotic bass and help from Bobby Byrd, has Brown firing off such witticisms as "I'm a greedy man/yes I are" and "Taking care of my business/now run tell that." Brown wasn't all fun and games on this one. "King Heroin," an eerie, laid-back jazz offering, has him reciting chilling poetry about the ills of the drug. "Public Enemy #1 (Pt. 1)" attempts to re-create the same message. By "Public Enemy #2 (Pt. 2)" he is doing nothing but connecting the same dots and screaming himself hoarse to little effect. Although by this point Brown was best known for his dance tracks, he still had a way with a ballad. "Who Am I," a song that had been kicking around his oeuvre for aeons, gets a strong arrangement and has Brown giving an impassioned performance. It's well worth picking up.© Jason Elias /TiVo

Vocalist Marley Munroe (aka Lady Blackbird) evokes the maverick style of singer Nina Simone on her potent 2021 debut Black Acid Soul. Produced by Chris Seefried, Black Acid Soul is Munroe's first full-length album following a handful of singles and several years of studio work and live performing. Much like Simone, Munroe is blessed with a throaty, highly resonant voice that's well-suited to carrying a jazz standard, but which also fits nicely on dusky R&B ballads. Working with guitarist Seefried and an intimate ensemble of collaborators, including pianist Deron Johnson, bassist Jon Flaugher, and drummer Jimmy Paxson, Munroe finds a spellbinding balance between acoustic jazz and live small group soul. She underlines the Simone connection from the start, opening with a burnished take of the legendary singer's classic "Blackbird," conjuring a menacing, earthy sensuality that perfectly sets the tone for what is to come. Part of what made Simone's classic work of the '60s and '70s so intriguing was her ability to take a song from any genre and make it her own. Munroe has the same gift and displays it throughout, diving into an organ-tinged take on Reuben Bell's 1967 track "It's Not That Easy" and transforming Bill Evans' languid 1958 composition "Peace Piece" into a dreamily intoxicating tone poem called "Fix It." She even reworks the James Gang's 1969 "Collage" into a far-eyed modal number that draws equally from John Coltrane and the psychedelic band Love. While Lady Blackbird's distinct influences and love of Simone certainly drives much of Black Acid Soul, there's an immediacy and warmth to the album that feels all her own.© Matt Collar /TiVo

When Up! was released in November 2002, Shania Twain revealed in one of many promotional interviews that she writes far more songs than can fit on her records and that she hides any personal, introspective songs she pens, not even playing them for her husband and collaborator Robert John "Mutt" Lange. Now, this is certainly a psychological quirk worth exploring, but it also suggests why Twain's albums are such brilliant pieces of mainstream pop. Anything that doesn't fit the mold is discarded, so the album can hum along on its big, polished, multipurpose hooks and big, sweeping emotions. This is Super-Size pop, as outsized and grandiose as good pop should be. And, unlike the work of most pop divas, where the subject matter is firmly about the singer, none of the songs on Up! are remotely about Shania Twain, the person -- let's face it, she's never faced a situation like "Waiter! Bring Me Water!," where she's afraid her guy is going to be stolen away by their hot waitress. No, these songs have been crafted as universal anthems, so listeners can hear themselves within these tales. Just as cleverly, the songs are open-ended and mutable -- always melodic, but never stuck in any particular style, so they can be subjected to any kind of mix and sound just as good. (Indeed, Up! was initially released in no less than three different mixes -- the "Red" pop mix, the "Green" country mix, and the "Blue" international mix; sometimes the differences in mixes were so slight, it sounded like nothing was changed, but each mix revealed how sturdy and melodic the structure of each of the 19 songs was, and how they were designed to sound good in any setting.) True, the sheer length of the album could be seen as off-putting at first, since these 19 tracks don't necessarily flow as a whole. Then again, part of the genius of Up! is that it's designed as a collection of tracks, so the album is durable enough to withstand years on the charts, producing singles with different textures and moods every few months. Time revealed Come on Over as a stellar pop album, and the same principle works for Up!. Upon the first listen, singles seem indistinct, and it seems like too much to consume at once, but once you know the lay of the land, the hooks become indelible and the gargantuan glossiness of the production is irresistible. In other words, it's a more than worthy follow-up to the great mainstream pop album of the late '90s, and proof that when it comes to shiny, multipurpose pop, nobody does it better than Shania Twain.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

When Up! was released in November 2002, Shania Twain revealed in one of many promotional interviews that she writes far more songs than can fit on her records and that she hides any personal, introspective songs she pens, not even playing them for her husband and collaborator Robert John "Mutt" Lange. Now, this is certainly a psychological quirk worth exploring, but it also suggests why Twain's albums are such brilliant pieces of mainstream pop. Anything that doesn't fit the mold is discarded, so the album can hum along on its big, polished, multipurpose hooks and big, sweeping emotions. This is Super-Size pop, as outsized and grandiose as good pop should be. And, unlike the work of most pop divas, where the subject matter is firmly about the singer, none of the songs on Up! are remotely about Shania Twain, the person -- let's face it, she's never faced a situation like "Waiter! Bring Me Water!," where she's afraid her guy is going to be stolen away by their hot waitress. No, these songs have been crafted as universal anthems, so listeners can hear themselves within these tales. Just as cleverly, the songs are open-ended and mutable -- always melodic, but never stuck in any particular style, so they can be subjected to any kind of mix and sound just as good. (Indeed, Up! was initially released in no less than three different mixes -- the "Red" pop mix, the "Green" country mix, and the "Blue" international mix; sometimes the differences in mixes were so slight, it sounded like nothing was changed, but each mix revealed how sturdy and melodic the structure of each of the 19 songs was, and how they were designed to sound good in any setting.) True, the sheer length of the album could be seen as off-putting at first, since these 19 tracks don't necessarily flow as a whole. Then again, part of the genius of Up! is that it's designed as a collection of tracks, so the album is durable enough to withstand years on the charts, producing singles with different textures and moods every few months. Time revealed Come on Over as a stellar pop album, and the same principle works for Up!. Upon the first listen, singles seem indistinct, and it seems like too much to consume at once, but once you know the lay of the land, the hooks become indelible and the gargantuan glossiness of the production is irresistible. In other words, it's a more than worthy follow-up to the great mainstream pop album of the late '90s, and proof that when it comes to shiny, multipurpose pop, nobody does it better than Shania Twain.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

At two discs and 32 songs, 2006's The Essential Michael Bolton is by far the most comprehensive Michael Bolton collection ever assembled; at 17 tracks, the previous Bolton comp, 1995's Greatest Hits 1985-1995, was nearly half the size of this set. Longer isn't necessarily better, at least as far as the average Bolton fan is concerned, since every one of Bolton's biggest hits is on the 1995 collection. In the decade that followed the release of Greatest Hits, Michael Bolton was a fairly regular fixture on the Adult Contemporary charts but had only one hit that crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100 -- "Go the Distance" in 1997 -- which means that there wasn't much from the late '90s and 2000s that crossed into the popular consciousness the way that "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You," "How Can We Be Lovers," and "Said I Loved You...But I Lied" did. Anyone just wanting those hits, along with other '80s and early-'90s singles as "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" and "Soul Provider," would be better off with Greatest Hits, but listeners who want to dig a little deeper into that classic era and the years that followed are well-served by The Essential Michael Bolton, which covers both eras equally by serving up all the big hits (minus "Love Is a Wonderful Thing," which has been written out of Bolton's history) and selected album tracks.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Not yet out of her teens and already put through the showbiz wringer, Mahalia considered leaving music after the 2016 release of Diary of Me, a full-length the singer, songwriter, and guitarist (perhaps tellingly) termed a project, not an album. The next year, Mahalia rebounded when the single "Sober" took off through social media, and on a semi-regular basis well into 2019, she continued to release new singles evincing total rejuvenation. Some of those songs appear on this, what Mahalia considers her true first LP. It continues to nudge the artist in a more commercial direction -- collaborators higher in profile, no songs written with her parents, and almost no acoustic guitar -- without forsaking her young-woman-next-door character. She's paired smartly with a crop of U.K. and U.S. producers whose collective work includes sessions with Jazmine Sullivan, Elle Varner, Jorja Smith, and featured artist Ella Mai, consequently securing her position in a hip-hop soul lineage that can be traced back to the likes of Caron Wheeler, Mary J. Blige, and Lauryn Hill. Mahalia's accounts of opposing and moving past unsuitable male behavior, seeing beyond her faults and persuasively bigging-up herself, are distinct and flow as freely as the hooks that embellish them. No matter how detailed the productions get, they don't obstruct the vocals, which are consistently dynamic without being showy. Going by the natural charm of the album and the fun Mahalia seemed to have in making it -- the smile cracked in the chorus of "I Wish I Missed My Ex" is the clearest evidence -- she might only be getting started.© Andy Kellman /TiVo