Few bands captured the Zeitgeist like blink-182 did during their time as the irreverent kings of Warped Tour-era pop punk in the late '90s and early 2000s. Like a nasally, SoCal, three-headed hydra, the band, featuring singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge, singer/bassist Mark Hoppus, and drummer Travis Barker, broke boundaries, gatecrashing MTV's TRL with their snotty, tongue-in-cheek music videos and anthems about falling in love at rock shows, making prank calls, and generally being stupid and having fun. Of course, there were darker times ahead, with DeLonge quitting the band and then returning and quitting again. Barker survived a 2008 plane crash that left him with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, in 2021, Hoppus successfully underwent chemotherapy to treat a rare form of lymphoma, a diagnosis that ultimately brought the trio back together, looking to heal old wounds and rekindle lost friendships. It's that feeling of gripping onto the past right before it slips away that the reunited blink-182 capture on their ninth studio album (or tenth, depending on if you count their initial demo), 2023's One More Time.... Produced by Barker, the album is their first to feature DeLonge since 2011's Neighborhoods. While the albums the group made with Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba (2016's California and 2019's Nine) were solidly crafted, they always felt like something was missing. That something was DeLonge's goofy sincerity and hyper-resonant croon, two key elements of the group's classic sound, along with their crisp guitar, bass, and drum riffs that are front and center throughout all of One More Time.... Cuts like "Dance with Me," "Bad News," and "Fell in Love" are classic blink-anthems that wouldn't sound out of place on Enema of the State or Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Yet, there are wounds here, and the band dig deep into them, working through the mess of bad breakup on "More Than You Know" and revealing the stark truth about taking someone's presence in your life for granted on "You Don't Know What You've Got," the latter of which finds their voices intertwined in a throaty harmony. There's certainly the sense that blink-182 are working through the pain of the past two decades on One More Time..., including the death of close friends, divorces, and their own interpersonal drama. It's a vibe of carpe diem that they explicitly underline on the title track, singing "I know that next time ain't always gonna happen/I gotta say, 'I love you' while we're here." One More Time... plays like a love letter, both to fans who stuck with them and to each other -- a letter that doesn't so much ask for forgiveness as offer it willingly, passionately, and without conditions.© Matt Collar /TiVo

White Blood Cells may have been a reaction to the amount of fame the White Stripes had received up to the point of its release, but, paradoxically, it made full-fledged rock stars out of Jack and Meg White and sold over half a million copies in the process. Despite the White Stripes' ambivalence, fame nevertheless seems to suit them: They just become more accomplished as the attention paid to them increases. Elephant captures this contradiction within the Stripes and their music; it's the first album they've recorded for a major label, and it sounds even more pissed-off, paranoid, and stunning than its predecessor. Darker and more difficult than White Blood Cells, the album offers nothing as immediately crowd-pleasing or sweet as "Fell in Love With a Girl" or "We're Going to Be Friends," but it's more consistent, exploring disillusionment and rejection with razor-sharp focus. Chip-on-the-shoulder anthems like the breathtaking opener, "Seven Nation Army," which is driven by Meg White's explosively minimal drumming, and "The Hardest Button to Button," in which Jack White snarls "Now we're a family!" -- one of the best oblique threats since Black Francis sneered "It's educational!" all those years ago -- deliver some of the fiercest blues-punk of the White Stripes' career. "There's No Home for You Here" sets a girl's walking papers to a melody reminiscent of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" (though the result is more sequel than rehash), driving the point home with a wall of layered, Queen-ly harmonies and piercing guitars, while the inspired version of "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself" goes from plaintive to angry in just over a minute, though the charging guitars at the end sound perversely triumphant. At its bruised heart, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with chivalry and innocence usually losing out to the power of seduction. "I Want to Be the Boy" tries, unsuccessfully, to charm a girl's mother; "You've Got Her in Your Pocket," a deceptively gentle ballad, reveals the darker side of the Stripes' vulnerability, blurring the line between caring for someone and owning them with some fittingly fluid songwriting. The battle for control reaches a fever pitch on the "Fell in Love With a Girl"-esque "Hypnotize," which suggests some slightly underhanded ways of winning a girl over before settling for just holding her hand, and on the show-stopping "Ball and Biscuit," seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess that ranks as one the band's most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs. Interestingly, Meg's star turn, "In the Cold, Cold Night," is the closest Elephant comes to a truce in this struggle, her kitten-ish voice balancing the song's slinky words and music. While the album is often dark, it's never despairing; moments of wry humor pop up throughout, particularly toward the end. "Little Acorns" begins with a sound clip of Detroit newscaster Mort Crim's Second Thoughts radio show, adding an authentic, if unusual, Motor City feel. It also suggests that Jack White is one of the few vocalists who could make a lyric like "Be like the squirrel" sound cool and even inspiring. Likewise, the showy "Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine" -- on which White resembles a garage rock snake-oil salesman -- is probably the only song featuring the word "acetaminophen" in its chorus. "It's True That We Love One Another," which features vocals from Holly Golightly as well as Meg White, continues the Stripes' tradition of closing their albums on a lighthearted note. Almost as much fun to analyze as it is to listen to, Elephant overflows with quality -- it's full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity (and the excellent "The Air Near My Fingers" features all of these). Crucially, the White Stripes know the difference between fame and success; while they may not be entirely comfortable with their fame, they've succeeded at mixing blues, punk, and garage rock in an electrifying and unique way ever since they were strictly a Detroit phenomenon. On these terms, Elephant is a phenomenal success.© Heather Phares /TiVo

A guitarist worshipped by Jimi Hendrix, an insanely good falsetto singer that even Prince looked up to, an author heavily involved in the American civil rights movement and a top-tier songwriter: Curtis Mayfield was a man of many talents. His groovy symphonies helped form solid links between funk, jazz, blues, soul and traditional gospel. After making his name with The Impressions in the 60s, he embarked on a solo career in 1970. This box set named Keep On Keeping On contains the singer’s first four studio albums, each remastered in Hi-Res 24-Bit quality: Curtis (1970), Roots (1971), Back to the World (1973) and Sweet Exorcist (1974). Here, the rhythm'n'blues enjoy a second life, supported by a wah-wah guitar, careful percussion and an always airy string section. Every topic concerned is a mini-tragedy, socially engaged, anchored in traditional gospel music. The masterful arranging of these albums (especially his masterpiece Curtis, and Roots) can be considered rivals to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. It is worth mentioning that this 1970-1974 box set does not include the soundtrack to Superfly, Gordon Parks Jr.’s 1972 film which contains the singles Pusherman and Freddie’s Dead. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Be Opened by the Wonderful is the 17th album from British rock outfit James and follows 2021's All the Colours of You. The 20-track release sees the band reworking their back catalog with the help of the Andra Vornici lead orchestra Orca 22 and the Manchester Inspirational Voices gospel choir. The album also includes the new track "Love Make a Fool," which was recorded specially for the album.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Few bands captured the Zeitgeist like blink-182 did during their time as the irreverent kings of Warped Tour-era pop punk in the late '90s and early 2000s. Like a nasally, SoCal, three-headed hydra, the band, featuring singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge, singer/bassist Mark Hoppus, and drummer Travis Barker, broke boundaries, gatecrashing MTV's TRL with their snotty, tongue-in-cheek music videos and anthems about falling in love at rock shows, making prank calls, and generally being stupid and having fun. Of course, there were darker times ahead, with DeLonge quitting the band and then returning and quitting again. Barker survived a 2008 plane crash that left him with multiple injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, in 2021, Hoppus successfully underwent chemotherapy to treat a rare form of lymphoma, a diagnosis that ultimately brought the trio back together, looking to heal old wounds and rekindle lost friendships. It's that feeling of gripping onto the past right before it slips away that the reunited blink-182 capture on their ninth studio album (or tenth, depending on if you count their initial demo), 2023's One More Time.... Produced by Barker, the album is their first to feature DeLonge since 2011's Neighborhoods. While the albums the group made with Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba (2016's California and 2019's Nine) were solidly crafted, they always felt like something was missing. That something was DeLonge's goofy sincerity and hyper-resonant croon, two key elements of the group's classic sound, along with their crisp guitar, bass, and drum riffs that are front and center throughout all of One More Time.... Cuts like "Dance with Me," "Bad News," and "Fell in Love" are classic blink-anthems that wouldn't sound out of place on Enema of the State or Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. Yet, there are wounds here, and the band dig deep into them, working through the mess of bad breakup on "More Than You Know" and revealing the stark truth about taking someone's presence in your life for granted on "You Don't Know What You've Got," the latter of which finds their voices intertwined in a throaty harmony. There's certainly the sense that blink-182 are working through the pain of the past two decades on One More Time..., including the death of close friends, divorces, and their own interpersonal drama. It's a vibe of carpe diem that they explicitly underline on the title track, singing "I know that next time ain't always gonna happen/I gotta say, 'I love you' while we're here." One More Time... plays like a love letter, both to fans who stuck with them and to each other -- a letter that doesn't so much ask for forgiveness as offer it willingly, passionately, and without conditions.© Matt Collar /TiVo

The way that Chaka Khan turbocharged the career of Chicago funk band Rufus was extraordinary enough to warrant the group appending "featuring Chaka Khan" to its name throughout most of her hit-making tenure with them. So, it was inevitable that after four successful studio albums between 1974 and 1977 that "featured" Chaka Khan, Rufus would soon watch their star vocalist embark upon a solo career, even though that solo career mostly took place alongside her role in Rufus. (Khan would appear on several more—though not all—Rufus albums until the band's eventual dissolution in 1983, truly becoming a "featured" performer.) 1978's Chaka was released the same year as Street Player, her fifth studio album with the band, and the contrast between the two records could not be more sharp. While the latter focused on brassy funk and midtempo drama like "Stay," Chaka explodes out of the gate with "I'm Every Woman," a now-inescapable banger that finds both Khan and the songwriting team of Ashford & Simpson at the heights of their powers. Its lush, discofied groove makes the song an insistent dancefloor hit and also a remarkable showcase for Khan's voice.  While that voice had long been a focal point on Rufus albums, they often used group harmonies. On Chaka, her room-filling approach to singing is given plenty of space to shine, and she is unafraid to unleash its full power, which she does so tastefully and with plenty of dynamics. "I'm Every Woman" is undoubtedly the best-known classic, but the album also shines with other notable moments like the slow jam favorite "Roll Me Through the Rushes," which would become a deep-cut cornerstone of Quiet Storm radio, the gender-flipped Stevie Wonder cover "I Was Made to Love Him," and the jazzy romance of "We Got the Love," which finds Khan duetting with George Benson. Arif Mardin's production touch is a perfect match, expertly fusing a sophisticated soulfulness with dancefloor acumen and marshaling an army of session players to execute this material at its highest possible level, and this dynamic modern remaster delivers warmth and presence. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

Time has been good to Bonnie Raitt. At 72, she sounds great—and as strong as ever. The California roots-rock queen has said she wanted to try new styles on her 21st album, but there are no wild U-turns here. When she adopts a little Lyle Lovett jazziness on "Something's Got a Hold of My Heart"—accented by Glenn Patscha's seesaw piano and her own slow-hand guitar—she sounds like Nick of Time era Bonnie Raitt. Ditto the sexy, funky blues rock number "Waitin' for You to Blow," with its cocksure rhythm and a killer Hammond solo by Patscha. The whole thing sashays, and Raitt delivers the title line in a whispered growl that really belies her years. She plays around with R&B—heavy on the blues guitar—on the terrific "Made Up Mind," and tries on a little New Orleans street jazz sass for "Love So Strong." Her voice is so perfectly suited for the Dylan-esque ballad "Just Like That," about a man who died too young but donated his heart to save someone else's life. Told from the stricken perspective of his parents as they meet the man with their son's heart, she brings incredibly rich empathy to the story: "They say Jesus brings you peace and grace/ but he ain't found me yet," Raitt sings at first. Then, "I spent so long in darkness/ I thought the night would never end/ But somehow grace has found me/ and I had to let him in." There's a similar feel to "Down the Hall," a John Prine-like story song with the narrator finding redemption and hoping for good karma by caring for hospice patients—taking care of a dying stranger who has no one, washing his feet, shaving his bony head. Raitt, who has been making records for more than 50 years, is unafraid to face mortality on Just LIke That; it's a running theme, but matter-of-fact and in no way depressing. In fact, "Livin' for the Ones"—"Keep livin' for the ones who didn't make it/ Cut down through no fault of their own"—is absolutely alive with spitfire energy, a juke-joint blues rocker led by Raitt's ferocious guitar. "Just remember the ones who won't ever feel the sun on their faces again," she sings, and it feels like a jubilant rallying cry. She even makes amends on the Sunday-morning gospel blues of "Blame it On Me," drawing it out like taffy before she finally hits a high note of salvation and shifts the blame: "Ooooh, gonna blame it on you!" (After all, the clock's not stopped yet.) Raitt also sounds completely relaxed and like she's having a ball on "Here Comes Love"— a little bit of funk, a little jazz piano, a little street percussion. "Chicken 'n' dumplings that's all it's gonna take/ Just to make you stay for the ice cream cake" are the words of a woman who hasn't lost a beat. ©Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

Delivered months after her May 2023 death, Queen of Rock 'N' Roll is the first comprehensive solo retrospective assembled on Tina Turner in many years. Spanning either three CDs or five LPs, the box set follows a chronological order, opening with a trippy reading of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" -- popularized in Disney's Cruella -- then swiftly running through several late-'70s tracks that didn't often appear on collections before the comp reaches her great comeback of 1984. By this point, the collection is seven cuts deep and there's another 48 songs to go, which means Queen of Rock 'N' Roll relies heavily on her international hits of the 1990s and beyond, building upon her basic hits with live cuts and re-recordings. It perhaps winds up getting a little too glossy and tasteful by the close of the collection, yet this, of all Turner compilations, paints a portrait of the entire arc of Tina's solo career. Her rawest, nerviest, and funkiest material is missing, but this depicts her comeback and reign in vivid detail.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Capitol's 2005 collection All the Best weighs in at only 18 tracks, which is a little bit light to truly contain all of the best songs Tina Turner has recorded over her lengthy career. And, truth be told, it doesn't come close to containing all of her best -- it concentrates on material she recorded from her '80s comeback, Private Dancer, on, stretching all the way into the '90s but focusing on such '80s hits as "What's Love Got to Do with It," "Private Dancer," "The Best," "Better Be Good to Me," "Typical Male," and "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)," adding her biggest '90s hit, "I Don't Wanna Fight," plus a couple of OK but forgettable new songs. The classic 1973 version of "Nutbush City Limits" is here, but it's the only Ike & Tina cut; the version of "Proud Mary" is taken from the soundtrack of her 1993 biopic What's Love Got to Do with It. That highlights the problem with All the Best -- it has many of the big hits, but for one reason or another ignores the music on which her legend is built. Still, as a summation of her comeback and beyond, it's good, and for fans who favor this sound, it's a good disc to have.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Simply the Best is surrounded by some of the best situations a compilation can hope for. Tina Turner's work for Capitol past Private Dancer was spotty, she made a bunch of appearances on soundtracks and other artists' albums, and most of the tracks on Private Dancer are good enough to own twice. Almost half of Private Dancer shows up on Simply the Best, but you don't have to endure the way the original album spiraled down into slick fizzle. Instead you have to endure a misguided, pumped-up house remix of "Nutbush City Limits," but that's it. Everything else here is either top-notch or campy, certifiable fun. A duet with Rod Stewart on "It Takes Two" supplies the fun along with the new track, "I Want You Near Me" (Turner to lover: "You're so good with your hands/To help me with a hook or zip"). The two other new tracks tacked to the end beat out most of the album cuts the collection passes on, plus you get the bombastic "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" without having to buy a dull soundtrack. The oldest cut by years is the monolithic "River Deep-Mountain High," which is a bona fide classic but sonically out of place here. Reprogram the disc to play it at the beginning or end, skip the new "Nutbush" completely, and you've got sparkling, nearly perfect overview of Turner's postcomeback career.© David Jeffries /TiVo

It’s not quite right to say that the Go-Go’s' 1981 debut, Beauty and the Beat, is where new wave caught hold in the U.S., but it’s not quite wrong, either. Prior to this, there had certainly been new wave hits -- Blondie had been reaching the Top Ten for two years running -- but the Go-Go’s ushered in the era of big, bright stylish pop, spending six weeks at the top of the U.S. charts and generating two singles that defined the era: the cool groove of “Our Lips Are Sealed” and the exuberant “We Got the Beat.” So big were these two hits that they sometimes suggested that Beauty and the Beat was a hits-and-filler record, an impression escalated by the boost the Go-Go’s received from the just-launched MTV, yet that’s hardly the case. Beauty and the Beat is sharp, clever, and catchy, explicitly drawing from the well of pre-Beatles ‘60s pop -- girl group harmonies, to be sure, but surf-rock echoes throughout -- but filtering it through the nervy energy of punk. With the assistance of Rob Freeman, producer Richard Gottehrer -- a veteran of the Strangeloves (“I Want Candy”) who also wrote the girl group standard “My Boyfriend’s Back” -- sanded down the band’s rougher edges, keeping the emphasis on the hooks and harmonies but giving the Go-Go’s enough kick and jangle that at times the group resembles nothing less than early R.E.M., particularly on “How Much More” and “Tonite.” But this isn’t Murmur; there is nothing murky about Beauty and the Beat at all -- this is infectiously cheerful pop, so hooky it’s sometimes easy to overlook how well-written these tunes are, but it’s the sturdiness of the songs that makes Beauty and the Beat a new wave classic.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Brothers Osborne—siblings TJ and John, and their band—are in their adult-contemporary era on their fourth album, and that's not a boring thing. Nor is it criticism to call "Who Says You Can't Have Everything" smooth, easy listening country. "We Ain't Good at Breaking Up" brings along Miranda Lambert for a Fleetwood Mac-ish slow-burn. "Love You Too" melds Alabama's trad-country and Southern rock with the grandiosity of Kings of Leon. The brothers from Maryland sound confident and sure of their place in contemporary Nashville, which is important considering that TJ came out in 2021, making him the first major country star who is openly gay. You can't help but read a bit of pride in the ass-shaking Southern rock of "Might As Well Be Me": "Somebody gotta shake things up/ Somebody gotta shut things down/ Somebody gotta strike a match/ Break the ice and buy the first round." Maybe it's about his history-making declaration or maybe, at face value, it's about getting the party started, but the song makes the most of TJ's signature baritone twang, layering on revving guitar and an on-fire solo from John. TJ's voice is rich as ever on the album's sole ballad, melancholy-sounding love song "Rollercoaster (Forever and a Day)", with its message of how opposites attract and complement. "New Bad Habit," meanwhile, finds him pushing smoldering temptation and bad-boy flirtation alongside Stonesy guitar: "I want to be your pack a day ... I want to be your 90 proof … can't quit cold and you can't rehab it." TJ has long had a habit of singing about vice as a metaphor—for relationships, for humility (getting effed up and effing up), for a good time—and there's no shortage of that here. Kissed by a bit of dub and R&B, "Goodbye's Kicking In" explores how break-up regrets hit "like that first cigarette, like that second shot of whiskey." And "Sun Ain't Even Gone Down Yet," with its bluesy honky-tonk riff, is an ode to day drinking: "We were already high noon high/ If a cold libation's any indication/ We're gonna have a hell of a night." Some things never change, and TJ makes it clear on '80s-rich "Nobody's Nobody" that he wants the music to speak for itself: "Some people never ever make a name/ But change the game in someone's story/ I'm still tryna leave my mark/ With a simple song and an old guitar/ One thing I've learned out on the road is/ Nobody's nobody."  © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

When she released Private Dancer in 1984, Tina Turner was already 45 years old and had a solid career behind her. Alongside her ex, the violent but brilliant Ike Turner (they divorced in 1978 after 16 years of marital hell that she described in a book), she sang soul and rhythm’n’blues like no one else before, venturing into other genres. But her solo début didn’t interest many people, especially since at the beginning of the ‘80s vintage soul was no longer popular. Supported by the record label Capitol, the Tennessee lioness decided to immerse soul in a blend of rock FM and synth pop. This resulted in her reaching the top of the charts and a boost to her career, mostly thanks to the hit What’s Love Got to Do With It. Tina Turner also enjoyed being more daring and covering songs as diverse as Private Dancer by Dire Straits (with Jeff Beck on guitar), Help! by The Beatles, 1984 by David Bowie but also soul classics like I Can’t Stand The Rain by Ann Peebles and Let’s Stay Together by Al Green. An eclectic repertoire that is accompanied perfectly by her fierce feline voice. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz