Fearless by Taylor Swift One of the best mainstream pop releases of 2008, Taylor Swift's second album is styled after crossover country-pop stars Shania Twain and Faith Hill. There may be a hint of youthfulness to the 18-year-old Swift's singing but her writing—and she had a hand in penning all 13 tracks, with six of them bearing her solitary credit—is sharply, subtly crafted and the music is softly assured. Swift's gentle touch is as enduring as her songcraft, and this musical maturity results in a small-scale and sweetly tuneful production— always seeming humble even when the power ballads build to a big close.
The last Beatles album to be recorded (although Let It Be was the last to be released), Abbey Road was a fitting swan song for the group, echoing some of the faux-conceptual forms of Sgt. Pepper, but...
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With Revolver, the Beatles made the Great Leap Forward, reaching a previously unheard-of level of sophistication and fearless experimentation. Sgt. Pepper, in many ways, refines that breakthrough, as...
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The U.S. version of the soundtrack for the Beatles' ill-fated British television special embellished the six songs that were found on the British Magical Mystery Tour double EP with five other cuts...
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With the Beatles is a sequel of the highest order -- one that betters the original by developing its own tone and adding depth. While it may share several similarities with its predecessor -- there...
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Each song on the sprawling double album The Beatles is an entity to itself, as the band touches on anything and everything it can. This makes for a frustratingly scattershot record or a singularly...
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Naysayers listen up: Muse refuses to be the "next" Radiohead. Since forming in 1997, the alternative rock trio has continuously battled comparisons to the famed Oxford group while ambitiously...
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While the Beatles still largely stuck to love songs on Rubber Soul, the lyrics represented a quantum leap in terms of thoughtfulness, maturity, and complex ambiguities. Musically, too, it was a...
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It would not have been surprising if Collective Soul had become a one-hit wonder. Straddling a line between '80s arena rock and jangling, '90s alternative pop, their debut was a pleasant affair that...
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It was inevitable that the constant grind of touring, writing, promoting, and recording would grate on the Beatles, but the weariness of Beatles for Sale comes as something of a shock. Only five...
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Once "Please Please Me" rocketed to number one, the Beatles rushed to deliver a debut album, bashing out Please Please Me in a day. Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh, precisely...
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Released in conjunction with Billy Joel's grand experiment with classical music, The Essential Billy Joel was a welcome reminder of Billy Joel's way with a pop song, improving on the previous...
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Hair was both celebratory and anticlimactic at the same time. Heralded by many at the time as being a rejuvenation for musical theater, it was also supposed to "speak" for the youth. The problem with...
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Thanks to good timing and some great singles, the Breeders' second album, Last Splash, turned them into the alternative rock stars that Kim Deal's former band, the Pixies, always seemed on the verge...
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Hello Nasty, the Beastie Boys' fifth album, is a head-spinning listen loaded with analog synthesizers, old drum machines, call-and-response vocals, freestyle rhyming, futuristic sound effects, and...
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With 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented...
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Meat Is Murder may have been a holding pattern, but The Queen Is Dead is the Smiths' great leap forward, taking the band to new musical and lyrical heights. Opening with the storming title track, The...
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King Crimson fell apart once more, seemingly for the last time, as David Cross walked away during the making of this album. It became Robert Fripp's last thoughts on this version of the band, a bit...
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Alice Cooper wasted little time following up the breakthrough success of Love It to Death with another album released the same year, Killer. Again, producer Bob Ezrin was on board and helps the group...
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One of Stephen Sondheim's better-known works, A Little Night Music is inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. The story follows the intertwining of several imperfect...
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Comedian George Carlin's definitive monologue was delivered on 1972's Class Clown album in the form of "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say on Television." While the majority of routines on Class...
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A serious contender for the title of best Wu-Tang solo album (rivaled only by the Genius' Liquid Swords), Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is also perhaps the most influential, thanks to Raekwon's cinematic...
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In a sense, 2009's Everybody Dance! is the coming-out party for longtime gospel producer James Roberson. Often seen behind the boards for the likes of inspirational luminaries from Beverly Crawford...
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All the rules fell by the wayside with Revolver, as the Beatles began exploring new sonic territory, lyrical subjects, and styles of composition. It wasn't just Lennon and McCartney, either --...
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Many of the songs on Strange Days had been written around the same time as the ones that appeared on The Doors, and with hindsight one has the sense that the best of the batch had already been cherry...
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