Thirty years later, we can finally hear the songs that Son Volt’s Jay Farrar wrote without the alt-country baggage critics perpetuated to the point of cliché.
Thirty years on, Michael Jackson’s HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is among the most ambitious and personal pop statements of the 1990s, born from pressure, transformed into autobiography, and forever in our History.
Constantines are Canadian, but they understand the death of the American Dream, with their quiet, dignified stories of working-class struggles.
The New Pornographers took their power pop to another level on Twin Cinema, with Carl Newman’s impeccable songwriting and all three vocalists dialed in.
Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run is one of the great rock albums; it showcases youthful idealism’s shortcomings while keeping one enraptured with its false promises.
Punk’s rooted, regional, and defiantly local identities made scenes like Louisville punk essential and life-affirming during the violently conformist Reagan years.
If Kate Bush’s The Dreaming is a hellscape of bizarre fragmentation and nightmarish beauty, Hounds of Love teaches pop how to dream and capture those contradictions in sound.
The “gigantic, derelict, empty, silent monolith” sparked Tame Impala’s imagination while composing one of the most memorable albums of the 2010s.
Elliott Smith’s self-titled sophomore album marks the beginning of his solo career in earnest, and it remains one of the finest indie records of the 1990s.
While not a perfect record, Kyuss’ …And the Circus Leaves Town captures the Californian stoner rock juggernauts at a unique moment in time.
Rife with concept albums in the 1970s, Captain Fantastic is one of the most coherent, and it shows Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s creative relationship.
Marie-Paule Belle has been crafting smart, sweet, and tart pop-rock since 1973. It’s time for her profile to be higher outside her native France.
