Growing up in the 1980-90s meant hearing the most popular songs by Billy Joel on the radio but having no context or sense of chronology. The recognizable singles from The Stranger (Only the Good Die Young, Movin' Out (Anthony's Song), She's Always a Woman, and the overly sentimental Just The Way You Are) are here with the dated production of the era: accordion and saxophone solos, string sections and melancholic whistling smothering some incredible lyrics and melodies. Even the iconic "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" is positively restrained by the sterile conditions of the studio. It is Possible that having heard powerful live versions of this material prevents me from fully appreciating this essential album.

Classic arena rock with ambient dream pop tones, distorted vocals and swirling guitar solos. Sounds like a heavily reverbed Paul Simon collaborating with M83, with some interesting sonic textures, warm and repetitive, strumming and pulsing! A more accessible Bob Dylan style vocals echo in such a way that lyrics are rendered obscure, hooks are incidental. At other times it sounds like Bruce Springsteen being produced by Phil Spector, or a less memorable My Morning Jacket. "Burning" transcends the pleasant pulsing familiarity that otherwise makes this album generic indie rock from the early aughts and twenty-teens, though it does remind me of Dancing in the Dark. Considering I associate the War on Drugs with an internet mediated feud with Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kill Moon (that was mostly Kozelek being an aging curmudgeon and tangentially related to competing performance slots at a music festival where Kozelek complained about the volume of their music), but never felt inspired to listen to The War on Drugs before now.

Malian blues! A collaboration between Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder. Although I am more familiar with the call-and-response style of Wassoulou associated with the incomparable Malian vocalist, Oumou Sangaré, and tend to associate African blues with Taureg ensembles, like Etran Finatawa, it was wonderful to listen to a true cross-cultural collaboration. Bringing the blues back from the Mississippi Delta to the country of its origins. Some songs have an obvious "Highlife" influence with the chiming arpeggiated guitars.

Iconic double album of infectious British punk flirting with rockabilly, dub reggae, ska and New Wave, London Calling has been justifiably considered essential and topped critics' lists since 1979 (1980 for the United States). Every single song feels vital and timeless!

All the controversy and critical acclaim inspired by Eminem's debut album "The Slim Shady LP" still feels justified. Tori Amos covered '97 Bonnie & Clyde on her album "Strange Little Girls," recording it from the perspective of the murdered woman overhearing the conversation between father and daughter, but art should inspire debate and response. This material is just as shocking, skillful and inventive, even if the cultural references are a little historically specific allusions to Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct in the Oval office reads like the Kent Starr Report 26 years later. A relic from that era where rap albums were half skits and interludes. "My Fault" is incredible and irresponsible storytelling about giving a recovering heroin addict an accidental overdose of psilocybin, "Role Model" establishes the Eminem/ Slim Shady public persona of trickster and violent clown, underprivileged, underdog, industry outsider with open eyes calling out the moral hypocrisy of American culture. The Dr. Dre production does feel like Freshman year in high school, Eminem's skills as a rapper is prodigious. "Cum On Everybody" is brilliantly irreverent and antisocial. "Rock Bottom" yearns to go from minimum wage to overnight stardom, but might resort to crime instead and will run "up on someone's lawn with guns drawn." The violence and misogyny of Slim Shady as blue collar avenger, full spectrum addict, antisocial, raw doggin' everyone to impregnate the cultural consciousness and walk away with a rainbow coalition of sexually transmitted diseases, a bullied child gets his day on "Brain Damage" and "As The World Turns." Parents outraged by a commercially viable white rapper selling violent records to their white suburban adolescent sons, but unconcerned about economic inequality and systemic racism have missed his point about artistic freedom, the first amendment and fiction: "My baby Mama's not dead." "Bad Meets Evil" is brilliant and lacerating. "Still Don't Give A Fuck" depicts "A lyricist without a clue" who " can't rap anymore, I just murdered the alphabet" rebelling against "all the people {he} offended." The homophobia is less pronounced than I remember, perhaps the GLAAD protests were related to his follow-up album? But, everyone who criticized or supported Eminem both gave him ammunition for subsequent inventive diss tracks and a bloated discography.

Back in the late 1990s, Amazon used to allow users to create publicly posted recommendation lists of their favorite albums, books, films and I recall seeing the surrealistic and iconic cover art for Nick Drake's Pink Moon on quite a few. It was before Gilmore Girls name dropped the album as a way for Rory to pretend to have common interests with her crush, Season one Dean (before Supernatural turned him into Sam), but the title track had already been featured on a Volkswagen advertisement. This third, and final, album from Nick Drake was my adolescent introduction to the artist, and its beautifully melancholic and unaccompanied acoustic guitar made it challenging for me to appreciate his earlier Chamber folk albums that sounded a bit busy with their background singers and orchestral backdrops. Every single song on "Pink Moon" is timeless and engaging. Rather romantically associated with Nick Drake's depression and death, although the album was actually released to critical indifference and hostility two years before he joined the "26 club," most contemporary critics and fans see Pink Moon as a suicide note of elegiac beauty. But, there is joy here that can't be overshadowed by his overdose.

Billie Holiday always wanted to record an orchestral album arranged by Ray Ellis for most of her career, but her previous record labels solely sought to sell more commercially viable jazz material featuring Lady Day. All of Billie Holiday's recordings are powerful and influential, some prefer her earlier recordings for Columbia Records 1933-1944 for the youthful and expressive flexibility of her unique vocal range and impeccable sense of phrasing, and her collaborations with Teddy Wilson and Benny Carter. Others love the emotive darkening of her vocals on Verve records, as all her vices and legal issues took their toll proving that Lady Day truly lived the life of intense despair depicted in her songs. Ray Ellis was disappointed with the deterioration of Billie Holiday's voice on her penultimate record, Lady in Satin, solely because he was looking at it from a technical perspective and not from emotional resonance. Deep, somber, reedy, choked, vibrating with a control, her voice was a peculiar instrument that eschewed the multi-octave "sophistication" and scat-singing improvisation of her peers. Not initially blessed with the best material, her unique mastery of timing and ability to make the most of her limited range helped to invent and expand the American song-book. For many Lady in Satin is the last great album by Lady Day, her Last Recording sessions were manipulated by the producer who adjusted speed and pitch to compensate for her ravaged vocals. It is rumored that Holiday was in such poor health during the Last Recording session that she was propped up on a stool in the studio, barely able to keep her eyes open. On Lady in Satin the weariness is present, beautifully orchestrated, cinematic and somber, elegiac. Nothing swings, Lady in Satin is entirely slow, heart aching ballads with the occasional ghostly background vocals, clarinets, horns, snares, and strings ("But Beautiful"). "I'm A Fool To Want You" begins with such a deep note of despair and sets the tone for a bitter maturity enveloped in strings, the break on "love" and the choking on "time and time again." "Glad to Be Unhappy" makes you believe it, "Unrequited love's a bore, and I've got it pretty bad." The vibrato gargle on "bad" rends my heart. "I'll Be Around" was the original final song of the album (before it got reissued with studio outtakes) and it is perhaps a grim reminder that she would not always be there enduring unrequited passion with patience, is it a resigned promise or an evasion? "The End of a Love Affair" (Mono Take 4 with Vocal Overdub Take 8) is beautiful.

Jeff Buckley, tortured pretty boy bohemian, the music industry wanted to brand him a nepo-baby decades before the concept entered the cultural consciousness. Buckley never knew his father, 1960s folk troubadour, Tim Buckley, and resented having his music connected to the man who abandoned his mother. Being seen as a scruffy, grunge era heart throb affecting an Elvis Presley pose on the cover of his debut album Grace, may have inspired some casual listeners to deprive themselves of his powerful music. Unfortunately, his drowning in the Mississippi, while recording a follow up album in 1997, meant that his limited studio output his been accorded a tragic mythology and left fans wondering what might have been. His voice is mystical and transcendently passionate, Buckley considered Sufi devotional singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to be his Elvis Presley, and the influence of such global classical, multi-octave singing is evident on "Grace" and "Last Goodbye" whose string sections sound a little like Bollywood instrumentals. But, the guitar playing is also electrifying and the band is beautifully cohesive. Jazz standard "Lilac Wine" starts as a delicate vocal and electric guitar strumming before the brushed snare drums and cymbals come in and build to retreat, leaving Buckley's voice unaccompanied, fragile, tender and stunning. "So Real" comes in waves, earthly and ethereal, building to a guitar feedback battle that ends in a seductively whispered "I love you, but I'm afraid to love you." His acoustic Leonard Cohen cover, which inspired the Canadian songwriter to perform it in a similar style (like how Jimi Hendrix's cover inspired Bob Dylan to perform his "All Along the Watchtower" differently), is probably the most ubiquitous of the songs from Grace (it was also similarly covered by Rufus Wainwright and associated with the soundtrack to Shrek, before it inexplicably became a widely covered "Christmas song" (proving that Christians are quite literal in their assumptions about faith and incapable of interpreting texts (like poetry or the Bible)). "Lover, You Should Have Come Over" is iconic and the lyrics are incredible. Though I have been listening to this album for years the front half tends to stick in my mind a lot more than all of the songs following "Corpus Christi Carol" but "Eternal Life" rocks and "Dream Brother" has mystical, swirling, Middle Eastern guitar melodies and powerful vocals. "Forget Her" is a bluesy closing number that I, ironically, forget. It is such an incredible song, although a fadeout ending is kind of a slap in the face to both artist and the audience, especially since Buckley and the band sounded like they were in a groove and the singer was beginning to vocalize as the song fades to silence.

Britpop for the American mainstream rock fan meant "Wonderwall" or "Song 2" and the UK music press mediated rivalry (perhaps "Connection" if you were open to female fronted Alternative bands), Although there are some 4AD disciples who would argue that the shoegazer genre proliferated during the 1990s with My Bloody Valentine producing record label bankrupting albums of blissful sound and fury, it just wasn't being spun by Casey Kasam. Britpop aficionados would protest apoplectically about Pulp, Cornershop's Brimful of Asha, St. Etienne, Suede, The Stone Roses and any number of NME's Next Big Thing on an Island, but some of the retrospectively revered were obscure in their own time. Eventually Britpop both would and would not reach a fevered pitch with perpetual critics' darlings, Radiohead. The Boo Radleys had a hit record and single in 1995, but it flew above or under my radar. Giant Steps starts out with guitar feedback and audio samples, a staple of what passed as underground music in the UK (see Huggy Bear's "Our Troubled Youth" a split LP with Bikini Kill), and it builds to a catchy neo-psychedelic hook laden "I Hang Suspended." "Upon 9th and Fairchild" is build on a Reggae rhythm adorned with feedback saturated guitar. "Wish I Was Skinny" is melodic power pop with handclap beats and strummed guitars, vocalist is trying to out-Dando the Lemonheads vocalist with sweet yearning, but the music is more complex than anything on "It's a Shame About Ray." I appreciate the chameleonic nature of the Boo Radleys, their consistent distorted guitar unifies everything. "Leaves and Sands" begins softly strumming before a jarring dynamic shift, effects pedals deployed strategically as the guitar tone evolves throughout the song, alternating between soft and ear bleeding. Butterfly McQueen begins as an homage to the Beatles "Blackbird" before morphing into the horn heavy psychedelic wall of noise from Magical Mystery Tour, before becoming a stummed power pop song with vocal harmonies, and then swirling psychedelic tones. "Rodney King - Song For Lenny Bruce" is better than the best My Bloody Valentine track, lurching like a psychedelic merry-go-round. "Thinking of Ways" starts like "Scarborough Fair" that morphs into Syd Barrett demented chamber pop with Beach Boys harmonies and inevitable The Velvet Underground noise with Freakbeat tape experiments. "Barney (...and Me)" reminds me the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and then the flute comes in, stunning! The Boo Radleys don't seem content to simply let a simple pop song exist without melding it with studio experimentation, sonic allusions, dynamic and genre shifts. It doesn't make Giant Steps an easy listen because the comfort of repetition is discarded, melodies start off find a groove and then the song changes completely. Not every song works, "Spun Around" is just buzzing distorted vocals bereft of melodic ideas, interrupted by backwards vocal samples and nothing memorable. "If You Want It, Take It" comes to the rescue, vintage organ and guitar noodling. "Best Lose the Fear" starts off sounding like the theme song of a 1970s sitcom before it becomes a breezy pop song. "Take The Time Around" has the feedback freakouts of Dinosaur Jr. and quietly contemplative pop passages. "Lazarus" sounds like a dub outtake from the Clash's Sandinista album, shimmering tones alternating in stereo until it hits the one minute mark and it turns into a distorted horn section over electric guitar, before becoming a soft summery pop song with chiming strummed guitars and "ba ba ba ba" background vocals. "One is For" plucked guitar and ambient noise. Considering that the album was originally mastered to seamlessly transition from one track to another, listening to digital versions with even momentary disruption is a less than ideal introduction to Giant Steps. This album demands repeated listening. "The White Noise Revisited" (which name drops the Beatles) and "I've Lost the Reason" are a bit too heavily invested in effects which make it sound like the vocalist is singing into a rotating fan blade, the unadorned pop choruses are not enough to temper the distracting stylistic choices.

Guns N' Roses represent 1980s hair metal, Slash is a gifted guitarist and Axl Rose has an instantly recognizable voice but this entire era of music leaves me generally underwhelmed, even when I was a child at the height of its popularity I always thought that there was something cringe-inducing about the videos on MTV. "Welcome To The Jungle" was ubiquitous, "It's So Easy" with Duff McKagan on lead vocals was surprising but not consistently interesting, "Nightrain" is dull. "Out Ta Get Me" is melodic and engaging but that industry insiders are masquerading as outlaws in leather jackets is laughable. "Mr. Brownstown" sounds like "I Want Candy" (perhaps intentionally?) until it doesn't, decent ode to heroin addiction. "Paradise City (is seven minutes long?!), this is "Sweet Home Alabama" for California motorcyclists, every generation has its music of adolescent rebellion. My Michelle, cowbell! "Your daddy works in porno/ Now that mommy's not around/ She used to love her heroin/But now she's underground/ So you stay out late at night/And you do your dope for free/ Drivin' your friends crazy/ With your life's insanity" Sounds like every LA story in the 1980s and the genre's justification for continuing to have sex with every adolescent groupie from a broken home. "Think About You" is almost a tender transition song for "Sweet Child O' Mine" which is a great song. "Rocket Queen" is incredible!

A sonic palette cleanser following the excess of black leather jacket clad, white, heterosexual, male angst of Guns N' Roses "Appetite for Destruction," Fishbone's "Truth and Soul" is a funky, politically astute merger of ska and metal that sounds as fresh and relevant today as when it was released in 1988. The album begins with a hardcore cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead" proving that urban African-American communities were still suffering from the same system of exploitation, poverty, addiction and racially motivated political indifference and hostility; although Reaganomics and the CIA introducing crack cocaine to the inner city reflects a level of white supremacist corruption that even Youngblood Priest would find shocking. "Ma and Pa" sounds like an update of "Shame and Scandal (In The Family)" except it comments on a bitter divorce that destroys the child used as a pawn during a custody battle. "Subliminal Fascism," "Slow Bus Movin' (Howard Beach Party)" and "Ghetto Soundwave" all still sound fresh and, sadly, relevant. Although these days in America Fascism has become less subliminal and more mainstream, it just got re-branded as MAGA. The fight for racial equality is still a very slow mode of public transportation driving on deteriorating infrastructure while the billionaires find ways to eschew pay taxes. Ghetto Soundwave could have been describing Amadou Diallo in 2000 or George Floyd. "Change" ends the album with a spiritual and political optimism.

I remember that Pavement's celebrated debut "Slanted and Enchanted" appeared on multiple music periodical lists in 1999; critics retrospectively called it "summery," probably because of the paradoxical first track/single "Summer Babe (Winter Version)." Following the transition of "Alternative" from post-grunge to Limp Bizkit, I relied heavily on Rolling Stone's End of the Year or "Fin de siècle" lists to pursue music that would otherwise not be played on the mainstream radio. Having missed the era of MTV's 120 Minutes Live or even Unplugged, I found artists like Liz Phair, Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Built to Spill, PJ Harvey, Tori Amos via back issues of music periodicals. Unlike some of the artists I listed Pavement was a band whose debut was my introduction to their discography, for the subsequent releases I relied on my local library (which only had a badly scuffed copy of "Brighten the Corners"). I didn't get a copy of "Crooked Rain Crooked Rain" or "Wowee Zowee" until Freshman year of college, so both of those records never inspired the same level of appreciation and heavy rotation as the ones I listened to while in high school. "Silence Kit," begins with an intentional false start and caught dialogue, before a cowbell percussive breezy guitar melody...Stephen Malkmus's slacker lyrics read like an inside joke meandering at a conversational tone without choruses, it shifts into a cul-de-sac and then ends. "Elevate Me Later" sounds like spiritual sequel to "Loretta's Scars" ("Those who sleep with electric guitars/Range rovin' with the cinema stars...There are forty different shades of black/ so many fortresses and ways to attack") Clever lyrics and overlapping guitar textures, incidental hooks and accidental choruses, tossed off time signature changes (Stop Breathin"). The college radio quasi-hit "Cut Your Hair" launched Pitchforkmedia with a sarcastic critique of the indie rock gold rush and a feigned indifference that reduced credibility to haircut aesthetics (but "ironically"). "Newark Wilder" has a 1960s spy movie vibe with snaky guitars, everything has a false ending...."Unfair" anticipated Weezer by a decade for asking to "burn the hills of Beverly" because California has "Manmade deltas and concrete rivers." Every song tends to blur together like they could have defined a perpetually shrugging and snide generation that distrusted being reduced to a marketing demographic. 5-4=unity (is a marvelous night for a Moondance), "Range Life" has a "Zurich is Stained" strum and weary desire to "settle down" but "Don't worry, we're in no hurry" before mocking both The Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots for being "nature kids" and "elegant bachelors." I guess if you can't be overtly political you can gatekeep the scene at a time when selling out mattered to privileged suburban kids passing as bohemian outsiders. "Hit the Plane Down" is terrible and "Fillmore Jive" feels like filler (1994 makes Pavement a few years too late to dismiss hair metal as passé). "Crooked Rain Crooked Rain" was a decently catchy follow up record that fell short of all expectations, because the final ten minutes are excruciatingly poor in execution. Some will argue that the best Pavement material exists on limited edition import singles and obscure compilations that were subsequently combined on Expanded Remastered Editions of their studio albums, which can be differentiated from standard issue by the colon and clever subtitle appended to the original album name (i.e., Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: LA's Desert Origins adds 12 b-sides from singles and a second CD with two concert recordings and a John Peel Session). I am not reviewing those editions because I am not a completist.

"I live uptown, I live downtown, I live all around" utter banality from the bearded lips of the bloated Lizard King on the Doors final studio album, L.A. Woman. "The Changeling" is a feeble attempt at James Brown funk, a stylistic departure from the demented carnival music courtesy of Ray Manzarek's keyboards ("Love Her Madly"). "Been Down So Long" appropriates the title of Richard Fariña's book "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me" and sounds like a pale imitation of Creedence Clearwater Revival. On "Cars Hiss By My Window" Jim Morrison has the white boy blues and attempts to imitate a harmonica solo with vocal improvisation. I have been actively dreading the buildup to "L.A. Woman," the album version is much better than I remember (it must be the eleven minute extended version that has the self-indulgent organ solo that feels like downing). L'America is gloomy. "Hyacinth House" starts off beautifully as the inspiration to every 1980s jangle pop band and then Jim Morrison opens his mouth. "Riders on the Storm" is really the only song where it all comes together with a memorable enough melody, production style and dark poetic lyricism that it transcends the pretentiousness of the rest of the album.

Not typically a fan of metal music, but Motörhead has the adrenaline paced energy, hooks, anarchistic attitude and subtle searing proficiency to appeal to punk, rockabilly and blues fans without alienating heavy metal enthusiasts. The title track is probably the most easily identifiable Motörhead song, but the entire album is transcendent and powerful, full of infectious melodies, Lemmy's growl makes the usual lust-filled cliche sound like a call for revolution. "Fire Fire" he sees someone's erotic and destructive potentials and loves the "conflagration." I can't condone the song "Jailbait," especially since Lemmy's sexual exploits are quite well documented.

A Keith Haring background with a heavily modified boombox with horns and feathers and a cheetah print handle adorns "Duck Rock." Malcolm McLaren the fashion designer and music manager who strategically aligned himself with the nascent UK punk scene, dubbing John Lydon "Johnny Rotten" and encouraging the Slits to wear nothing but mud on the cover of their Cut album. A sleazy misanthropic opportunist. Creates a sample based New Wave/hip-hop hybrid, global amalgam of spoken word Afro-pop ("Double Dutch") and Square dancing ("Buffalo Gals"). Hearing "When they do the Double Dutch, that's them dancing," and realize that Liz Phair was winkingly appropriating it for her, much better, song "Whip-Smart." The entire album is cultural appropriation by an cynical provocateur and may have influenced such post-colonial experiments by Lizzy Mercier Descloux and M.I.A. but at least those third-world rhythms felt honest and collaborative. "Punk It Up" and "Jive My Baby" sounds like the Indestructible Beat of Soweto, unsurprisingly McLaren did not credit any of the South African musicians on this record. If I hadn't grown up with the Talking Heads and Paul Simon's "Graceland" (which is not without controversy) and felt compelled to seek out original South African music, "Duck Rock" might have been a revolutionary exposure to global pop. Instead it just feels like exploitation from a misanthrope who courted controversy his entire life. "Song For Chango" in title has a smug condescension for the political conditions and revolutionary aspirations of African music. The Brit-centric slant of this list of essential records is quite obvious.

High school nostalgia, I will associate this album with PJ Harvey's "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea" both have an optimistic pop sheen and stadium rock production (and both artists toured together at the time). U2 hadn't yet become a perpetual punchline although they were well on their way to becoming complacent celebrities with performative activism and albums of love songs. The first four tracks on a theoretical side A were all radio hit singles and product placed, comfortable on corporate playlists with Dido, Sting and Bon Jovi and the soundtracks of CBS sitcoms. "All That You Can't Leave Behind" was banned in Myanmar because Bono dedicated "Walk On" to dedicated to Burmese human rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, which sounds a bit convoluted because she was under house arrest. I suppose it could be about the plight of refugees, exiles, and political prisoners, but it often just sounds like a bland affirmation of "moving on," although it had a different meaning after 9/11. After getting to "Kite" I realized that the remainder of the album is a mystery to me, yet it offers no sonic innovations or surprises. Rhyming "new media" with "the big idea" is indolent. "In a Little While" does have a blues-inspired guitar and gritty vocal delivery that "elevates" it above the preceding songs. "Wild Honey" is saccharine and generic, all breezes, bees and swinging through the trees. "Peace on Earth" aspires to invigorate the album with political content but it just sounds shallow and insipid. If only lines like "Peace on Earth/Hear it every Christmas time/But hope and history won't rhyme" were more present in a song that contains this verse: "They're reading names out/Over the radio/All the folks, the rest of us/Won't get to know/Sean and Julia/Gareth, Ann and Breda/Their lives are bigger than/Any big idea." Though well-intentioned it just sounds superficial and clichéd. New York is an tuneless and meandering ode to the City that inspires countless better songwriters filled with generic statements like "in New York summers get hot" and "Irish, Italians, Jews and Hispanics/Religious nuts, political fanatics in the stew/Happily not like me and you/That's where I lost you." This is the sound of an popularly acclaimed band coasting on an established image and nostalgic fanbase. "Grace it's a name for a girl...it's also a thought that changed the world" such adolescent banality seeking to combine the poetic, philosophic and political into something profound, but just sounds smug and obvious.