Genre: New Wave, Synth-Pop, New Romantic

Label: EMI Records

Release Date: June 15, 1981

Vibe: 🕶️

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

We humans, we love categorizing culture, don’t we? Before we fully understand what a piece of art is or what it will mean to current and future generations, we’re quick to gin up a few easily accessible labels, slap them on the box, and, in short order, start pigeonholing the artist(s), fairly or not, into corners that, more than anything else, serve to put consumer minds at ease. It’s to our collective detriment, in the end. Does labeling a song, album, or discography rock, pop, or disco do the work justice? Where precisely do the lines separating new wave from post-punk from dance-pop begin and end? And most importantly, can these labels ever push the critical and cultural conversation forward, rather than limiting it to tropes and clichés? I ask these questions because, like a few other acts from the 1980s, Duran Duran are so much more than they’re typically made out to be. It’s only in the past few years, following their belated induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, that the discussion around their greatness has shifted significantly, reaching beyond those tired labels and towards a deeper understanding of how influential their music really is.

Formed in 1978 by childhood friends John Taylor (bass) and Nick Rhodes (keys and synths), alongside their schoolmate Stephen Duffy, who would go on to have a successful solo career in his own right, Druan Druan went through several lineup changes before they ever got noticed by a major label. Drummer Roger Taylor joined in 1979, and both guitarist Andy Taylor and vocalist Simon Le Bon came on board in the first few months of 1980. By the time that iteration of the band performed together for the first time, they were already the residents at Birmingham’s Rum Runner club, a venue that became a hub for the burgeoning New Romantic movement. Alongside a bevy of British acts that include (but aren’t limited to) Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Heaven 17, Soft Cell, and ABC, Duran Duran was suddenly seen as one of the acts at the forefront of what was considered one of the most creatively fertile periods for UK pop since the 1960s. Duran Duran spent much of that summer writing and demoing original material, as well as gigging in London and surrounding areas. By the time the majors came calling, they had already either penned or recorded early versions of everything that would appear on Duran Duran.

It’s arguable that the band’s self-titled debut wouldn’t have had the initial success it enjoyed without newly minted EMI A&R man Dave Ambrose in their corner. While working in the label’s publishing department, he’d already brought hit acts like the Sex Pistols and Dexys Midnight Runners into the fold. He had a keen ear for emerging talent and, after traveling to Birmingham to see them perform live, he was instantly bullish on Duran Duran’s future. “People used to say to me, ‘Dave, why are you getting so excited about this band?’” he said in 2011. “But I was convinced they were going to be massive.” He was also the voice within the group’s inner circle who pushed for the outstanding “Planet Earth” to be the lead single off their debut album. “I brought Duran’s demo tape home. I was with my wife, Angie, and Rob Hallett, the band’s live agent, came round. We opened some wine and listened through all the tracks. And Angie and Rob ended up dancing around the room. And we all, individually of each other shouted for ‘Planet Earth’ […].”

What’s striking, listening back to Duran Duran, is how confident and fully-formed a debut it is. So often, bands at that stage of their careers are still assembling an identity from the most readily available parts. They try out poses, audition different sounds and tones, and any distinctive personality traits peek out through the venetians instead of kicking down the door and announcing themselves with full-throated enthusiasm. You certainly hear the influences here, with odes to everyone from David Bowie to Kraftwerk to Giorgio Moroder audible for anyone looking for them, but they never obscure the specific synthesis at the band’s core. John Taylor and Rhodes had spent the better part of three years absorbing the post-punk energy of the Midlands scene alongside the pop, disco, and funk that dominated the American charts into the early-80s in equal measure. The built-in taste barometer is critical, especially when starting out. Rum Runner owners Paul and Michael Berrow also shaped the overall aesthetic as they transitioned into becoming Duran Duran’s management team. Every move here sounds deliberate.

If there’s an MVP to single out on Duran Duran (though, even as I say that, I will add that all individual performances on this record range from good to excellent), it’s John Taylor on bass. He’s the glue that holds these grooves together and gives them this irresistable bottom end that dares you not to move to them. “Girls on Film,” the album’s commercial apex, would crumble if it didn’t have that bassline in its foundational architecture. Colin Thurston’s production, as it is throughout the tracklist, is clean and crisp, adding polish to the final mix without crowding out Le Bon’s vocals or any of the instrumentalists. That funky, straight-ahead strut would be borrowed by countless other new wave and rock acts who pined for chart success, bridging the gap between humid dance clubs and accessible pop that almost instantly had broad appeal. As with their bigger hits, Duran Duran also had MTV in their corner, where the music video for this track played early and often. There’s apparently a much more naked version of the video that the BBC didn’t take kindly to and banned from their airwaves, though that move ended up giving the group more facetime in the press and surely helped increase their record sales. Sex sells, even if you can’t see it.

Other highlights include “Careless Memories,” which ratchets up the tempo and paranoia in equal measure, and “Night Boat,” which sucks you in with this swirling synth line before hitting you with a rhythm that’s more dub than it is rock (Clash fans, stand up). Le Bon’s slightly menacing vocal inflection is also darkly compelling as an emotional register, one he excels at when he chooses to return to it. There’s also the aforementioned “Planet Earth,” which remains one of their very best songs. It opens with a tasty, stuttering synth figure before Roger Taylor’s pounding four-on-the-floor drums set expectations before Le Bon utters a syllable. The chorus, built for arenas the band hadn’t played yet, was an instinct that turned out to be prescient rather than presumptuous. The track peaked at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart in February 1981, four months before the album’s release. Andy Taylor’s guitar, an aspect of the band’s early work that divides some corners of their fan base, may be the track’s most underappreciated element. It’s not showy, but it’s also far from passive patchwork.

Duran Duran peaked inside the Top 5 and spent 118 weeks on the UK album chart, granting the band instant notoriety in their home country. It would later be certified Platinum and, in fits and starts, creep up the charts elsewhere in Europe. However, the New Romantic sound had yet to fully captivate American audiences, though that market wouldn’t deny Duran Duran for much longer. Their follow-up, Rio, was an even more impressive global smash, fueled by the lavish production value of the music video for the title track (it’s somehow sexy and hilarious at the same time) and “Hungry Like the Wolf.” They were one of the first acts that really understood the power of TV as a branding medium rather than a promotional afterthought. That said, the downside is that their persona, one wrapped in pastels and topped with impossible hair, began to overshadow their music. There are moments on albums like Seven and the Ragged Tiger and the much-maligned Notorious that I prefer to much of Rio, but they rarely get brought up in a more holistic conversation because all anyone remembers is the day-glo paint being poured onto those bikini-clad women lounging on the pier, beach, and boat.

It’s also worth mentioning how short-lived this specific iteration of Duran Duran was. Andy Taylor and Roger Taylor both left in 1985, and the band changed shape repeatedly across the decades that followed. They’re still recording and releasing underappreciated music to this day, with 2021’s Future Past earning a spot as one of my favorite LPs of the decade. But the version of Duran Duran that exists on this record—that specific combination of people in that specific moment of collective ambition, before the machinery of their own success closed in around them—was a finite thing. In that cultural flashpoint, they managed to construct the blueprint for what a ton of 80s new wave and pop-rock would sound like. Heavy on the synths and drums, precise in their melodies, and unrelenting in their pursuit of a hook that even the most cynical music fan would have a hard time resisting.

Which Duran Duran song is your favorite? Share it in the comments.

Genre: Indie Rock, Post-Punk, Alternative Rock

Label: Rough Trade Records

Release Date: June 16, 1986

Vibe: 👸🪦

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

There’s a misconception about this newsletter I’ve picked up on through my interactions with readers and the Substack community lately, which is, when I choose to review an album, I do so because I adore it and listen to it on repeat. That’s definitely not the case. More than some subscribers may realize, I devote album review space to works other people cherish that a) I haven’t had meaningful interactions with to this point in my life, or b) I’m compelled to give a second chance to. The Queen is Dead, an album that plenty of folks hold up as the paragon of 1980s indie rock excellence, falls into the latter category, and, to coincide with its 40th anniversary, the time was right to press play on this one again. I wasn’t so much turning over every stone I could find searching for greatness, but trying to dissect why it didn’t click with me when I first heard it as a teenager and early-twentysomething.

In general, I don’t dislike the Smiths. They’ve got some bops, both upbeat (see “This Charming Man,” a song that was a mainstay in a specific rock club I used to frequent with my wife when we first started dating … I have no idea if it’s still on the DJ’s shortlist of bangers to hit on a regular basis, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it still is) and dour (see “How Soon is Now,” whose instrumental still rattles through my car’s subwoofers semi-frequently). My primary objection to their hits and deep cuts in equal measure has always been that, to varying degrees, they try my patience. On Meat is Murder, for example, the activism in their lyrics comes across as more self-absorbed than anything else, particularly on cuts like the title track and “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.” As danceable as some of the more uptempo tracks are, they also don’t really go anywhere melodically, an observation I’d extend to Morrissey’s vocals on most of the album. It’s not bad, just not something I vibe with. That sentiment used to sum up my relationship with The Queen is Dead, too.

But, on a fresh listen, this record started to take on a new life. I had this experience as a college film student with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The first time I saw it, I thought it was mostly ridiculous, saving the most egregious for last with the extended sacrificial allegory at Kurtz’s compound. Looking back on that reaction now, it’s a tad superficial or, at the very least, one-dimensional. What it lacks in self-control or self-awareness (neither of which is Coppola’s strength, anyway), it more than makes up for it with astonishing pyrotechnics and atmosphere. The Queen is Dead operates the same way. The grandiosity Morrissey brings to this record, the melodrama the band refuses to temper or apologize for, the dark humor that permeates every corner of the songwriting, it all reads as more than slightly obtuse the first time around. The fifth or sixth time? A stroke of near-genius.

The album is loud, arch, overreaching in spots, and completely uninterested in your objections, a disposition that makes it stick in your gut on repeated spins. Like Coppola’s film, what’s worth knowing is how close none of it came to existing at all. The Smiths recorded this LP in 1985 at RAK Studios in London while they were locked in an ugly standoff with Rough Trade Records over (what else?) money, in part due to the label’s own financial instability. The release was held up for months. On top of all that, Rough Trade founder Geoff Travis and the band were barely speaking (Morrissey threw a few lyrical jabs at Travis, most notably on “Frankly Mr. Shankly”). Guitarist and out-and-out rock legend Johnny Marr described The Queen is Dead sessions as the group’s creative peak, but one that carried a steep physical and psychological toll. His weight supposedly dropped to around 98 pounds as he ran on nervous energy and little else.

One of the underdiscussed aspects of this record’s legacy is how funny it is. Pitch-black comedy in a lot of cases, to be sure, but when you have Morrissey penning every song, it’s unlikely the messaging would be delivered in any other tone. Take the opening title track, which gallops through a gallows satire of the media’s obsession with the British royal family. Andy Rourke’s bassline is incredible, anchoring the storytelling in sly, deep-rooted cynicism. “I find as time goes by, this happiness we had slowly slips away and is replaced by something that is wholly grey and wholly saddening,” Morrissey told NME in 1986. “The very idea of the monarchy and the Queen of England is being reinforced and made to seem more useful than it really is. The whole thing seems like a joke. A hideous joke.” That last notion of a truth so ugly it can only make you laugh seeps into other songs on this album, including “I Know It’s Over” and “Cemetery Gates,” which serves up a wonderfully offbeat sonic contradiction. The jangle-pop guitar work and the buoyant drum pattern from Mike Joyce turn what could’ve been an ultra-bleak walk among the tombstones into something more of a jaunt. It’s as unnerving as it is transfixing.

For my money, the second side of this LP is where it truly earns its greatness. “Bigmouth Strikes Again” is a knowing wink at Morrissey’s proclivity for running his mouth in public, and while I’ve always found the songwriting amusing, I can never be sure how seriously or not he’s taking himself here. “I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head,” he says early on. “Now I know how Joan of Arc felt/As the flames rose to her Roman nose/And her Walkman started to melt,” he adds later. It’s a surreal visual, picturing Maria Falconetti getting a few final tunes in at the stake. The excellent “The Boy with the Thorn in His Side” is a pot shot at the music industry’s “murderous desire” vis-à-vis their most commercial brands, and “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” is as sacred a text in the UK’s 1980s pop canon as you’re likely to find. Again, here you have an anthem that carries completely different meanings for different generations of fans. Some see it as a depressive excavation, while others have reframed it as a hopeful testament to love. It all depends on how you look through the kaleidoscope’s viewfinder.

The Queen is Dead peaked at No. 2 on the UK Albums Chart, held out of the top spot by Madonna’s True Blue, charted for 35 weeks, and has sold several million copies worldwide. In the US, it peaked at number 70 on the Billboard 200, an outcome that the band partly brought on themselves by refusing to license their music for advertisements and keeping American commercial radio at arm’s length. Arriving in the Summer of 1986, amid an ocean of manicured dance-pop on either side of the Atlantic, this material struck a much different chord, particualrly with critics. It was called by some as “the most realistic portrayal of England” of its era, which is a damning statement in several ways. The British mindset of the mid-to-late-80s was certainly before my time, but the more I immerse myself in the literature, the more shocking the political and cultural twists and turns become. While it was being recorded, this album apparently had the working title “Margaret on the Guillotine,” which should tell you everything you need to know about their collective political leanings.

The Smiths would never build on the momentum they generated with The Queen is Dead. Interpersonal tensions and growing media scrutiny led to the group’s dissolution in 1987, with Strangeways, Here We Come serving as their Let It Be, a more subtle and refined studio effort than maybe anything they’ve ever released, and yet I feel unsatisfied. There should be more to the story, no? As a body of work, their four studio albums leaves so much potential unrealized. When they were at the top of their game, as a unit and individuals, few Brit rock outfits wrote songs that became as universally beloved as theirs. A decent comp from the next decade would be Oasis, who similarly left their fans wanting more after they stopped recording together. Does that make me a hater? Or merely someone who wants to see the best of the Smiths, one final statement that we never had the pleasure of hearing? Reader, meet kaleidoscope.

What Smiths song has stood the test of time for you? Shout it out in the comments.

Commercially, the album’s ubiquity is unrivaled. It has sold over 5 million copies in the United States alone and has never been out of print since 1959. Even the most casual fans, folks who may only know Davis and a couple of other jazz names to begin with, are more likely to have this record in their collection than any of his other works.

But none of those measures vault it into the inner circle of the most important music he ever released. When Kind of Blue is both the beginning and end of a Miles Davis conversation, it crowds out a handful of records that genuinely changed how music was conceived, arranged, and recorded in ways that Kind of Blue, for all its beauty, didn’t.

This list isn’t meant to be a takedown. Kind of Blue is a great album. The modal improvisation, especially between Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderley, is everything people say it is. But Davis released 48 studio albums and reinvented his own sound at least six times. What follows are the LPs that shook the foundations of musical tradition and experimentation the world over.

Before I dive in, a quick reminder to do all the things, including subscribing and sharing this post if you’re enjoying this newsletter’s content so far.

In chronological order, let’s begin:

1. Birth of the Cool (1957)

This album is arguably the most important contribution Miles Davis ever made to the art form. True to its namesake, it popularized the “cool jazz” archetype, adding this detached, effortlessly elegant temperature to bop’s supple sonic curves. It’s the style that would define Miles’s career from that point forward and was, at the time, his most orchestrally ambitious work. He was all of 22 years old when he assembled the nine-piece band, including musicians like Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, and J.J. Johnson, that would change jazz forever in three sessions, recorded in 1949 and 1950.

Amid all that starpower, the biggest influence on this record (and, to a degree, Davis’s trajectory as a musical tastemaker) was arranger Gil Evans, the Canadian orchestrator who had gained a reputation for crafting arrangements that were seen as punishment by other big band leaders. The two men would go on to release a handful of other jazz masterpieces in their time working together, such as Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960). Birth of the Cool would go on to influence multiple generations of West Coast jazz artists, as well as bossa nova greats João Gilberto and Tom Jobim.

If you’re looking for the moment when Miles Davis became a superstar, give this one a spin.

2. Milestones (1958)

A credit I’ve seen falsely attributed to Kind of Blue in various critical and academic writing is how it “invented” modal jazz. Compositions that fall into that category feature solos and band member interplay improvised over scales, rather than chord changes, the latter of which was the dominant way to go about your business as a jazz pro in the mid—to-late-1950s. The theoretical framework for this movement drew in part on pianist and composer George Russell’s book, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, a text Miles had been studying with keen interest.

On the title track for Milestones, Miles translated Russell’s experiments into a conceptual breakthrough that quickly became the organizing principle behind much of his music. No matter how many times I hear it, it’s never less than exhilarating in its interplay. The rest of the record is far closer to hard bop stylistically, with fearless contributions from an all-star cast that includes John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on saxophone, Paul Chambers on bass, and “Philly Joe” Jones on drums. “Dr. Jekyll” is one of my sleeper picks for best Miles Davis track ever, and “Two Bass Hit” is one of the brightest, most energetic tunes of its era.

On the right day, in the right mood, you wouldn’t have to twist my arm too hard to get me to say that I prefer Milestones to Kind of Blue.

3. Filles de Kilimanjaro (1968)

Often dismissed as a “bridge” album between the Second Great Quintet and Miles’s electric period, Filles de Kilimanjaro has evolved into one of the most underrated gems in the jazz impresario’s catalog. As important as the handoff moment is to his narrative, it obscures just how impressive the playing is top to bottom.

Miles recorded it in two sessions, five months apart, and the personnel’s pedigree is off the charts. The June session features Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams, while the September session saw Chick Corea step in for Hancock and Dave Holland for Carter. The former’s dynamic on the electric piano is among the album’s most arresting elements, with the instrument becoming increasingly central as you roll through the tracklist. Corea leaves more room than Hancock does and also pushes harder rhythmically. The architecture is still mostly familiar from the Second Quintet days, but the walls were already expanding out to more experimental horizons.

Of all the compositions on this LP, “Mademoiselle Mabry” is the most prominent hinge moment. Betty Mabry, Miles’s flame at the time, had introduced him to the funk and rock records reshaping popular music in 1968, and the track named for her is the clearest evidence of the shift that was on the precipice of taking over his musical thinking: a groove-first sensibility that jazz tradition had no framework for. All the effects-drenched weirdness has yet to rear its head sonically, but the altered mindset was locking into place. If nothing else, this record is indispensable if you want a comprehensive understanding of Miles’s genius.

4. In a Silent Way (1969)

In a Silent Way is, in a word, perfection.

Recorded in a single day in February 1969, the final credits list boasts more than a dozen musicians “going electric” in ways that blur previously well-defined genre lines between jazz, rock, funk, and the bones of what would become ambient electronic soundscapes of the 1970s. Producer Teo Macero waved his magic wand in post-production, turning studio technology into a force that shaped performances and created a pervasive atmosphere of transfixing mystery. The approach was radical, altering how artists, producers, engineers, and labels conceived of how jazz records could be put together. It’s a powerful before/after inflection point.

The balance Miles and company strike here between richly textured, busy compositions that never feel chaotic or messy is astounding. Part of that is achieved through the instrumentalists’ contributions, but an equally important aspect of this album is the negative space between the notes that invites you to get lost in its delightful web of musical intrigue. The first side, “Shhh/Peaceful,” tacitly avoids any resolution, with wave after wave of electric piano and guitar drifting over Tony Williams’ glittering hi-hat. “In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time” is even more dazzling, featuring playing that’s so precise and unhurried that you can’t help but be drawn in. Joe Zawinul’s intro section is among my favorite stretches of jazz music ever.

As I often say when recommending legitimate 10/10 albums, I envy your first spin of this classic if you’ve never given it any play.

5. Bitches Brew (1970)

If In a Silent Way doesn’t split your skull open with its disregard for the “rules” of jazz as dictated by tradition, then Bitches Brew might blow it clean off.

The experimental apex of Miles Davis’s illustrious career, it’s an intense, bewildering, and, for some casual listeners, intimidating in its fusion-forward dissonance. And yet, in my original review of the album, I go over how many familiar influences Miles and his collaborators, particularly guitarist John McLaughlin, let bubble to the surface. Listen closely, and you’ll hear wisps of Ritchie Blackmore, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, James Brown, and many other non-jazz entities helping this group push the art form into another sonic dimension.

I’ll let that initial write-up fill in some of the contextual blanks around what makes this release a must-listen, especially if you appreciate genius that can’t be defined in straight, neat lines. To that end, how you listen to Bitches Brew is also likely to impact your experience, regardless of whether you’re a first-time listener or not.

Here’s my recommendation:

“[I] want to add this disclaimer: If you’ve never listened to Bitches Brew all the way through, do yourself a favor and get your hands on the highest-quality speakers or headphones you can manage. You want the sound to wash over you from all sides, just as the recording intended. You want your listening experience to be as immersive as possible. And please, for the love of all things sacred in music, don’t you dare listen to this one from a smartphone speaker. That would be an insult.“

6. On the Corner (1972)

Of all the anarchic left turns in Miles Davis’s discography, On the Corner may be his most deliberately confrontational. Miles wanted to reach Black audiences who had moved from jazz to funk and soul, so he ended up making the most abstract, audacious science experiment of his career. There are no chord changes to speak of in the conventional sense, no solos in a similar vein. Practically nothing jazz purists from his existing audience would have recognized. Tabla, sitar, wah-wah trumpet, and layered percussion crashing into one another. It’s a doomsday scene for some, but it’s also a lot of fun.

As you might expect, critics hated On the Corner when Columbia first released it in 1972. It failed commercially, an outcome Miles later attributed to the label’s lack of a coherent marketing push. He said that, essentially, they didn’t want to back it 100% because they didn’t understand it. Whatever the case, Black audiences didn’t embrace it, and his jazz supporters rejected it as “selling out.” And yet, more than three decades on, legendary producers like J Dilla, Madlib, and Flying Lotus have cited it in their own work, confirming the record’s enduring appeal. It’s not hard to see why, too. Many of the arrangements and post-production choices anticipate hip-hop, R&B, and dance music production of the 80s and 90s in ways that are hard to dismiss once you hear them.

7. Get Up With It (1974)

You won’t find many 50-plus-year-old jazz fusion records that sound like they could’ve been made last year or even last week, but Get Up With It is one such release. A double album compiled from sessions that occurred between 1970 and 1974, it’s a wildly uneven and darkly compelling listening experience that, if you go into it with no inhibitions, will push all of the right emotional buttons. in exactly the right ways. The whole thing resists any concise sonic description, largely disregarding melody in favor of organ drone, wah-wah effects, and nerve-jangling rhythms. Miles’s health was deteriorating by this point, and after its completion, he nearly left the music business entirely.

Some more color, from my full review of the album:

“After Get Up With It, Miles Davis disappeared from show business. In his autobiography, he wrote of rampant substance abuse and promiscuity, habits that formed more as physical and emotional pain relief than anything else. “Sex and drugs took the place music had occupied in my life,” he observed frankly. Part of me wonders if this record took so much out of him that he needed years to recover and rekindle his love of the art form. By pushing the boundaries of what jazz, rock, funk, R&B, electronic, and various other genres could sound like, he’d also pushed himself far past the limits of what most musicians and composers would deem attainable. But that was Davis’ modus operandi until he passed away—to dig deeper. To look ahead to the future and what was possible instead of continuously dredging up the past and reheating well-worn trends or habits.”

From his 32-minute ode to Duke Ellington (“He Loved Him Madly”) to his equally epic Afrofuturist tornado (“Calypso Frelimo”), there’s over two hours of awe-inspiring material to sink your teeth into. It’s one of the strangest yet most unforgettable records you’ll ever hear.

Which Miles Davis has left the biggest impression on you? Let us know in the comments.

Genre: Hip-Hop, Gangsta Rap

Label: Roc-A-Fella

Release Date: June 25, 1996

Vibe: 🚬🎩

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

As a branding exercise, one that kickstarted one of the most profitable and reliable brands in rap history, Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt knows few equals. The man born Shawn Carter had been plying his trade as a sometimes emcee for several years prior, but had been consistently relegated to the margins of the music industry. He toured with Big Daddy Kane, rubbed shoulders with the Wu-Tang on the posse cut “Show & Prove,” and even sold tapes out of his car for a while with Damon Dash. Nothing stuck. Similar to Biggie Smalls’s origin story, Jay “made ends meet” (and by that I mean accumulated the piles of cash he’d need for his next major move) by dealing drugs in New York. Even with that financial safety net, he did what most would consider unthinkable, spurning contract offers from the likes of Def Jam to start the Roc-A-Fella label. In 2005, after the parent company bought half of his imprint for $10 million, Jay-Z became Def Jam’s CEO. As it turns out, there are perks to owning the incredibly successful company you rap for.

Now, I don’t think Roc-A-Fella existed (at first, anyway) because Jay-Z was such a staunch independent. It came to be because, back then, nobody took him seriously enough to give him the platform he thought his talents deserved. because nobody would sign him. In 1995, Payday Records had taken him on for singles, but they weren’t pulling their weight. “[They] were acting shady the whole time, like they didn’t know how to work a record or something,” Jay-Z said in 1999. “The things that they were setting up for me, I could have done myself. They had me traveling places to do in-stores, and my product wasn’t even available in the store.” So he, Damon Dash, and Kareem Burke pooled what they had, made a distribution deal with Priority Records, and built something from a position of total institutional rejection. The label’s name was even a classic Hova double entendre: rocking a fellow rapper and Rockefeller.

That tension, between where Jay came from and where he was about to go, is fitting creative fuel for a man who, for as long as I’ve been following his career, has been so singleminded about curating his own legacy. This album started life with the working title Heir to the Throne, which tells you everything you need to know about what kind of statement Jay intended. It became Reasonable Doubt during the recording process, reportedly influenced by the OJ Simpson trial, which was reaching its conclusion while sessions were underway at D&D Studios in Manhattan. The original concept for this record wasn’t even the Scarface-adjacent parable that it became at first. Instead, it would’ve positioned Jay-Z as a rapper on trial for being the best in the game, facing off against a jury of critics and peers deliberating on whether he belonged. That framing got scrapped, but the hubris behind it (Jay was a world-weary 26 when this LP dropped) remained intact.

“Can’t Knock the Hustle” opens the album with gravitas and establishes the production philosophy before Jay raps a word. The beat is this uncanny mix of warmth and grit, wisely using the specific nostalgia of 80s soul music as a fulcrum. It places Jay’s street accounting inside a tradition that carries an inherent weight of Black aspiration and survival. Rapping about drug money over that kind of sample, instead of a more booming (some would say archetypal) East Coast groove, reframes the narrative from what fans were more used to hearing at the time. Hindsight shows that the distance between what those sounds evoke and what Jay is actually describing is an emotional register that so, so many other emcees have reached for (the majority of whom have stumbled and faceplanted in the process). It’s deceptively difficult and, to Jay’s credit, takes laser-like focus to appear effortless. Rinse and repeat on “Politics as Usual,” which runs the same logic at a lower temperature. The Stylistics sample gives him a bit more room to breathe, and he sounds completely unhurried here. It’s insanely impressive.

The rest of the album’s first half covers a lot of biopic-type ground in short order. “Dead Presidents II” takes cues from both Lonnie Liston Smith’s piano and a Nas vocal from Illmatic, a move that lit the fuse for a beef that culminated in not one, but two of the most devastating diss tracks of all time. That beef is worthy of another article one day, but for now, let’s just say that they don’t make them like that anymore. Public fueds don’t carry the kind of bone-deep weight as that one did. Millennials who bore witness at the time know what I’m talking about. Elsewhere, a man who’s worked with both legends, DJ Premier, brings some of the record’s best production to “D’evils,” with Jay deploying equally dizzying wordplay to illustrate what street money does to people and what it costs them. “22 Two’s” is a gimmick that you can’t help but rock with, built around 22 variations on “to,” “too,” and “two” in a single track, while the Isaac Hayes sample underneath “Can I Live” gives orchestral weight to as cinematic a script as Jay has ever spit.

The sentimental favorite of mine, however, will always be “Brooklyn’s Finest,” a song that has only grown in stature since 1996. Clark Kent not only produced the beat but also brought the Jedi-in-training and the master, the Notorious B.I.G., together in the studio. At the time, Biggie was arguably the biggest star in hip-hop, while Jay was still largely a local sensation, like the “Juicy” star had once been. They had not been in the same room before Kent arranged it. What came out in the recording is two titans performing at the same level lyrically, closing the gap between their respective real-world positions in the cultural hierarchy. Kent has said that watching Jay construct a verse from memory unsettled Biggie enough that he went paperless in the booth from then on. It’s a stunning showcase of the best who ever did it. A close second in the “favorite song” department is “Regrets,” the album’s most devastating track. Premier’s sparse piano loop holds the instrumental together still while Jay names names on death certificates. It’s both a reflection of and a refinement of the mafioso-rap framework that’s still widely circulated today.

For how revered it is several decades on, it’s kind of surreal to look back and see that Reasonable Doubt did good but not great business during its initial release lifecycle. It debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200 and number three on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, eventually went Platinum, and charted for 18 weeks. And yet, compared to the 14 number-one albums and 25 Grammy wins that followed, those numbers are on the modest side of Jay-Z’s career ledger. The album also arrived in one of the most loaded years in hip-hop history. Tupac’s All Eyez on Me and Nas’s It Was Written are just two of the all-time classics that dropped in that 12-month span. Pac was shot three months later, in September 1996, and Biggie six months after that. In the blink of an eye, the golden era of rap music that had made this record possible ended within eighteen months, though older heads like myself have been clawing to get it back ever since. Jay’s 20th-anniversary concert in celebration of this LP sold out in 2 minutes. I suspect his forthcoming shows at Yankee Stadium will do just as well.

Everything that followed for him got bigger and bigger and bigger. Vol. 2, The Blueprint, The Black Album, and several others became the bricks that formed the wall around Jay-Z, insulating him enough to become, if not the genre’s most dedicated artist, undeniably its wealthiest (which, in some circles, is the same thing). As of this writing, he’s pushing 60 and, in several recent interviews, comes across as trying a little too hard to protect, or at least reinforce, that pesky legacy of his. In a lot of ways, records like Reasonable Doubt play like bargaining chips for him in some ongoing game of status signaling. They’re used to remind us how great he was, seemingly to offset increasing evidence of how decidedly not great he allegedly was, too. But, as I did with Michael Jackson not long ago, the talent and baggage, no matter how ugly, must be taken in stride, as both inform the art through the artist. Whatever Jay-Z is purported to be now, it doesn’t change the fact that Reasonable Doubt is a stone-cold classic, one made without institutional support. The Recording Academy, bless them, eventually caught up.

What Jay-Z track from this period still brings the heat? Shout it out in the comments.

Starting in June and running through August, I’m publishing a series called “The Summer of Billboard No. 1s,” where I’ll be selecting my 20 favorite songs that reached the top spot on the Hot 100, one decade at a time. There are tons of great singles from every era, but if it didn’t claw its way to No. 1 on the Billboard chart, it doesn’t qualify for consideration.

Also, I’m purposely designating these lists as my 20 favorites. Not the 20 most important in an objective sense, nor an arbitrary collection of “essentials,” because, let’s be honest, those types of lists have been done to death and mostly tread on similar ground. My 20 favorites, which turns out to be a harder and more brutally honest undertaking than it sounds, is where I landed. It feels right, and I’ve really enjoyed making these, piece by piece, over the past few months.

I hope you’ll enjoy them just as much.

For those not in the know or who need a bit of a refresher, the Hot 100 has been the definitive measure of American popular music since 1958. Its history, which is every bit as checkered as you might expect, is fascinating reading in its own right if you’re interested. But what’s worth underscoring for a second is the American distinction there, one I didn’t make clear at the outset in my article about one-hit wonders and, predictably, got roasted for it. The UK singles chart will tell a different story of a decade’s hits, as will the equivalent chart in Canada, where I grew up. Keep that in mind when these start rolling out.

Overall, I’m sure some picks will surprise you (though maybe not, especially for subscribers who have been with me since the beginning), and others you may have forgotten even reached No. 1. I’m most interested in the songs that changed how I listen to music, the ones that land differently now that I’m closer to 40 than not. Hindsight and nostalgia make strange bedfellows, and I’ll leave it there for now.

Extra content for paid subscribers

Each post in the series will include an exclusive playlist: my favorite 100 recordings from that decade. One constraint was built into each mixtape to make it more interesting: I was allowed only one song per artist, which meant making genuinely difficult choices. One Beatles track for the 1960s, one ABBA or Bee Gees track for the 1970s, and so on. The playlist is a decade filtered through one set of ears, and the one-per-artist rule helped me keep the selection honest, not a tired “best of” collection for a select few artists.

If you’ve been on the fence about upgrading to a paid subscription, this series is an excellent opportunity to make that leap. Paid subscribers get all five playlists, full access to the back catalog of paid-tier content, and every paid-only post going forward.

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If you’re enjoying the content I’ve been posting (most) Mondays and Wednesdays, I invite you to share this post with someone who has opinions and, more importantly, a deep love of music. Word of mouth is how this community grows, and a forwarded email or a shared link is worth more than any algorithmic maneuvering.

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We’ll begin in June with the 1960s. Hope to see you there.

Genre: Rock, Art Pop, New Wave

Label: Warner Bros. Records

Release Date: May 19, 1986

Vibe: 💯

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

The story goes that Daniel Lanois nailed the studio door shut.

Not metaphorically. He physically bolted Peter Gabriel into the barn that had been converted into a two-room creative space on the grounds of Ashcombe House and went off for lunch. The former Genesis frontman and art-pop legend wasn’t allowed to leave the room until the lyrics for his eventual Kate Bush collaboration, “Don’t Give Up,” were finished. Gabriel eventually smashed through the door frame and was, understandably, pretty steamed. Lanois later said he “almost got fired,” but at least he got his message across. That wasn’t the first incident between the pair, either. Earlier in the recording sessions, Lanois had grabbed Gabriel’s phone mid-call, smashed it to pieces, and simply continued working. These are the measures that produced So, Gabriel’s finest achievement as a solo artist, his most controlled and precise outing in a discography filled with delightful, masterfully made oddities.

In several ways, his career serves as a useful microcosm for understanding a broader shift in rock music that began around 1973. At the time, he was the lead singer for one of prog’s most respected (and self-serious) groups. As their star rose, Gabriel’s stage persona grew more out of step with Genesis’s distinctive brand of complex arrangements, famously donning his wife’s red dress and a fox’s head mask on stage during the tour supporting Foxtrot. Eventually, strained relationships within the band led him to quit in 1975, kicking off a decade in which he prioritized studio experimentation, especially with sounds outside the British canon. He made four self-titled albums in seven years, each one more visionary than the last. His 1980 release, commonly referred to as Melt, introduced gated reverb drums before they became a cliché. Security, from 1982, is an infomercial for the Fairlight CMI synthesizer. These records were critically respected and commercially marginal until they weren’t.

In the mid-80s, the script flipped, and the sounds pulsing through many alternative and avant-garde scenes seeped into the mainstream. Gabriel scored his biggest pre-So hit with “Shock the Monkey,” which peaked at No. 58 on the Hot 100. Unlike someone like Bryan Ferry, who met mainstream early-80s tastes where they were compared to the stranger corners of Roxy Music’s discography, I’d argue that the marketplace met him on his level, or at least most of the way there. Right place, right time, as it were. The same goes for Gabriel’s So collaborators, chiefly Lanois, who was fresh off producing U2’s The Unforgettable Fire, and engineer Kevin Killen, who’d also helped craft several of the Irish outfit’s early hits. Despite the pedigree (the long list of celebrity cameos includes Stewart Copeland, Laurie Anderson, and Nile Rodgers), everything on So sounds slightly alien in texture. Gabriel had a penchant for recording multiple instruments on a single track and then bending them to his will, turning them into intriguing hybrid elements.

Recognizable but not quite categorizable … maybe that’s the best way to describe the underlying quality that makes this tracklist so pristine and engaging, rising above so many artifacts of that period sonically. “Red Rain,” written from a recurring dream about glass bottles filling with blood, makes that surrealism audible, with Copeland’s cymbals and hi-hat cascading over this impenetrable (but gorgeous) wall of processed sound. Gabriel had actually banned cymbals and hi-hats from his previous two albums, finding them too metallic, which makes their reappearance here important. It signals that the sonic vocabulary is expanding, not contracting. “Mercy Street” makes the same argument from a completely different angle. Written as a tribute to the poet Anne Sexton, it moves at a fundamentally slower pace, more submerged and experimental than anything you’d classify as “pop” on this LP. It’s all atmosphere and daring, refusing to explain Sexton or contextualize her work for those who don’t know it. It’s the track that asks the least of you and arguably lands the hardest.

Casual fans of 80s pop who may not be familiar with Gabriel’s oeuvre will almost certainly know or remember “Sledgehammer.” That level of recognition is due in large part to the music video, directed by Stephen R. Johnson and featuring stop-motion by Aardman and the Brothers Quay. It won 9 (!) MTV Video Music Awards in 1987 and remained the most-played video on MTV into the early 2010s. It’s a celebration of Black American music (Gabriel got Otis Redding collaborator Wayne Jackson to help him get the horns sound just right) with an art-rock edge to it, and it was also a throw-in at the very last minute. Gabriel’s session band had already wrapped and dispersed to other projects when he urged them to return to try something he had cooking on short notice. Drummer Manu Katché, who absolutely crushes it on the track, played his part in a single take. If you enjoy that rock-n-B energy, you’ll also dig “Big Time,” the artist’s takedown of yuppie consumer culture that, by that point, had already begun to poison Western culture’s well. Michael Douglas would proclaim “greed is good” a little over a year later and receive a (well-deserved) Oscar for his efforts.

Stacked up against all those highlights, the two most affecting cuts off So are case studies in emotional stoicism in the face of uncertainty. The first is the haunting duet “Don’t Give Up,” one that was originally offered (here’s a sliding doors moment for you) to Dolly Parton, who turned Gabriel down. The lyrics are written from the point of view of a man who has lost his job to Margaret Thatcher’s austerity measures, and who is staring down a path where he can envision his life unraveling quickly and painfully. Then, like a shard of light slicing between two clouds, Bush’s soft, soothing vocals emerge in the mix, giving him the courage to keep going. “Don’t give up ‘cause you have friends,” she tells him. “Don’t give up, you’re not beaten yet.” Around the duo, the arrangement is unassuming to a degree that it almost goes unnoticed. The synth chords and piano vamps hit your soul in the gentlest of ways, and the percussion somehow seems to move in time with your own heartbeat, regardless of when you press play. Landing somewhere between ASMR and a virtual therapy session, it’s utterly hypnotizing from beginning to end.

The same can be said for “In Your Eyes,” the song that Gabriel had always intended to be the closing track. It’s a deft blend of his infatuation with international, polyrhythmic shapes and cutting-edge studio technique, building on his fascination with African music in particular. 1982’s “The Rhythm of the Heat” is an early example of how he worked through this muse, though it’s not nearly as light on its feet or earnest as “In Your Eyes.” I’d go so far as to say the latter gets my vote for Gabriel’s best song. I’ve always adored Katché drumming, patterns I foolishly spent hours trying to emulate as an amateur player back in the day, as well as Youssou N’Dour’s vocal in the final section, rooted in Senegalese griot tradition and built around communal call-and-response. Both imbue the track with a spiritual quality that Gabriel has since described as intentional, calling it a “religious love song.” It doesn’t resolve so much as open outward, and at some point, you stop listening to it and start living inside it. Three years after release, Cameron Crowe captured its essence perfectly when he used it to augment the image of Lloyd Dobler holding a boombox outside Diane Court’s window in 1989’s Say Anything. That pairing of visual and sound is now permanent cultural shorthand for a specific kind of romantic vulnerability—making yourself completely visible to someone who may not want to (or know they need to) see you.

So is undoubtedly the record that defined Gabriel’s reputation, at once an achievement and an ongoing complication, since everything that came after it was measured against it, fairly or not. Us, which dropped six years later, sold a fraction of what So had despite being more personal on the songwriting front. The albums that followed into the 21st century have arrived to diminishing commercial returns. The question I’ve seen in several fan threads about this review is whether Gabriel traded something substantial to reach this commercial peak. By eschewing his previous experimentalism (though that’s not to say this LP has none to offer), it seems like he was more willing to lose listeners in service of a specific vision. The song-forward approach Lanois pushed him toward was more open, molding the ambition into a more digestible form that more people could enter. Gabriel was 36 when So came out, the four self-titled albums had built a real critical reputation but not a commercially sustainable one, and had it landed like its predecessors, the reasonable expectation was a long and respected career at the margins. Instead, he went mainstream, more or less kept his reputation, and spent the next 40 years standing in this album’s shadow.

What’s your favorite Peter Gabriel track? Add it to the comments.

Genre: Hip-Hop, Gospel, Alternative

Label: Self-Released (independent)

Release Date: May 13, 2016

Vibe: ⛪💗⛪💗⛪

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

When Chance the Rapper won a Grammy for Best Rap Album in 2017, he changed the music industry forever. Not because of his talent behind the mic (though he has that in spades, moreso when he’s not chasing Top 40 clout, but I suppose that’s also in the eye of the beholder), but instead because he became the paragon for a streaming landscape teeming with underground talent that was primed to explode. His mixtape Coloring Book was the first streaming-only project to take home a Grammy in any category, and that win led to sweeping changes at the Recording Academy a few months later. The importance of that last point shouldn’t be underestimated. The institution that crowns the best music of a given year had, to that point, treated streaming as a loophole rather than a legitimate format or platform. Chance forced them to rethink their definition of what counts.

A decade later, the conversation (I wanted to use the word “debate,” but again, I’m not positive it’s as black-and-white an undertaking as some think) around streaming as the default option for music consumption has only intensified. You only need to take a semi-close look at the economic side of the business (h/t ) or the notion that streaming, as a digital content ATM, is “minutes away” from becoming obsolete (h/t ) to understand how divisive the shift has become. But, if we’re being honest, even in 2016, that evolution felt inevitable. Netflix has already normalized the idea of renting your digital media for an affordable (in those days) monthly rate. Platforms like Tidal were gating and breaking albums from hip-hop and R&B’s most popular stars. A few global superstars even made a killing running in the opposite direction. I was working at a pop radio station at the time, and despite the station and program managers’ words to the contrary, the change was unstoppable. Streaming was the new cutting-edge, the place where what was cool lived.

In that sense, Chance the Rapper knew what he had and, naysayers be damned, held onto that advantage with all his might. By January 2016, he was three years removed from Acid Rap, the mixtape that had served as his initial coming-out party, and still no closer to signing with a major label. That’s not to say that big corporations hadn’t pitched him aggressively, because they had. But he’d turned every one of them down, including Ye’s GOOD Music, which, at the time, was the spot to be if you were a budding hip-hop star. Chance had ticked all other boxes: endorsements, XXL Freshman cover spot in 2014, and so on. All that left him oddly vulnerable, as he was seen as a critical darling with no distribution options, an artist operating solely on SoundCloud and Datpiff at a moment when the industry still couldn’t quite decide whether “free music” was synonymous with “commercially legitimate music.”

In September 2015, Chance’s trajectory changed again when his daughter, Kensli, was born. She had an atrial flutter, a heart condition that required immediate intervention, and the event had an immediate and lasting impact on him. He talked about quitting smoking and turning to his church for guidance. “All things are possible thru Christ who strengthens me,” he said on X. That discovery, and his experience contributing to the unabashedly spiritual exercise that is “Ultralight Beam,” off Ye’s Life of Pablo, clearly informed a lot of the aesthetic choices on Coloring Book. It’s more of a gospel record than straight hip-hop or R&B, with the rapper’s faith running through every track. What’s more interesting than that dynamic in a vacuum is how it allows him to create a dialogue with his former self. Under the posturing and layers of production, you can hear a young man, a new father, terrified by the reality staring him in the face. He has to reorganize his life and, creatively, build from a completely new emotional register.

Opener “All We Got” announces exactly what the record is going to be before the first verse ends. “Man, I swear my life is perfect, I could merch it,” he proclaims early on. “If I die, I’ll probably cry at my own service.” Every second of this track sounds celebratory—of life, or love, and of a global community that Chance makes clear later on gives him the conviction to practice his craft with such precision. “Music is all we got,” he adds. The Chicago Children’s Choir is another important throughline to highlight here, because they’re around for mere decoration. They appear on several songs, functioning as a structural glue on top of being a key textural element. It belies a specific set of roots, the center from which basically every other musical element on Coloring Book radiates outward. As he’d explain in several interviews during that and subsequent press junkets, Chance grew up in church, left, went back, and, after this daughter arrived, weaved it into his persona as a performer like few others have done in the 21st century.

On what ends up being a somewhat subdued tracklist, Chance still serves up several bops that bring ample energy to the party. “All Night” remains a seriously underrated weekend starter, with a suitably loopy Kaytranada groove somewhat obscuring the paranoid lyrics that Chance delivers with such cheerful remove that you don’t actually think it’s that big a deal. “No Problem” is even better, both in its club-ready trap structure and its fiery independent spirit. Flanked by Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, two artists who also navigated the music industry as untameable voices, Chance rails against the labels that tried to meddle too much in his creative process. Otherwise, as he puts it, some of his posse will be waiting for the offenders in the lobby. As is the case more often than people might think, history was on the side of the artist. “No Problem” was the engine that propelled this project up the charts, reaching No. 43 on the Hot 100 and nabbed Chance another Grammy for Best Rap Performance.

The more I’ve returned to this record over the years (and I say this as a staunch atheist), this material is at its most compelling when it’s at its most soul-searchingly spiritual. “Blessings” is a good example: an out-and-out tribute to God that invites you in rather than preaching to you from up high. “I don’t make songs for free, I make ‘em for freedom,” Chance spits. “Don’t believe in kings, believe in the Kingdom.” That thread is extended with cuts like “How Great,” featuring genuinely uplifting harmonies and a welcome appearance from Jay Electronica, and “Finish Line / Drown,” which pairs T-Pain with Kirk Franklin and works better than maybe it has any right to. All those highlights aside, the best and most surprising track is “Same Drugs.” It’s so stripped-down, with no collaborators pulling Chance into competing aesthetics. Instead, it’s just him and a piano, writing about growing up and losing touch with people who used to know you. It’s the album’s quietest moment and the one that holds up most cleanly a decade later, with a melody that I’m glad was left to stand on its own.

The record arrived right before one of the richest summers ever for mainstream hip-hop and R&B. By shipping Coloring Book 11 days after Beyoncé’s Lemonade and two weeks before Drake’s Views, it put itself at the front of the line regarding the genre’s tastemakers in a crowded, mostly excellent field. Unfortunately, it looks like this record will be Chance’s defining moment as an artist. The Big Day, which dropped in 2019, landed badly, drawing the ire of online trolls and music critics alike for being earnest in all the wrong ways. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, but it also doesn’t rise to the level that this project does. Few albums would be able to, if we’re honest. I didn’t love 2025’s Star Line, a release that most saw as a return to form but, even so, failed to recapture the momentum that made this one so special. It makes you appreciate circumstances when they converge like that, giving a burgeoning movement the spokesperson it didn’t know it needed.

What’s your favorite example of a small-scale, streaming-only record that hit it big? Before or since, doesn’t matter. Drop it in the comments.

Five new playlists are now live for your listening pleasure.

Each one explores a specific question, argument, or curiosity. They join the full Spotify library, which includes a paid back catalog of nearly 20 playlists. Access them here. If you’re not a Spotify user, TuneMyMusic transfers any of these playlists to the service of your choice in 2-3 minutes.

View All Playlists

Now, here’s what’s new:

Free Tier Playlists

Free Playlists

The best playlists are more thought experiments than mood boards (for me, anyway). I have little interest in creating something that’s essentially, “Here’s some soul music, see you later, bye.” Instead, I tend to pivot and think more along the lines of, “Here’s what the soul canon gets wrong about which records mattered.”

Less mythologizing, more exploring what those commonly-held cultural tenets leave out, purposely or not. These new free playlist additions are built along those lines.

The B-Side Was Better

38 tracks from artists who consistently saved something better for the people paying closer attention, whether that means deep album cuts or official B-side songs that served as counterpoints to the A-side radio hit hopefuls. Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” over “When Doves Cry.” The Rolling Stones’ “Moonlight Mile” over “Brown Sugar.” D’Angelo’s “Spanish Joint” over “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” The argument holds across genres and decades.

Classic Rock That Actually Swings

39 tracks built around a single filter: does the rhythm section make you move before the guitar does anything? Featuring Bonham, Watts, the Meters, Humble Pie, ZZ Top, and a few dozen others who answered in the affirmative.

60s & 70s Soul You Should Know Better

Forty-two tracks from Hi Records, Philadelphia International, Stax, and Muscle Shoals featuring artists who were in the same rooms, with the same session musicians, at the same cultural moment as the songs you already know by heart, and still somehow didn’t make the short list. Doris Duke, Bettye LaVette, Timmy Thomas, Gloria Ann Taylor, and many more featured here.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to paid, the collection is at a point where it’s worth it. One price, hours of music to explore.

Read more

For someone who has sold over 160 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music acts of all time, and 85 million in the US alone, you’d be hard-pressed to find a stranger, more unexpected career arc than Billy Joel’s.

He spent the better part of a decade making records nobody bought before he ever became a household name. Between 1970 and 1976, he released four studio albums, moved to California under a management contract so punishing that it stripped him of every royalty and publishing right he owned, played piano in a bar under a fake name to pay rent, and watched each new release essentially disappear without a trace commercially.

For a while, he was genuinely invisible.

Then came The Stranger in 1977, and everything changed overnight. In the 16 years that followed, he saw four of his albums hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and enjoyed a run of pop-rock hits so consistent and so widely absorbed into American culture that they’ve become part of the furniture. I’d wager that many of you reading this don’t come to “Piano Man” or “We Didn’t Start the Fire” fresh, but rather with a brain that’s pre-loaded with a lifetime of associations to his music.

That dynamic is exactly why this studio album ranking exercise is worth doing. It forced me to look beyond familiarity and make decisions based on quality rather than reputation alone. While the hits are well-known, the more interesting debates lie in the less-trafficked corners of his discography, highlighting records that critics consistently dismissed, never warming to him in the first place.

Even if you think you know this oeuvre inside out, there’s likely a surprise or two in store for you.

Before we begin, the usual reminder to like, subscribe, and comment on what I missed or what changes you’d make to this list. You can also check out the other discography ranking deep dives I’ve published previously, including in-depth looks at the studio albums of the Beatles, Aretha Franklin, and many more.

12. Streetlife Serenade (1974)

Joel has said Streetlife Serenade is his least favorite of all his albums, and the production choices do not help its case in a revisionist sense. What saves it from being a pure write-off is Joel’s charisma as a performer. The portions of this record that work best are the ones where the arrangements give him plenty of room to speak plainly, and in several cases, air his petty grievances.

The best of those moments is “The Entertainer,” and maybe it’s because it had been a while since I’d heard it, but it plays as remarkably bitter. Joel torches the singer-audience contract with a knowing smirk, skewers the suits he had been forced to glad-hand, and takes a specific pot shot at Columbia for editing “Piano Man” down to a “suitable length” for radio without his blessing. “If you’re gonna have a hit, you gotta make it fit, so they cut it down to 3:05,” he sings at one point, which is deliciously ironic, because “The Entertainer” runs exactly … you guessed it, 3:05. Disc jockeys thought he was complaining about fame, even after Joel said repeatedly that it wasn’t the intent. “It’s a put-down,” he explained at the time. “Sticking a pin in the balloon of the performer.” The song hits hard either way, and the distinction mostly got lost.

Elsewhere, “Roberta” is looser and funnier, a portrait of a sad sack pining after a woman who’s clearly out of his reach, and “Los Angelenos” is an adequate stomper with more energy than most of what surrounds it on the tracklist. Outside those highlights, though, not much gets off the ground. Joel sounds tired, and more than tired, he sounds fed up with this version of himself. The horns feel borrowed and the strings reflexive. He was in the wrong city, working with the wrong people, under the worst possible contractual circumstances, and the record sounds like all three of those things at once. To add insult to injury, the album peaked at No. 35 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went Platinum, but Ripp’s royalty arrangement meant that every sale enriched a man Joel despised.

It isn’t a shock that he shed the vestiges of that LA existence and returned to New York for a reset. The move back east, and everything it unlocked, would more than make up for it.

11. Storm Front (1989)

I have a feeling this ranking may step on a few toes, but I found very little engaging or resonant about Storm Front. Instead, song after song, I couldn’t shake this overwhelming sense that I was listening to an artist who, despite having nothing left to prove, was still sprinting full-tilt on pop music’s hedonic treadmill, chasing the next commercial milestone at the expense of the distinctive soulfulness that Joel’s hugely successful late-70s and early-80s records contained in spades.

The stench of an overcorrection wafts through every crack and crevice of this tracklist. Following the more tepid commercial response to The Bridge (more on that album in a few minutes), he fired most of his band and parted ways with long-time producer Phil Ramone, the man who had figured out how to lend warmth to Joel’s storytelling without sacrificing any of the edge he sang or played with. Instead, the singer/songwriter brought in Foreigner’s Mick Jones, supposedly by way of a recommendation from Eddie Van Halen, who brought with him a big, tinny arena sheen that, for a lot of people, works well enough on the LP’s centerpieces but fits poorly on basically everything else. There are some charismatic flashes here and there, but Storm Front was, unfortunately, just a series of strange, borderline nonsensical choices.

Take “That’s Not Her Style” as an opening track. It’s a deeply weird and uncomfortably defensive ode to his ex-wife Christie Brinkley that’s aged about as well as you’d expect. Forget the cringeworthy mansplaining tone to it all, but my goodness, some of the writing is too icky to shrug off. At one point, after he says the papers imply she’s stepping out on him with another, potentially richer guy, he says: “And then she chartered a Lear when she heard her career was in danger/And gave the pilot somethin’ extra for a perfect ride.” Tell me you’re insecure about your marriage without actually saying those words, Billy. “I Go to Extremes” and “Shameless” are two other examples of songs that are far more toothless than their titles suggest, which is a specific kind of disappointment in its own right. It should be noted that Garth Brooks covered “Shameless” two years later and took it to No. 1 on the country charts. He’s even performed it with Joel multiple times. I wonder how well that sits with the latter party.

Then there’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which, honestly, I can’t anymore with this song. I will pause for a moment and acknowledge that it hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 and, in the decades that followed, became such a cultural fixture that schools around the US have built parts of their history curricula around it, so, if hearing it means youngsters can rattle off the names of important world events a bit faster on an exam, there’s a sliver lining in there somewhere. But strip all that away, and you’re left with a gratingly mediocre song, one that Joel has since called his worst musical composition. The critique is easy enough to make: it’s repetitive and flat, and the lyrical conceit is even more annoying. Underneath the Forrest Gump-style inventorying of decades of geopolitical chaos, there’s a self-serving shoulder shrug that implicitly distances the Boomers from any accountability for any of it. Maybe they didn’t start the fire, but they certainly didn’t run in droves to get hoses and buckets to try to put it out. Forgive me, a millennial, for having exactly zero sympathy for the fallout from such inaction.

What saves the record from being a complete write-off is “Leningrad,” which at least tries to push past the corporatized sonic baseline and reach for something approximating genuine feeling. “And So It Goes” is similarly unguarded, but also so sonically spare that the piano ballad sounds like it wandered in from a different planet. Joel wrote it years before Storm Front came together, which explains the jarring stylistic shift right at the end of its runtime. I say all of this knowing I’m in the minority about this album, however. Storm Front topped the Billboard 200, went Platinum four times over, and (somehow) earned five Grammy nominations. It boosted Joel’s commercial prospects globally because it was engineered to do exactly that. Mission accomplished, I guess.

10. Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

Before Billy Joel was Mr. “Piano Man,” he was a cautionary tale about how the music industry can really screw you if you’re not careful. He recorded this debut under the thumb of Artie Ripp, owner of Family Productions, who had signed the 22-year-old Joel to a downright deplorable 10-record contract. The deal essentially stripped him of his rights to both the master tapes and the publishing on every song he’d ever write under its banner, which meant that, in the few years that followed, and as Joel’s star rose, particularly on FM radio, he didn’t see a dime of those royalties. Never forget to read the fine print, kids.

Back to the actual record. The sessions that produced this initial group of Billy Joel songs went smoothly enough, though you could safely call this a one-note soft-rock tracklist, too. Cold Spring Harbor is as much a product of the singer-songwriter boom that peaked in the early 1970s, with artists like James Taylor and Carole King finding success by stepping out from behind the beaded curtain of the for-hire lyricist and into the spotlight as performers in their own right. Joel was clearly trying his hand at crafting the kind of subdued, introspective record that was doing decent business in 1971, and there are glimmers of the talent that would later make him a global superstar.

Songs like “She’s Got a Way,” later a live show staple, and “Everybody Loves You Now” hint at the sophisticated storytelling of his upper-echelon material, particularly in the earnest, tender ballad lane. Also, I’ll say it now: Joel isn’t one to shy away from a cornball bit of songwriting if the opportunity presents itself. You have to meet the songs on that level if you hope to enjoy them to their fullest. I got some blowback in my “best of” Chicago article for putting “If You Leave Me Now” up there with the band’s best material. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course, but the logic that everything they did tracked went downhill when they got “soft” won’t get you very far with Joel’s discography. You’ve been warned advised.

The legacy of Cold Spring Harbor was, for the longest time, the botched mastering. The tapes were transferred to vinyl at too fast a speed, raising the pitch of everything by a half-step and giving Joel’s voice a thin, chipmunk-like quality. Joel later said that he threw the finished record across the room when he first heard it back. I would’ve done the same. But Ripp, in his infinite wisdom, didn’t bother to correct the error, and, expectedly, the album sold virtually nothing. Columbia reissued a remixed, speed-corrected version in 1983, after Joel had become famous enough that the history mattered. The mastering disaster gets the headline because it’s the more dramatic story. But even a clean pressing would have been a modest debut. Cold Spring Harbor isn’t a great album. It was a sabotaged one, though, and there’s a difference.

9. River of Dreams (1993)

River of Dreams is, as of this writing, Billy Joel’s final studio album of pop originals, and despite releasing a surprise single in 2024, it seems likely to stay that way. Based on interviews he’s given this millennium, I don’t think he planned to make this LP his swan song, but the experience sounds agonizing enough that he didn’t want to put himself through it again.

“The thing was, I put a lot of work into River of Dreams, and it was as if the business had left me behind,” he told Vulture in 2018. “So I said, ‘What’s the point of putting myself through writing and recording if it doesn’t mean what it’s supposed to mean out there in the world?’” It’s amusing to read that portion of the interview and see the interviewer push back on Joel’s notion that it underperformed. After all, it did top the Billboard 200 on its initial release and sold millions of copies. But, when pressured for more insight, Joel replied bluntly: “I just had higher expectations for it. Then the record company [Columbia] came in and said, ‘Okay, what’s your next album going to be?’ And I went, ‘No, that’s it.’”

Of all the Joel records in this ranked list, River of Dreams was the one I was least familiar with, aside from the eponymous lead single, which has a fun 1960s throwback energy, not unlike what he did so well on An Innocent Man. Maybe it’s the fact that I went into this album listen with little-to-no expectations, but I dug it more than I thought I was going to. Granted, it’s Joel in full-on adult contemporary mode, so take that for what you will, but you can also hear the pedigree in every note. Joel’s flanked by a lot of top-tier studio talent on this record, including producer Danny Kortchmar, who’d worked with King, Taylor, Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, and dozens of others. It sounds expensive and impressive, particularly on tracks like “All About Soul,” which feature a full gospel choir.

But, underneath all the polish, is a more measured, mature strain of Joel’s signature melancholy. There’s an understanding, especially on songs like “The Great Wall of China” and “Shades of Grey,” that life’s most meaningful conflicts seldom have clean resolutions. There’s also “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel),” a song written for his daughter Alexa, framed as a parent talking to a child about mortality and the persistence of love beyond death. It’s quietly one of the most devastating compositions in his entire catalog, a piano ballad so direct and free of self-consciousness that I was low-key stunned.

River of Dreams has often been talked about as Joel ending his studio output on a less-than-stellar note, but I’m not positive that’s actually the case. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and even if it didn’t blow people away, I think we’d all be talking about his legacy as a songwriter much differently had Storm Front been his final collection of original songs. It’s not like things didn’t work out for Joel, either. He has spent the past three decades performing to sold-out arenas and generally enjoying his time as a raconteur in interviews across various media formats. Not such a bad way to extend one’s career, if you ask me.

8. The Nylon Curtain (1982)

Long touted as Joel’s “statement album,” The Nylon Curtain has ambition to spare. Much of the songwriting sounds like a Boomer spokesperson working through frustrations and anxieties in real time as the US grappled with the early stages of the Reagan-era decline. On that level, it’s decently compelling, especially throughout its first side.

Opener “Allentown” sees Joel crafting a cutting portrait of post-industrial Pennsylvania (one that apparently served as a proxy for Bethlehem, where real-life mills and factories were shutting down weekly at the time). The found-footage nature of the song is well done, incorporating clangs and steam-whistle sound effects into the arrangement so seamlessly that you forget they’re there. There’s a nod to Bruce Springsteen and Don McLean in there, but it’s an arresting way to kickstart the LP. Elsewhere, “Pressure” is full of fire, featuring eight overdubbed synthesizers that push the sense of dread into the red. “Goodnight Saigon” runs seven minutes, opens and closes with the emulated sound of Bell UH-1 Huey rotor blades, built from a Roland synth and processed tom-toms, and was built from first-hand accounts about what Vietnam felt like from inside. It probably should have closed the album.

Instead, it lands mid-sequence, and the second side struggles under the weight of the concept it’s trying to carry. The tracklist post-"Saigon” isn’t awful, but the momentum and focused energy definitely take a hit. “Surprises” and “Scandinavian Skies,” the latter of which starts off promisingly, ultimately spin their wheels without adding anything of real substance to match what Joel pulls off in the first half. Joel has proven himself to be an exceptional architect of characters and mood, but incisive, politicized observation was never his sharpest tool, and the seams start to show after a while. “Where’s the Orchestra?” ends the record on a defeatist shrug, a man at a show that wasn’t what he expected, using theater as a metaphor for life. The idea is good. The execution, especially in tone, feels perfunctory.

If there’s an overarching issue with The Nylon Curtain, it’s the late-period Beatles influence that’s front and center. Joel’s acknowledged it openly, so it’s not like I’m speaking out of school here, but if you’re going to pay that kind of homage to that kind of band, it’s tough not to find yourself in a death-by-comparison situation if you don’t land the plane cleanly, and I don’t think Joel does that here. I appreciate the ambition and, overall, admire a lot of what he strives for song to song, but I can’t in good conscience put it up there with his best work. Joel has said he holds this album in higher esteem than The Stranger or 52nd Street, and there’s a growing segment of his fans that agree. But, in reality, it’s a strong half-album buried under thick dollops of pomp and circumstance.

7. The Bridge (1986)

In what became a theme for 1980s-era Billy Joel, The Bridge is mostly an exercise in hubris. It’s also more consistently entertaining than other records of his that have sold better and, somehow, garnered a much better reputation over the years. What that says about my taste, I’m not sure, but the confidence Joel writes and performs with here is off the charts and absolutely worth the price of admission.

Like a lot of mid-80s albums that I’ve written about, the production is where these songs show their age (see my Queen discography ranking for a few examples). It may have been a more cutting-edge, digital-first sound at the time, but there’s a flatness to the instrumentals that scrubs nearly all the emotional resonance out of the mix, prioritizing clean, smooth lines and surfaces instead. On one hand, it’s satisfying to hear the Swiss watch ticking away with as much precision as it does, but the trade-off is that the efficiency of the machine drains some of the life out of the material. If it were a bit looser and more carefree, you wouldn’t hear the gears turning as much.

What saves it from being a bore is Joel himself, both in front of and behind the mic. Even in the moments where he’s transparently riffing on other popular styles, the showmanship never wavers. “Running on Ice” sees him winking and nodding at Sting and the Police, transplanting a bass-forward minimalism to a New York setting. He pulls it off with enough conviction that the homage comes across as nothing short of loving. “Baby Grand” is a grand, showy duet with Ray Charles built on their shared reverence for the piano, and it works because Charles has an uncanny way of infusing such shameless gimmicks with boundless soul and elegance. “Big Man on Mulberry Street” turns Joel’s attention to a theatrical big-band arrangement that implies he had reached a point in his career where he could simply call whatever shot he wanted and no one would stop him.

And yet, those positives notwithstanding, the record was seen as a relative disappointment, commercially and creatively. Joel took the perceived failure hard, too, firing much of his band, severing ties with a lot of his production team, and taking his former manager to court. The Bridge didn’t cause any of that, but in retrospect, it reads like the beginning of a slippery slope to a career valley. It was also the last record to carry the Family Productions logo. Columbia’s president, Walter Yetnikoff, had finally pressured Artie Ripp into selling the publishing rights back to Joel. Fifteen years after signing that first catastrophic contract, Joel finally owned his own songs.

6. Piano Man (1973)

The secret here is as follows: Not only is Piano Man a hugely entertaining album, but the title track may be among its least impressive tracks.

Granted, it’s the song that most people continue to hear over bar or patio PA systems to this day, and if it’s your Billy Joel jam, I shan’t deprive you. But I do think it’s interesting that, even though it’s the track that initially made him famous, Joel has spent the better part of a half-century clowning on it publicly (see this conversation with Howard Stern as an example). To hear him describe it is to feel someone’s barely contained exasperation of how to play it over and over and over again for fans. Honestly, I get it. The song rambles, and the structure is more of a loop than a focused arc. What saves it is the specificity of the caricatures. The bartender named John, the real estate novelist, the piano man himself, each sketched only in a sentence or two, but they are all immediately recognizable as the kind of person you’ve met at least once. Joel was writing this portrait of losers with more compassion than condescension, and that instinct, more than anything else, makes the song stick.

The legacy of “Piano Man” tends to overshadow how great and how country the rest of the album is. It sits much closer to of-its-era Americana than what Joel’s artistic palette would evolve into. “Stop in Nevada” is this gem of a road song with a genuinely cinematic quality, tracing the geography of a woman leaving a relationship with wonderfully understated detail. “The Ballad of Billy the Kid” is even more ambitious, a sweeping narrative built on an orchestral arrangement that Joel would never attempt at this scale again. “You’re My Home” is a nice touch that conveys its sentiment without overreaching. These three tracks alone make the album worth more than its status as a footnote to the title track suggests.

The Columbia deal itself came about because of a song that would eventually end up on Piano Man, but, at the time, wasn’t yet recorded in a studio setting. A live radio performance of “Captain Jack” on Philadelphia’s WMMR in 1972 became the station’s most-requested song. This phenomenon caught the attention of the label’s promotions man, Herb Gordon, who brought it to then-president Clive Davis. Joel signed shortly thereafter, and the rest is history. The album peaked at No. 27 on the Billboard 200, and the title track reached No. 25 on the Hot 100. Modest numbers if you look at the scope of Joel’s career, but enough to keep him pushing toward the next industry milestone. The song was certified gold in 1975, though some Hollywood accounting left Joel with only $8,000 in actual royalties.

He was a proven hit-maker on paper and effectively broke in practice. That wouldn’t change for a while, either.

5. Turnstiles (1976)

This record is Joel’s true pivot point, and it sounds like one from the first note.

By 1976, he had moved back to New York and, for the first time in his career, recorded with the touring band he’d spent years building chemistry with on the road. Most notable among those players are drummer Liberty DeVitto, who’s been with him ever since, and bassist Doug Stegmeyer, who would also help anchor his sound for the next 15 years. The sonic upgrade from Streetlife Serenade to this LP is so noticeable, you kind of wonder why Joel hadn’t pulled the plug on the previous Los Angeles-based process that was clearly holding him back. Songs like the opener “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” ooze with this easy confidence, giving the arrangements momentum and gravitas in equal measure, all without ever coming across as strained. To the degree that Joel had swagger before, here’s where it finally kicked both doors down in one motion.

Not long after that moment comes probably my favorite Billy Joel song, “New York State of Mind.” It’s at the top of that list because, and maybe this will sound like an oversimplification, but it’s more than just a great song. Joel has plenty of those in his discography. What makes “State” special is that it serves as a wonderful declaration of identity. Through its layered, textural storytelling, you invited inside the mind of a man who’s, at long last, comfortable in his own skin as an iconoclast. He was done trying to fit into the idealized mold of a SoCal singer-songwriter and, relatedly, letting someone else’s ideas for him shape his music and career. To return to New York at a time when the city was broke and its luster had worn off significantly, and to find comfort in that homecoming, takes hutzpah. Joel flaunts his without apology.

What Turnstiles doesn’t get enough credit for is its range. Amid the full-throated rockers, you also get more nuanced tracks like “Summer, Highland Falls,” a quiet, aching ballad about someone who can’t find the middle ground between elation and misery. “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” is another highlight, a closer that finds an oddly satisfying lane as a sci-fi-cynicism piece that puts an exclamation point on his pro-New York stance. The piano playing across this record is worth singling out, too. It’s tighter and more varied than anything on his first three albums, folding in nods to jazz, classical, and R&B throughout. This album, more than any in Joel’s studio catalog, grows in stature the more you return to it, and the gap between what it sold initially and where it should stand now, legacy-wise, hasn’t been totally reconciled in the larger conversation about his career.

4. Glass Houses (1980)

When the research phase of this discography ranking turned its attention to Glass Houses, I kept reading that it was Joel’s hardest-rocking album. And, sure, that tracks … sort of. But that designation is also a great example of why genre categorization is kind of pointless. Is it rock? Is it pop? Is it closer to late-70s new wave? Maybe it’s even closer to an alternative scene that was bubbling over with fresh, exciting voices? Whatever you want to call it, the album is produced with a crisp, clean sensibility that keeps everything tightly wound without losing its sense of adventure or fun.

The most obvious comparison point for much of this tracklist is Elvis Costello, which is both a blessing and a complication. Joel pulls off that wiry, oddball rock vibe well on the deeper cuts, particularly “Sleeping with the Television On” and “Close to the Borderline,” both of which could’ve been hits for Costello, Joe Jackson, and several others who were thriving around the same time on college and FM radio. That energy also gives “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” its signature whimsical bounce. It’s kind of surprising that the track eventually became Joel’s first No. 1 on the Hot 100, only because it’s a bit mind-boggling that it didn’t happen sooner. It’s especially apropos since the song is a pointed defense of melodic, hook-centric songwriting that countered what Joel saw as the aestheticized aggression of punk. It feels genuine rather than calculated.

A couple of times, though, that alternative influence tips into thinner, more imitative territory. The closer, “Through the Long Night,” is the clearest example, a three-part harmony ballad that lands softer than much of the record around it and, for me, doesn’t put quite the exclamation mark on the album that you’d hope. What’s also worth honing in on, if purely for entertainment value, is the petulance running through all of Joel’s lyrics. He was pissed that critics kept treating him as a lightweight, and Glass Houses was his first serious attempt to shift that perception. He wasn’t wrong to try, but it’s funny to me that the record is still fundamentally a pop album, produced to a high sheen, full of melodic delights, and probably a bit too pleased with its own eccentricities to be taken seriously as a rebuke of his detractors. Unsurprisingly, critics didn’t warm to it.

Glass Houses reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and sold 7.1 million copies in the US, making it the 41st best-selling album of the entire decade (!). Joel also won a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, earning him the cultural currency he’d cash in for his next, more complicated studio effort. It marked the end of an era of sorts, as this was the last album to feature the original Billy Joel band lineup in full. Saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Richie Cannata departed before the Nylon Curtain sessions.

3. An Innocent Man (1983)

Part fizzy love story, part rose-colored nostalgia project, An Innocent Man is a record that’s pushed my buttons in the best way possible since I first heard it over 25 years ago. And, in the age of everything-is-a-pastiche pop culture that we live in now, it’s arguably aged better than almost everything in his catalog. It occupies a space in my heart right next to the Grease soundtrack, as a loving, expertly executed homage to a decade I wasn’t around to experience in real time, yet it still carries a wonderful aural mystique whenever you spend time with this tracklist. It always puts a smile on my face.

As I listened to more music and broadened my stylistic palette, I was able to hear all the references Joel was making with these songs. The funky “Easy Money” is his play on a Memphis soul strut reminiscent of Sam & Dave or Otis Redding. “The Longest Time” is a gorgeous throwback to late-1950s doo-wop, and the effervescent “Uptown Girl” apes Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons. In lesser hands, it might’ve come across as a cheap imitation, but because the craft is never in question, you stay with him every step of the way. It doesn’t hurt that Joel’s vocals are also among the best he’s ever recorded, particularly on the ballads and doo-wop numbers. If you’re looking for a deep cut to hang your hat on, “Leave a Tender Moment Alone” is a genuinely impressive love song.

Speaking of which, let’s pause for a moment and mention the record’s main character, Joel’s ex-wife, Christie Brinkley. They had fallen madly in love and, according to the pop star, the experience made him feel “like a teenager” all over again. “When you’re gonna write [songs for a new album], you write what you’re feeling. And I didn’t fight it. The material was coming so easily and so quickly, and I was having so much fun doing it […] I think within 6 weeks, I had written most of the material on the album.” Listen, if I were in his shoes and started dating (and later married) Christie Brinkley, I’d be pretty jazzed about it, too.

The album reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and went Platinum seven times over in the US, producing two No. 1 singles in the process. More than the familiarity with the songs and styles of a cherished, bygone era, I’d like to think that a big reason for this record’s commercial success is how energetic and infectious the performances are. After the self-seriousness of The Nylon Curtain, going back to basics and making a record for himself first, without trying to carry the weight of some outsized political statement on his shoulders or sneer at his detractors in the critical community, was the right call. You can debate whether it was a necessary reset or the beginning of a different creative calculus, but the honest answer is probably both.

He’s having the time of his life and it still sounds like it, more than 40 years later.

2. The Stranger (1977)

Similar to the Boss in 1975, this make-it-or-break-it scenario brought out the best in Billy Joel.

It didn’t look so great to begin with, however. Columbia was ready to drop him and saw this LP’s production cycle as his final chance to recapture at least some of the magic from Piano Man. While shopping around for a producer who could make that happen, Joel approached Beatles scion George Martin, but the legend ultimately passed on the opportunity because he wanted session musicians rather than Joel’s band. Instead, the Long Island native turned to Phil Ramone, who was coming off the Paul Simon success, Still Crazy After All These Years, and whose feel for a certain type of New York sophistication aligned with that Joel had been building for himself. Even with that built-in chemistry, I don’t think either man expected the resulting songs to become as transcendent as they have.

More than anything, the trust between the key personnel is the x-factor between the notes here. The entire album was completed in just three weeks, with Ramone doing his part to emphasize the livewire in-person chemistry that Joel and his band had spent countless hours honing on the road. It’s what drives earworms like “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “Only the Good Die Young,” and the criminally underrated “Get It Right The First Time,” the first two of which were Top 40 hits for Joel. Even its best-known song, “Just the Way You Are,” has this off-the-cuff lilt to it that draws you in from those first few iconic notes on the electric piano. That framing isn’t something you can fake with studio technology or multitrack smoke-and-mirrors. Sometimes, all you need is a motivated man and his piano.

The track that truly defines this album, at least for people like me who’ve spent considerable time with it, is “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” It’s essentially three different songs assembled into a single narrative arc, using the real-life backdrop of Fontana di Trevi, a restaurant near Carnegie Hall, as its setting. In seven minutes, you feel like you know these characters incredibly well. The lyrics move through romantic history, class aspiration, and the fond memories of one’s simpler, more youthful days and nights with such grace and ambition that I never tire of them. When it gets to the final minute or so, and it fades back to the present-day setting around the dinner table, it’s such a satisfying full-circle moment. If not Joel’s best song, then let’s call it his most cinematic achievement.

The Stranger was a runaway freight train right out of the gate. It spent six weeks at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and was kept out of the top spot by another musical monolith, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The LP has since sold more than 10 million copies in the US alone, earning it Diamond certification, along with hundreds of millions of streams across all platforms. It also turned what Joel considered a “gloopy” afterthought of a ballad in the recording process into an award-winning single when “Just The Way You Are” won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1978 Grammys. He may scoff at it now, as he does with several of his other hits, but it’s now considered an out-and-out pop standard. Not too shabby for an artist who was dangerously close to being an also-ran.

1. 52nd Street (1978)

Controversy! Or is it?

How surprising a pick this is for the top spot in Billy Joel’s will depend on your relationship with his other work. He’s got multiple A-tier albums to his name, so it’s not like you’d be “incorrect” to go with The Stranger or even Glass Houses in place of 52nd Street. But, in my defense, it was the release that became his first chart-topping LP and won him the Grammy for Album of the Year, beating out the likes of Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen, and those pesky, disco-fied Bee Gees. Justified or not, The Stranger wasn’t even nominated.

What I appreciate that much more about this record is that he really swings for the fences and, in practically any case, he connects. After selling tens of millions of records, it would’ve been extremely easy for him to trot out The Stranger, Pt. II, and it would’ve been a massive success, but he takes no small number of chances sonically. It starts with the titular reference to the Midtown Manhattan hub for jazz hotspots, an influence that he incorporates throughout this tracklist. You hear it in the opening of “Stiletto,” my favorite deep cut of his, as well as “Zanzibar,” which builds around a Freddie Hubbard flugelhorn solo and marries it with reggae, jazz, and rock without ever losing its footing. On this most recent listen, I immediately put that track on repeat before moving on through the rest of the album. My goodness, it’s so good.

Elsewhere, “Big Shot” is the best kind of venomous rock anthem, obliterating New York socialite culture with so much swagger that it makes you pine for more of that in Joel’s catalog (sadly, I don’t think he ever went that hard with a rock arrangement ever again). There’s also “My Life,” which became a staple on soft-rock radio in no small part because of its tie-in with the Tom Hanks sitcom Bosom Buddies. Finally, for one more song pick, I adore “Until the Night,” a sweeping piano epic that ranks up there with Elton John’s most compelling material in the same style. There’s a version of 52nd Street that, in someone else’s hands, becomes overly smug and polished. I’m a huge Steely Dan fan, for example, but consider what Fagen and Becker might have done with the same raw material, in the same New York setting. You’d have a much colder, more sealed-off end product, without the working-class appeal that keeps it grounded.

Beyond the worldwide sales (over 7 million at the time of this writing) and numerous industry accolades, 52nd Street also represents another very important first in music history. It was the first commercially released compact disc, launched by Sony in Japan on October 1, 1982. 52nd Street bore the catalog number 35DP-1, the first in the sequence. I don’t have to tell readers of this newsletter that, if you come across one sitting in a used record store bin anywhere in the world, it’s worth scooping a copy.

Which Billy Joel album holds up best for you? Drop your vote in the survey below and make your case in the comments.

Genre: Rock, Funk Rock, Alternative

Label: Warner Bros. Records

Release Date: May 9, 2006

Vibe: 🌋🌋🌋🌋

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

It’s funny. I was only vaguely aware of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP) at the turn of the century, when they were at their peak creatively and commercially.

I knew of them, but I can’t say I was familiar enough to be any kind of fan of their music. Every kid in my high school could, at the drop of a hat, magically bang out the intro, first verse, and chorus of “Californication” on guitar, whether you wanted them to or not. Ditto for “Scar Tissue” and “Under the Bridge.” Anything that fell into the languid, more sorrowful category of their discography was insanely popular. And yet, I couldn’t have cared less. At that time in my life, I was too busy working backward through time, discovering and savoring every new morsel I could get from groups like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Not a waste of time, per se, but I was definitely not plugged into the rock zeitgeist of the time. That is, until I heard Stadium Arcadium for the first time, and it blew my pants off.

More than any of their other records or eras—from the frenetic teeth-gnashing of Mother’s Milk to the funkier, slier Blood Sugar Sex Magik—this is their document of greatness. And it’s a document all right. 28 tracks, clocking in at a little over two hours, and, unlike some of the band’s LPs in the years since, surprisingly bereft of filler. The release is split into two distinct halves, Jupiter and Mars, and serves as a balanced showcase of their dual sensibilities. RHCP could mash and groove with the best of rock radio’s giants back then, but they were equally adept at creating what I’d call strange-but-beautiful alternative music. I’d argue they needed that extra layer, too, because rock music circa 2006 was in a specific kind of trouble. The critical establishment had largely handed the decade to the indies, favoring those who wrote three-minute songs that didn’t carry any arena aspirations. Nobody was waiting for a massive statement of a double album from a band in their 23rd year.

None of it felt inevitable within the band, either. By the time By the Way arrived four years earlier, RHCP were in a quiet crisis. Guitarist John Frusciante had seized the controls, steering the album toward Beatles and Beach Boys influences, replete with dense harmonies and orchestration. The rhythm section had been increasingly sidelined, and Flea, who had spent two decades developing one of rock’s most distinctive bass voices, found himself stuck in neutral. He later said he was dead set on quitting the band around 2004. But, thankfully for music fans, they reconciled and began the sessions for Stadium Arcadium in September of that year, at The Mansion in Laurel Canyon, the same house where they’d made Blood Sugar Sex Magik more than a decade prior. Kiedis described the writing room as more collaborative than ever. No one was forcing ideas down everyone else’s throats, and, sonically, the proof is audible.

The first disc opens with “Dani California” and immediately makes the case for the whole project. That opening drum crack from Chad Smith, the guitar line landing somewhere between surf rock and hard funk, and Kiedis tracing a character archetype he had invented somewhere around “Californication” through the history of American music. It’s not a happy ending, either: she dies at the end, shot in the back by a cop in Mississippi. It was also one of the last big hit songs of rock radio’s peak, peaking at No. 6 on the Hot 100 and holding the Alternative Airplay chart in the palm of its hand for a record-tying 14 weeks. It later won Grammys for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance. On that song and throughout Stadium, Chad Smith deserves a separate accounting. His contributions across such expansive material never become repetitive or meandering. He’s always been the secret MVP of the band for me, veering from hard rock to funk to soft-focus balladeering without ever letting the seams show.

He and Flea, whose bass is as much a load-bearing architectural element as Smith’s kit, are the structural reason this record doesn’t collapse under its own weight. The grooves are simply too good. “Tell Me Baby” is as Motown a moment as RHCP ever had, a staccato funk groove supported by Frusciante’s guitar switching between precision attack and wiry melodic runs at the drop of a hat. “Charlie” features incredible falsetto harmonies and two guitar solos running simultaneously, while “Warlocks” features Billy Preston on clavinet, one of his last recorded performances before his death, playing so far inside the pocket he sounds like a founding member. On “Jupiter,” every track knows what it was and absolutely breezes by.

The second disc, however, is a different animal entirely. “Desecration Smile” opens as a slow, circling acoustic piece that plunges into dissonance before finding resolution. “Especially in Michigan” pushed Frusciante’s guitar into stranger territory, alongside guest player Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of the Mars Volta. It sounds less like guitar give-and-take and more like diplomats negotiating a truce. And then there was “Wet Sand,” the song that justifies the double-album decision on its own. With its restrained guitar figure and Kiedis singing near a whisper, you keep waiting for it to take off, or at least stop withholding from you. Then the last minute-and-a-half arrives, with Frusciante erupting with the controlled abandon and the rhythm section, which had been holding the tension in place, finally opening the floodgates and letting it out. “Wet Sand” sees the Hendrix, Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd influences converge in grand, head-spinning fashion. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over it.

Stadium Arcadium debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, held the UK chart for 31 weeks, won four Grammys, and grossed over $80 million on the road. In 2025, Rolling Stone placed it among the 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century. The critical establishment had largely written off this strain of stadium-scale rock, and the band itself had nearly fractured before it was ever recorded. Neither the industry nor the band knew they needed this moment, but the reaction confirms that it was a much-needed return to form. They haven’t been able to pull off the same kind of comeback again, either. Frusciante left in 2009, came back in 2019, and the band released Unlimited Love in 2022. It sold well, but it was still only a good album by a band that had been great. Stadium Arcadium is what the difference sounds like.

What’s your go-to RHCP track? Show it some love in the comments.

But I digress. The reason you’re reading this is that I need your help.

I’m finally (at least in my mind) putting together a mailbag post, and I want to hear from you. Whether you’ve been a part of this community since the very beginning or joined us in the past few weeks, it’s a great opportunity to make your voice heard and ask me anything you want.

I’m not putting limits on the topics of audience queries either. Submit your questions regarding artists, albums, songs, genres, and eras you hold near and dear to your heart. If you want me to vet your mixtape (you can get the links to all of mine on Spotify, by the way) or a ranked list, send them over and I’ll let you know what I think.

Email Your Question(s)

Also, if you want to get into the weeds on writing process (a subject I adore discussing with likeminded scribes) or how this newsletter gets made, I welcome those, too. All I ask is that the discussion steer clear of any trolling or vitriol. If your submission falls into either of those categories, I’m telling you in advance it won’t make the cut.

Looking forward to seeing what y’all have for me. See you back here May 4 for more content, including a few tasty surprises I’ve got in the oven.

Until then, please enjoy this Coachella highlight from Nine Inch Noize (the album is a must-listen).

Genre: Metal, Rock, Hip-Hop

Label: Epic

Release Date: April 16, 1996

Vibe: 🐂

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“Is it hip-metal or heavy-hop?” That was the question posed by Tom Sinclair in his review of Rage Against the Machine’s Evil Empire in Entertainment Weekly. “Whatever you call it, the music [is] undeniably potent, sort of like Pantera for homeboys.” It’s easy to sneer at a statement like that (and believe you me, the weird racial undercurrent more than earns it), but it’s also easy to take the band’s unique brand of, well, sonic rage for granted. Artists who fuse together seemingly disparate genres now regularly thrive in various corners of the microculture (I see you, “hick-hop”), online and otherwise. RATM also started in that territory, selling DIY demo tapes for $5 in Los Angeles in late 1991. That street-level hustle was what eventually got them a deal with Epic Records and, 11 months later, a platform for their subgenre-defining self-titled debut. The keys to early-90s macroculture weren’t a few clicks or uploads away.

There’s a different kind of activist-minded exuberance that runs through that first LP and, in large part, carries over to Evil Empire. The rhythmic attack and political urgency of hip-hop were amplified by the sheer physical force of hard rock and vice versa. Bard Wilk and Tim Commerford’s chemistry on drums and bass, respectively, was pure alchemy. Tom Morello’s mad scientist riffs legitimately pushed guitar playing into uncharted territory as an art form. And Zack de la Rocha, all of 21 years old when he auditioned for the role of frontman, spits bars so righteously acidic, they could melt steel. From “Killing in the Name” to “Take the Power Back,” one thing was clear: they were having a really, really, really good time performing these combative rock classics. After critics and metal heads ate it up in equal measure, the band immediately hit the road for month after month of non-stop touring. It was a decision that nearly made them a one-and-done footnote in rock history.

“The first record came out, and we went on the road for three years straight, living together on a bus,” drummer Brad Wilk told the Los Angeles Times in 1996. “When you do that, it’s pretty easy to kind of get sick of each other.” They moved from touring right into the initial sessions with producer Brendan O’Brien in Atlanta, and, by all accounts, it was a disaster. The four members hadn’t stopped the forward momentum of their rap-rock machine long enough to confront the personal and creative conflicts that had begun to fester. According to MTV’s reporting at the time, the band fought so violently that they briefly broke up. Wilk said later he genuinely believed it was the end of their run together. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed. They regrouped in Los Angeles at Cole Rehearsal Studios, a room they already knew well, to recapture what they were afraid of losing. Tom Morello explained the logic: “Why spend $2,000 a day in some fancy recording studio trying to recreate the great vibe that we have right here?”

By the time 1996 had rolled around, Rage Against the Machine occupied an unusual position in the American rock firmament. Grunge’s commercial moment had mostly come and gone, and rock radio was turning to post-Nirvana programming alternatives, which included the first wave of nu-metal acts to break through to a national, or in some cases, a global audience. Three years later, acts like Korn and Limp Bizkit dominated the conversation at Woodstock 1999, though that was more about how they whipped the crowd into a genuinely unsettling frenzy. Compared to RATM, which had distinct targets for its lyrical and instrumental outrage, this new crop of rap-metal outfits didn’t have the same focused intensity. The budding genre borrowed Rage’s vocabulary without much of its meaning, making the sonic homages feel hollow from the start. The fact that Limp Bizkit can still sell out arenas is a fascinating conversation for another blog, but suffice it to say that there’s still a hunger for this style of music, more as a release valve for unfettered fury than anything else.

If there were any questions about RATM’s ability to bring the smoke after a four-year gap between studio albums, Evil Empire quashes those doubts in a matter of seconds. Opener “People of the Sun” builds a militant groove that never lets up, anchored by one of several gonzo Tom Morello guitar riffs. The song came directly from de la Rocha’s trip to Chiapas in southern Mexico, where the Zapatista uprising had begun on January 1, 1994, the same day NAFTA took effect. His lyrics reach back to 1516 and the Spanish invasion of the Aztecs, trace a line through the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, and land in the contemporary movement. The historical depth doesn’t attempt cookie-cutter commentary about writing past wrongs. Instead, he’s arguing that violent imperialism, a theme that runs through the entire album, constitutes a single, continuous fact. As long as guns and money drive decision-making, war will always be part of sociopolitical discourse.

Much of the LP’s second half quietly makes up some of RATM’s strongest-ever material. “Tire Me” is an absolutely vicious anti-capitalist, complete with one of the most devastating instrumentals in the Rage canon. “Down Rodeo” pushes the envelope even further, with Commerford’s bass line carrying you through the streets of a dystopian Los Angeles, where chaos is the norm, and the masses are out for revenge. De la Rocha’s lyric places the speaker in the back of a vehicle cruising down Beverly Hills’ most expensive street, creating a nightmarish reality with incredible verbal economy. “So now I’m rollin’ down Rodeo with a shotgun,” De La Rocha spits. “These people ain’t seen a brown skin man/Since their grandparents bought one.” Oddly enough, “Rodeo” is one of the more restrained tracks instrumentally, partly because it understands that those lyrics are so potent, they don’t need to escalate the tension much more to obtain the desired effect. “Year of tha Boomerang” closes the record nicely, submitting a verdict for everything the album has documented to that point.

But the commercial linchpin you’re likely familiar with is “Bulls on Parade,” a song that most precisely demonstrates why Morello’s guitar technique was so head-spinning, especially to youngsters like myself who thought, foolishly, that there were only a few ways you could play to sound cool. The main riff runs through a wah pedal set to full treble, tuned down a half step, creating a tone Morello described as inspired by the Geto Boys, with a dark, sinister tone. The solo is the famous moment: Morello mutes the strings with his fretting hand and rocks the pickup selector switch back and forth while working the wah, producing a sound that mimics vinyl scratching in real time. When I first heard that solo, I thought it was a DJ mimicking a guitar solo, which was interesting on another level. Later, after I found out that Morello played the solo the way he does live, my mind was blown. There was no precedent for taking the rap-rock genre fusion both literally and that deeply at the same time. To this day, it’s still one of my favorite guitar solos of all time.

The song was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 1997 Grammys, as well as Best Hard Rock Video at the MTV VMAs. But no honor cemented its legacy more than when RATM played it during their infamous 1996 appearance on Saturday Night Live three days before Evil Empire was released. The band was the musical guest opposite host Steve Forbes, the magazine billionaire who had recently suspended his Republican presidential campaign. The band had been scheduled to perform “Bulls on Parade” and “Bullet in the Head.” As part of their stage setup, their crew draped inverted American flags over the amplifiers during rehearsal. SNL producers told them to take down the flags, for fear of ruffling too many advertiser feathers. In a move that will surprise no one, the band put them back on the night of the show, right before they went out to play their first song. With seven seconds to air, a group of NBC stagehands won a brief physical confrontation at the amp line and removed the flags again.

The show did go on, and they played “Bulls on Parade” live on national television, which is quite the accomplishment in its own right (I honestly don’t think SNL would have the stones to allow such politically-charged music material on their show now). They returned to their dressing room, directly across the hall from Forbes’ dressing room. A show representative arrived and told them the show was running long, and they wouldn’t be performing their second song. Commerford then tore one of the flags apart, knotted it, walked into Forbes’ dressing room, and threw it at Forbes’ family. Forbes himself was not present. The hallway was supposedly flooded with Secret Service agents. The band was escorted out of 30 Rockefeller Plaza and onto the sidewalk. As of this writing, they haven’t been invited back.

“The inverted flags represented our contention that American democracy is inverted when what passes for democracy is an electoral choice between two representatives of the privileged class,” Morello said. “SNL censored Rage, period. They could not have sucked up to the billionaire more.” That dynamic is a good encapsulation of what made Evil Empire difficult for mainstream institutions to absorb. Anyone who wanted the RATM sound without the discomfort or the argument that might ensue was going to have a bad time.

What’s your favorite RATM song? Shout it out in the comments.

In the 1970s, Queen dominated the rock landscape like few bands have before or since.

Between 1973 and 1980, they released 9 studio albums, scored multiple international hits, and built a totally unprecedented live reputation. By 1981, they were drawing 300,000 people to a single show in Buenos Aires, the largest concert crowd in the country’s history at the time. They also mastered the album format when it still mattered commercially, and lorded over FM radio when it was the primary battleground for cultural relevance. Overall, their catalog is so diverse that casual fans and diehards regularly have different entry points into the same musical universe. Groups like that don’t come around very often.

And yet, that versatility is both a strength and a complication. Queen never committed to a single sound, ricocheting between hard rock, prog, theatrical glam, funk, disco, and synth-pop, often within the same LP tracklist. Some bands find their lane and perfect it. Queen treated lanes like suggestions, constantly swerving in and out of those markers to avoid predictability. The result is a legacy that’s thrilling and frustrating in equal measure. At their best, Queen produced some of the most ambitious, meticulously crafted rock and pop of their era. At their worst, they awkwardly chased trends with diminishing returns.

I can’t be mad, though. Even their misfires are instructive, revealing a band that, even at their peak, was incapable of coasting on their reputation alone. They were always reaching for something just beyond their grasp. They were also unafraid of excess. While punk stripped rock down to its essentials, Queen piled on more and more layers. While critics stood on their soapboxes, demanding authenticity, Queen reveled in showstopping artifice. They didn’t apologize for their theatricality, which was (and, so I’ve heard from folks who have seen them live since Freddie Mercury’s passing, still is) what made them unforgettable.

This ranking reflects both historical achievement and cultural staying power, however it’s not in the ways you might think. Some of their albums were massive commercial successes that, honestly, haven’t aged well. Others were critical and commercial disappointments that have revealed themselves as hidden gems decades later.

If you’re new here, make sure you dive into the discography ranking archives to catch up on all the deep dives you’ve missed.

Also, subscribe, share, and strap in for a trip down memory lane.

Let’s begin:

15. A Kind of Magic (1986)

Let’s start with a slight historical repositioning: A Kind of Magic is basically the Highlander soundtrack that, at least in the US, no one was clamoring for.

Six songs that appear in that film also pop up on this tracklist, which is why you’ll hear dialogue cut-ins every so often. Highlander never got its own soundtrack release, and Queen were working on both that project and this one simultaneously, so I can understand the two-birds-one-stone approach in theory. It was also a pretty transparent attempt to capitalize on the public’s renewed interest in their back catalog following their legendary set at Live Aid in 1985. And it accomplished what it set out to do … sort of. A Kind of Magic exploded in the UK, producing multiple hit singles and staying on the album chart for 63 weeks. Stateside, it was met with a tepid reaction, further diminishing Queen’s stature as A-list arena acts. Instead, they were sliding into nostalgia tour territory.

Both reactions are understandable. There are a few standout tracks, including “One Vision,” with its laser-sharp chord progression, and “Who Wants to Live Forever,” a power ballad that Mercury and the orchestral section sell with unwavering conviction. It’s also a great example of how he could vacillate between incredible, skyscraping vocal runs and small, almost whisper-level vulnerability, and back again in the space of a verse or bridge. Chill-inducing stuff. But, like several of the band’s other LPs from the 80s, the highlights are balanced out with an equal (or close to) amount of clunkers. Songs like “One Year of Love” and “Pain is So Close to Pleasure” sound pretty dated, not to mention lacking in energy compared to the group’s best stuff.

The contrarian in me wants to make the sweeping statement that this decade routinely gets underrated, especially in American retrospectives. But then you go through every song, album by album, and the rational part of me stands up, clears its throat, and says, “No, it’s properly rated.” The audience split plays to that dual sensibility, in a way. A Kind of Magic peaked at No. 1 in the UK but only No. 46 in the US, going 2x Platinum in the former region. The eponymous single hit No. 3 in the UK but barely charted in the US. Critics were lukewarm, and I don’t think that impression was entirely wrong.

14. Hot Space (1982)

Maybe this will be the hottest take on this discography ranking list. Who knows. But, even if the haters are going to hate, I’ll stand firm on the claim that Hot Space has at least a handful of redeeming moments. Maybe more. It all depends on how tied you are to the idea of Queen as a “rock band.”

By the time 1982 came around, the band was already moving away from a traditional stadium rock aesthetic and into humid dancefloor territory. The Game had an inkling of this experimental streak in it, starting with “Another One Bites the Dust,” of course. Keep in mind, 1982 was also the year that Billboard renamed their R&B songs chart “Hot Black Singles,” so it wasn’t exactly a progressive era for deciding what a rock band made up of white men, led by an out-and-out LGBTQ+ icon, should sound like. When Queen turned up the volume on the disco and funk elements, their fans revolted. Two of the group’s members, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, nearly did so, too. Taylor would later blame some of that influence on Mercury’s former personal manager, Paul Prenter, saying, “[he] wanted our music to sound like you’d just walked in a gay club...and I didn’t”.

What gets lost in the conversation about Hot Space is that it’s more like 60% disco-funk pastiche and 40% what Queen normally sounded like. “Put Out the Fire” is a perfectly pleasant throwback to their mid-70s heyday, while deeper cuts like “Life is Real (Song for Lennon)” and “Las Palabras de Amor” have elements that really work. May’s Latin-tinged guitar work on the latter is a nice touch. Less successful are the dance-oriented “Back Chat” and “Action This Day,” both of which sound thin and almost too sparse production-wise. You also have “Body Language,” one of the most sterile-sounding songs about sex ever released. The music video is also unintentionally hilarious, featuring Mercury strutting through a warehouse full of palettes topped with … New York City sewer grates? The 80s, man. What a time to be alive.

“Staying Power” is the best track here, full of bright horns and vibrant harmonies soaring over the synth bass and drum machine that underpins the infectious groove. If Queen had made more dance tracks as good as that one, you’d be talking about them having an entirely different career trajectory. And no, I’m not forgetting about “Under Pressure,” the David Bowie collab that earned them another No. 1 hit in the UK, when I call “Staying Power” the most delectible delight Hot Space has to offer. Bowie and Mercury are sublime as a vocal duo, and it’s a shame they never got to finalize a sequel while both men were still alive. It’s an impressive achievement, but it’s also been played to death over the years. The opening groove, however, still sounds fresh and fit for a Top 40 battle any time, any place.

13. The Works (1984)

After Hot Space, Queen attempted a course correction. After longtime fans felt betrayed by their dalliance with disco and a more club-ready sound, The Works was supposed to mark a return to their arena rock roots. It seemed like everyone wanted the “old Queen” back. More guitars. More anthemic scale. More of everything. No more chasing trends or giving in to their weirder musical impulses. That was the hope, anyway, and I think the band (mostly) delivered on that ask. I say “mostly” because there’s still a lot of synth-pop on this record, but, by the mid-80s, they would’ve been foolish not to try and incorporate some of that aesthetic for broader mainstream appeal.

Let’s lead with the good stuff. “Radio Ga Ga” is one of my all-time favorite Queen songs. It’s as if Hot Space and Flash Gordon had a baby after a wild night out, and I mean that in the best possible way. Those synths are lush and layered, creating a shimmering effect that’s among their most cinematic work. When the bridge hits, everything at the top opens up, and it sounds like the sky is cracking open, allowing shards of bright light to fall across the landscape. Where was this kind of single lurking for the first three years of the 80s? Maybe it would’ve been too ahead of its time, but “Ga Ga” is also the kind of single Queen could’ve honed in on quicker and saved themselves (and some of us) from their other, clunkier electro-disco experiments. Other highlights include “Hammer to Fall,” a legit stadium-worthy rock song, and “Tear It Up,” a Billy Squier and “We Will Rock You” hybrid that’s a lot of fun.

All that said, The Works was the first time listening through Queen’s catalog in chronological order that I felt the presence of genuine filler. Not big swings that don’t work, but the kind of songs that get added to an album to meet contractual obligations or pad tracklists to a similar effect. Case in point: a cut like “Man on the Prowl,” which sounds so autopilot that I checked out after the first 20 seconds and had to restart it from the beginning. Everything about it, from the riff to the songwriting, is as generic as you’ll find in Queen’s discography. The tension at the heart of this LP, a stylistic tug-of-war between hooky pop structure and guitar-driven rock, is one of the main reasons they can’t fully connect the dots moment to moment. Without that cohesion, you’re left with mostly fleeting glimpses of a record that could’ve been much, much more powerful.

The Works also gave the world one of the most unintentionally revealing cultural documents of the decade with the music video for “I Want to Break Free.” Conceived as a straightforward send-up of British soap opera Coronation Street, it features Mercury hoovering in a black leather skirt, May in curlers and a nightdress, Taylor done up as a schoolgirl, and bassist John Deacon shuffled around as a conservative grandmother. Everyone got the joke except MTV, which banned the video outright, causing the song to stall at No. 45 on the Hot 100. Sadly, this homophobic broadcasting decision cost Queen a good chunk of their momentum in America at exactly the wrong moment. They’d have to wait until Live Aid, which aired the following summer, to get it back.

12. Queen (1973)

Queen’s debut full-length studio effort opens with a lie. Not lyrically, but structurally.

“Keep Yourself Alive” barrels in with such force that you’d assume Queen had been road-testing this material for years. Interestingly, most of these songs were recorded in stolen studio hours at Trident, squeezed in between sessions booked for bigger acts. At that time, the band was effectively unpaid labor, burning through downtime to prove they belonged and, in the eyes of their label, could make music worth releasing. You can hear the hunger. Mercury’s voice already leans theatrical, to the point of defiance, stacking harmonies that feel almost combative for a hard-rock debut in 1973. Without that melodrama, several tracks would drift into competent but anonymous blues-rock territory. Instead, they tip into something stranger and more personal.

Brian May is the quiet anchor here. His guitar tone, achieved through obsessive overdubbing and that homemade Red Special, already sounds unmistakable. The opening run of “Keep Yourself Alive” and the seriously underrated “Doing All Right” make it clear this isn’t a band guessing their way through riffs or chord progressions. They flirt with Led Zeppelin’s long shadow, but they never totally wilt under it. There’s authorship here, even when the influences are loud and reasonably obvious. The problem (normal for a debut LP this ambitious) is the lack of cohesion. The second side sags due to pacing and sequencing issues, exposing a degree of uncertainty in the band’s early understanding of their persona. Hard rock brawlers sit next to delicate prog detours in a way that’s jarring. It plays less like a statement and more like a portfolio submitted for approval.

Though it gets memory-holed these days, the band was not a commercial success out of the gate. Queen peaked at No. 24 in the UK and failed to chart in the US. “Keep Yourself Alive” peaked at No. 47 on the UK Singles Chart, and critics were skeptical. Rolling Stone dismissed the band as derivative for years afterward, citing their debt to groups like Zeppelin and Cream as too indulgent for rock radio. But, for a first kick at the can that, from a recording standpoint, was held together with the equivalent of scotch tape and dental floss, it’s an impressive collection of material. The successes, starting with the opening 15 or so minutes, far outweigh the misfires. Queen already sounded like themselves, even when they’re not sure what that fully meant yet.

11. Queen II (1974)

Of all the albums in this discography ranking, Queen II was the hardest to slot in. It’s aged into cult-classic status across various corners of the internet and, even at the time, was seen as a mini-breakthrough for a band flashing increasingly seductive potential. It’s a quantifiable stepping stone towards their theatrical endgame, A Night at the Opera, though, unlike that record, not everything here works. More annoying still is that Queen makes you wait before hitting you with the strongest material.

The primary reason for that is sequencing. The LP is split into two distinct halves: “Side White,” mostly conceived by May, and “Side Black,” which is wilder, heavier, and, in a revelation that will surprise no one, came mostly from Mercury. As a conceptual structure, it’s a fine idea, but in practice, the more regal first side is less willing to let its freak fly fully. Songs like “Father to Son” keep the listener at arm’s length, leaving the first 20 or so minutes feeling like the band’s stuck in neutral. That said, does the second side work nearly as well if it isn’t preceded by May’s material? If those first few songs don’t take their time and restrict your access to Queen’s brand of mythic melodrama, does the latter part of their aesthetic hit you with as much force when they want it to? That’s all debatable and, with repeat listens, maybe Side White grows on me more.

That’s all to say that “Side Black” is mesmerizing from start to finish. Mercury leans hard into lyrics and atmosphere that evoke fantasy fiction, populating his stories with ogres, queens, and life-and-death battles. It’s a breathless swords-and-sandals epic in microcosm, delivered with unwavering seriousness and conviction. If you’re not in on that aspect of Queen’s sound, this album won’t hit the same way, and I don’t begrudge anyone that reaction. However, if we’re being honest, I’m not sure there are too many Queen fans out there in the world who are totally against theatricality in their rock music. It’s also worth calling out that the group’s studio experimentation was already in full swing on Queen II, with layer upon layer of vocal overdubs stacking harmonies high enough to give you vertigo before crashing back down to earth to devastating effect. It’s thrilling, but also mildly exhausting when it’s all over.

What’s missing, compared to their later material, is a consistent semblance of a pop instinct. “Seven Seas of Rhye” hints at what’s to come with that gorgeous piano figure and massive opening hook, but even that feels underdeveloped. There’s an alternate universe where that song cannibalizes what they’d later accomplish with a crossover like “Killer Queen,” but Queen wasn’t quite chasing that outcome yet. Still, the album peaked at No. 5 in the UK and was a resounding success in other European countries. It failed to chart in the US—words I will repeat at least a couple more times before this post is done.

10. The Miracle (1989)

Queen didn’t really need to make another album in 1989. They may have actually benefited from more time away from the album-release cycle. But circumstances brought them back to the studio to heal. Behind the scenes, the band was fracturing under personal turbulence. Brian May’s divorce was playing out publicly and messily in the British tabloids. Freddie Mercury revealed to the group’s other members that he had AIDS, a diagnosis he’d received in 1987 and wouldn’t disclose publicly for another two years. For them, along with Taylor and Deacon, the studio became a refuge, a space where the four of them could focus entirely on music instead of the chaos outside.

The material from those sessions may be their most complete albums of the 80s, or at least the one that packs the biggest sonic punch. Everything Queen does well is front and center, from towering arena rock to underrated club-ready digressions into synth-pop. “I Want It All” opens the record with a statement of intent, elevated by May’s enormous earworm of a guitar riff. Mercury’s vocals, particularly with hindsight, are defiant. Almost combative. He wasn’t ready to relinquish any of his frontman stature, even in the face of a terminal illness. Elsewhere, “Khashoggi’s Ship” and “Was It All Worth It” are two other solid rockers that lean into the band’s penchant for grandeur without apology.

Even with all those fine songs on the tracklist, my favorite cuts are of the synth-pop variety, territory that Queen handle much better here than on Hot Space or, save for “Radio Ga Ga,” The Works. Atop that list is the insanely catchy “The Invisible Man,” which features a bass line that’s absolutely addictive. Seriously, I walked around my condo for days after listening to the album, air-guitaring my heart out to that bass riff as it played over and over and over again in my head. The production is sleek, Mercury’s singing has considerable bite, and all of it makes the groove undeniable. “Scandal” is another pop highlight, a petty rebuke of their incessant tabloid coverage in the UK. The lyrics are acerbic, but the melody is gorgeous, leaving with a genuinely cathartic release of tension once it’s done.

How high The Miracle ranks in your personal list will largely depend on your appetite for their non-heavy rock material. There’s a thick dollop of late-80s gloss on several of these arrangements, which is definitely my jam, but may not be yours. Gated drums, prominent synths, and so on. Of its era, but I don’t think it takes away from the experience, either. The album peaked at No. 1 in the UK and No. 24 in the US, went Platinum in both markets, and provided the band with a much-needed resurgence in America. It was the first time a Queen album had cracked the Top 30 on the Billboard album chart in five years, and it’s hard to disagree with that popularity on the merits.

9. A Day at the Races (1976)

Here’s the problem with sequels. They arrive with enormous expectations and a track record to uphold. Surprising or wowing your audience is more challenging than ever, especially since the whole impetus behind making a sequel in the first place is to run a successful formula or aesthetic back and give consumers more of what they signaled they liked. Some sequels strike gold and attain a level of cultural transcendence that the original fell short of. In cinematic terms, you’ve got Aliens or Godfather Part II as prime examples. All that to say, A Day at the Races suffers from a case of sequel-itis that holds it back from greatness.

Designed as a spiritual follow-up to A Night at the Opera, right down to the Marx Brothers-inspired title and similar cover art, this record loses a lot of the spark that made its predecessor so special. There’s plenty of solid, occasionally incredible, craftsmanship embedded in this tracklist, but, in the end, it plays like a victory lap LP. A lavishly conceived and constructed one, not doubt, but a victory lap nonetheless. The band was no longer scraping together studio time or trying to prove their mettle as an A-list act. They had resources, creative control, and boundless confidence at their fingertips, which makes the actual album amusingly ironic. All the power they could want, and they sanded down the edges of what made Opera such an outstanding listening experience.

The highs remain spectacular. “Somebody to Love” is one of the greatest vocal showcases in rock history. Gospel harmonies stacked to the moon with the utmost precision and elegance. Mercury sings like he’s summoning something larger than himself, and the band clears space to let him dominate. It’s a genuine achievement. But the rest of the album lacks that same grandeur. The last remnants of Queen’s earlier hard rock and prog aggression are mostly scrubbed away in favor of a please-everyone polish. There’s no venom like “Death on Two Legs.” Instead, you have head-scratchers like “White Man,” which reaches for political commentary and lands awkwardly, as well as “Tie Your Mother Down,” a blues-tinged stomper that tries to reclaim grit and only half-succeeds. “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy” may be the best of the B-tier, in part because it’s a successful blend of old and new Queen—theatrical without being exhausting.

Commercially, the album was a smash. It reached No. 1 in the UK and No. 5 in the US, going Platinum in both markets. “Somebody to Love” reached No. 2 in the UK and nearly cracked the Top 10 on the Hot 100, too. The critical response was mixed, and I think that’s right. There was a consensus that Queen had delivered a very good album, but not a great one. What’s most frustrating is that it could’ve been. The couple of highlights I’ve mentioned here are as inspired as anything you’ll find in the band’s canon. It’s too bad that nothing else has the staying power to linger in the mind’s eye. It’s a different, more complicated version of falling short of expectations. But it’s a sequel, so maybe it was playing a losing game from the start.

8. Flash Gordon (1980)

I first saw Flash Gordon the film when I was 11 or 12. I thought it was one of the strangest, most unintentionally hilarious creations I’d ever laid eyes upon. The recent 4K re-release trailer describes it as being “like a fairy tale set in a discotheque in the clouds,” which is … not wrong. If you enjoy your campy sci-fi with several additional layers of gooey, period-specific cheese, you may get a kick out of the film. Despite being an infamous box-office disaster during its initial theatrical run, it’s since earned a place as a cult classic, not dissimilar to The Rocky Horror Picture Show in its appeal (Richard O’Brien even name-checks Flash in the opening verse of my favorite song from Rocky Horror, “Science Fiction/Double Feature”). The other aspect that unites both movies? Absolutely killer soundtracks.

Before doing the listening and research for this discography ranking, I hadn’t heard anything off Flash Gordon the Queen LP in years. I hadn’t thought about it. I barely even remembered it existed until listing the band’s studio albums. And you know what? That attitude was at least mildly disrespectful. I’m not proud of it, but I have to level with you and frame this reaction honestly, because, seriously, this record is slept on by too many fans. The music rises far above the source material, turning what could’ve been a purely disposable exercise into a tracklist that’s legitimately compelling, even if you’ve never seen a minute of the film. The eponymous theme is exhilarating, with Taylor’s pounding drums creating the perfect on-ramp for Mercury’s operatic declarations. Just the opening chant— “Flash! Ah-AAAHHHH!”—is so perfect that you’ll literally walk around for the rest of your day shouting it at random strangers. I did, anyway.

But “Flash’s Theme” is far from the only memorable moment on Flash Gordon. “Battle Theme” and “The Hero” lean into the band’s gift for propulsive rhythm, with Taylor’s drums driving the energy forward while the guitars and synths swirl around him. The quieter moments work too, especially in the aching throbs of “In the Death Cell (Love Theme Reprise)” and “The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash).” In terms of the group’s trajectory, this album also showcases their growing comfort with electronic textures, though the synths and drum machines hadn’t totally replaced any of the hard rock instrumentation quite yet. Instead, they layer underneath, adding depth and atmosphere. It’s arguable that the best thing Queen did in 1980 with Flash Gordon was prove they were adaptable.

The record didn’t perform as well as The Game, which came out less than six months earlier, but it still hit Gold status on both sides of the Atlantic. At the time, much like the parent film, the soundtrack was treated more as a curiosity than a proper Queen release, which, as my snooty attitude demonstrated, is the wrong way to conceptualize its legacy. Queen didn’t invent the synth-first, crossover-ready film score (Vangelis and Tangerine Dream got there first), but it’s fascinating to consider what Queen would’ve done had they been given more opportunities like this one. This is the sound of a band testing new waters, seeing what sticks. Some of it does. Some of it doesn’t. But the willingness to experiment is what keeps their catalog from stagnating.

7. Jazz (1978)

In their 1979 review of Jazz, Rolling Stone called Queen “fascist.”

Not authoritarian. Not problematic. Fascist.

That Dave Marsh write-up was so over-the-top that it became its own artifact, an overreaction that, to my eye, as someone who wasn’t around at the time, is an apt snapshot of the critical climate that greeted Jazz when it dropped. Here’s Marsh wrestling with what’s really fueling his discomfort with the record:

“Anyway, it shouldn’t be surprising that Queen calls its album “jazz.” The guiding principle of these arrogant brats seems to be that anything Freddie & Company want, Freddie & Company get. What’s most disconcerting about their arrogance is that it’s so unfounded: Led Zeppelin may be as ruthless as medieval aristocrats, but at least Jimmy Page has an original electronic approach that earns his band some of its elitist notions. The only thing Queen does better than anyone else is express contempt.”

Like, sure, I guess, but the fact that Queen had larger, occasionally sprawling notions of what their music could be, instead of staying in their ever-widening lane stylistically, shouldn’t be mistaken for contempt. Their previous album, the excellent News of the World, stripped back the pomp and circumstance and built razor-sharp arrangements on pure muscle. Here, they return to the often beautiful chaos that characterized most of their 1970s output. It’s a pastiche of pop, rock, early metal, and Broadway, a cocktail that made them persona non grata with critics. But can you really take the album’s title and implied mission statement at face value? I tend to think the group knew exactly what buttons they were pushing, particularly in their detractors. I admire that middle-fingers-to-the-sky energy, as it’s the most rock and roll thing you can do, actually.

That’s not to say that Jazz is altogether straightforward as an album. There are some genuinely strange decisions on this record, maybe more so than anything they’d done up to this point in their career. “Bicycle Race” and “Fat Bottomed Girls,” two of the bigger hits, still have this ability to make you sit up and go, “What did they just do?” The former starts like a nursery rhyme, simple, almost childish, and morphs into a barreling rocker with a full head of steam (there’s an absolutely insane May guitar run late in the song that’s one of my favorite hair-raising moments in their catalog). The shift happens so fast you barely register it. The latter is an equally silly excursion into the pleasures derived from, well, a certain kind of woman. Both tracks lean hard into absurdity, daring you to (and someone like Marash did) take them seriously. In 1978, that felt subversive. The jokes landed because they were inappropriate. Now, it’s all kind of quaint.

The deep cuts have aged better than those singles. “Let Me Entertain You” is sly camp built on staccato guitar stabs and Mercury’s voice sliding between menace and seductive invitation. “Dead on Time” is a manic jumble of jagged edges and pinballing rhythm that threatens to lodge itself in your skull for days. As far as Jazz’s most enduring song goes, I’ve really tried to love “Don’t Stop Me Now” the way the rest of the world does, but it won’t stick. The song has become one of our most enduring pop culture standbys, showing up in film trailers and wedding playlists with metronomic regularity. It’s catchy, sure, but I can’t etch its name onto Queen’s Mount Rushmore of great songs. It’s too frictionless, too eager to please. The same more or less goes for the rest of the LP.

6. The Game (1980)

The Game is a record that’s split clean down the middle. The first half gave Queen their first No. 1 album in the US, nearly a decade after their self-titled debut got them noticed by industry tastemakers. The second half delivers some of the worst filler they ever padded a tracklist with.

Maybe that’s coming on a bit strong or harsh, but I want to be clear: the first five songs earn this album its ranking on my list. It features some of the group’s catchiest, most enjoyable pop fare. Had the rest of the LP been of the same quality, there’s no doubt in my mind that casual and die-hard fans alike would be discussing The Game as the best Queen album of all time. You go through the first 15 or so minutes, and it honestly plays like a greatest hits compilation. Opener “Play the Game” is a tender ballad that’s among the most earnest hits they ever produced. Mercury’s voice, compared to his antic on Jazz and A Day at the Races, is restrained in the best possible way. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is the singer’s shameless Elvis impersonation, written in about “five or ten minutes” while taking a bath in a Munich hotel. It’s pure charm, a goofy rockabilly throwback that works because it never winks at the camera.

Elsewhere in that Side One stretch, “Dragon Attack” and “Need Your Loving Tonight” are quietly two of the best arena-sized rock songs of the decade. “Dragon Attack” in particular deserves more attention, with Deacon’s relentless, creeping bass line that creates an incredible rumbling pulse throughout the track. May’s guitar is coiled tight, playing off the bass instead of dominating it. It’s an example of the band being so locked in that Mercury, who could be called upon to save tracks that flounder instrumentally, barely has to do anything. His voice becomes another texture in the groove. Then you have the ubiquitous “Another One Bites the Dust,” which became their best-selling single in the US, reaching No. 1 on the Hot 100 and staying there for three weeks. It’s sleeker and funkier than anything Queen had released previously, paving the way for disco and dance experimentation in the years that followed.

But alas, we’re then met with the second half, where the record loses all momentum. “Rock It (Prime Jive)” and “Coming Soon” are glossy but forgettable, the kind of filler that wouldn’t have made it onto their LPs from their peak 70s period. Worse is “Don’t Try Suicide,” a track so dissonant between arrangement and subject matter, so tone-deaf in its execution, that it should’ve stayed on the cutting room floor. It wasn’t good then, and it plays even worse now. Best to block it from your mind. The closer, “Save Me,” does its best to answer the eponymous cry for help, but as pleasant as it is in some spots, it comes across as more strained than “Play the Game.” All that said, even if the second half sags under the weight of mediocrity, The Game packs quite a pop-rock punch when it wants to.

5. Made in Heaven (1995)

After Mercury’s death in 1991, the surviving members of Queen were faced with a question: What do we do now?

The answer arrived in stages. First, the massive Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in April 1992, which raised awareness and funds for AIDS research. Then Brian May’s solo album, Back to the Light, was released later that year. Eventually, and I mean several years after Mercury’s passing, they turned their attention to the vault and turned leftovers and half-done tracks into Made in Heaven, a surprisingly poignant and emotional eulogy to one of music’s most unique talents. Though they’ve since toured extensively with other singers at the helm, they’ve thankfully never released a true full-length follow-up to this record. In a sense, it helps Mercury’s legacy with the band remain intact.

By all accounts, the vocals you hear on Heaven weren’t altered significantly during the recording process. The surviving members fleshed out the arrangements, adding instrumentation and production, but clearly wanted to let Mercury’s final contributions to Queen’s backlog of unreleased music speak for themselves. Because of this, the LP’s best moments feel like gifts from beyond the grave. “I Was Born to Love You” is a lush, sweeping ballad that showcases Mercury at his most tender. “Heaven for Everyone” is gentle and hopeful, with a melody that’s as devastating as it is straightforward. “Too Much Love Will Kill You” is a raw confessional, as if the singer were tying up loose ends before leaving us. May’s guitar practically weeps underneath the vocal, walking right up to the overacting line without stepping over it.

“Mother Love” may be the most moving moment of all. It was supposedly the last song Mercury ever worked on. He didn’t have the strength to finish it and died not long after that session wrapped. May ended up stepping in and completing the vocal, and when that transition happened as I was listening, I teared up. It’s a heartbreaking moment not for what you hear, but for what (or who) you don’t. The only major miss on the album is the closing instrumental jam session, a 22-minute coda that still doesn’t land quite right. If it’s supposed to be a tribute to Mercury, why close in that fashion? Why include it at all? For some, I suspect it undoes much of the goodwill this posthumous eulogy, so lovingly executed to that point, built up.

Maybe it rubs me the wrong way because of the emotional weight the project carries. Made in Heaven closes Queen’s discography with more grace than anyone could’ve predicted, helping the record hit No. 1 in the UK. It may not be their best work or even their most musically adroit, but it’s undeniably powerful as a loving tribute. It gives everyone—the band, along with multiple generations of fans—the space to grieve and open their hearts at the altar of a legitimate music icon.

4. Sheer Heart Attack (1974)

This, my friends, is the first great Queen record.

On Sheer Heart Attack, everything snapped into place for the band. The production and performances got much tighter and sharper, moving away from the meandering style of their first two studio albums. For the first time in their history, Queen also began to sound like four people pulling in the same direction rather than competing for the same shared space. Even the tracklist’s sequencing feels intentional rather than haphazard on first listen.

What’s remarkable is how much catchier their songs became without sacrificing muscle. The opener, “Brighton Rock,” is a microcosm of that shift, barreling forward before detouring into whirlwind guitar solos that add to the momentum with each thrilling bar. “Stone Cold Crazy” opens with an alarm shriek, an exquisitely appropriate warning before it detonates into a ball of proto-thrash fury. It’s arguably the most metal song Queen ever recorded, so much so that when Metallica covered it, they didn’t have to change much. More than half a century later, it still sounds dangerous, like a car swerving too close to the edge of the PCH going 100 miles per hour. “Now I’m Here” lands one of the most explosive bridge payoffs in the group’s catalog. The way May’s guitar and Taylor’s tom rolls erupt out of the first verse feels like a trapdoor opening under your feet. You don’t hear it coming before it pushes you into freefall.

Sheer Heart Attack is a study in Queen’s chemistry, becoming an undeniable part of their overall appeal. Taylor’s drumming, punchier and lighter on their feet at once, is positively symbiotic with Deacon’s bass lines, giving the arrangements the structural integrity they’d previously lacked. Everything is more deliberate, carefully curating moments rather than trying to catch a rainstorm in a teacup. But, more than the beefed-up instrumentation, the real star of the show is Mercury, who, for the first time, asserted himself as the group’s gravitational center. The primary reason for consumers to buy their records. Not just a singer, but a frontman with a sense of character and narrative. You can hear the difference from Queen II to Sheer Heart Attack on cuts like “Lily of the Valley” and “In the Lap of the Gods,” testaments to how incredible a studio performer he was, with unparalleled range and precision.

No one song made Mercury’s reputation quite like “Killer Queen,” which is the pivot point on which their career truly rests. That song changed everything for them. Mercury stomps through the glam-adjacent camp anthem with all the confidence and bite of a singer who realizes mid-verse that he’s evolved into this indefatiguable force of nature. The band recognizes it too, clearing space and letting him dominate the frame. The harpsichord, the falsetto, the multi-tracked harmonies: all of it designed to serve and augment his performance, not compete with it on any level. The resulting commercial breakthrough was immediate. The album peaked at No. 2 in the UK and No. 12 in the US, and “Killer Queen” as a single did the same in both countries. Because it was the band’s first certifiable international success, critics finally took notice, with NME praising their newfound focus and Rolling Stone calling it “a remarkable debut” (because of course they would make that gaffe).

From that point on, Queen wasn’t just talented. They were the next big thing.

3. Innuendo (1991)

Freddie Mercury recorded Innuendo while he was dying. Mercury’s AIDS diagnosis wasn’t public knowledge during the studio sessions, but the band knew. They also knew, deep down, that this was their last shot at finishing a full-length project while he was still alive. That sense of urgency is palpable from the first note to the last, and it’s a major reason why it’s aged so gracefully in Queen’s discography. The four men clearly wanted to go out on a high note, and they more than succeeded. Under normal circumstances, this LP would’ve been hailed as their strongest in many years. Maybe since the mid-70s. In the context of how and when it was made, the achievement is nothing short of head-spinning.

The album opens with the title track, a six-and-a-half-minute epic that builds from Spanish guitar to speaker-shaking bombast. It’s one of Queen’s more ambitious songs, which is saying a lot, funneling flamenco, prog rock, and classical influences into a single towering statement. Mercury sings like a man possessed with fierce defiance, categorically refusing to go quietly into the good night. The rest of the album’s hard rock moments hit with renewed force after that. “Headlong” is an underrated early-90s rock gem, one that barrels forward with reckless abandon, featuring a May guitar riff that carries all the power of a runaway freight train. “The Hitman” is darker and meaner, making it clear the band wasn’t trying to coast on nostalgia alone. That disposition ensures the odder adult contemporary moments land, too. “I’m Going Slightly Mad” is playful and strange, with Mercury singing about losing his mind with a lightness that feels almost surreal given the context, whereas “Don’t Try So Hard” is tender, introspective, and, at times, almost still.

I’m torn between the two best tracks, earning the following distinction, but I have to go with my gut and anoint “The Show Must Go On” as the emotional centerpiece of the album. Mercury was reportedly so weak during the recording sessions that the band wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish his vocal. May told him they could scrap it. Mercury reportedly downed a vodka, walked into the booth, and nailed it in one take. The performance is staggering in a vacuum, but knowing that, knowing how much pain he was in and how much conviction he still had in him, it’s enough to bring you to tears. I say that, but the proper tearjerking farewell to his fans is the gorgeous “These Are the Days of Our Lives.” The music video, with a fragile, ghostly Mercury, only heightens its haunting nature. When he whispers, “I still love you,” I get chills every time.

Innuendo reached No. 1 in the UK and 12 other countries upon its February 1991 release. Mercury died nine months later. The timeline feels almost too cruel to process, even now, 35 years and change later, as I write this. What I will say is that, beyond the tragic circumstances, the album more than holds up on pure craft. Strip away everything you know about how it was made, and you still have a collection of songs that showcase Queen at full creative force, writing with economy, drama, and complete conviction. Put the context back in, and it becomes something else entirely. It’s not a death album, but rather a celebration of tenacity and, in many ways, life itself, recorded by a man running out of time and who refused to waste a second of it.

2. A Night at the Opera (1975)

I’ve already gone long on this album, so I’ll defer to my track-by-track thoughts from that article, which still hold. Instead, I want to position this LP correctly in Queen’s historical arc.

In 1975, they literally bet the farm on A Night at the Opera working. Everything, from its financial sustainability to its creative viability as a rock act, rode on its success. It also cost over £40,000 to record, then the most expensive rock album ever made. Mercury and the production team spent days perfecting the operatic section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” alone, layering vocal takes until the tape literally became transparent from overuse. Brian May recorded guitar harmonies by overdubbing his Red Special through different amps in different rooms to create orchestral depth without actual strings. Though the process was, by all accounts, a perfectionist struggle, the result was a maximalist masterpiece. It’s an unapologetically ornate, genre-hopping whirlwind, where nearly every idea gets pushed to its extreme. Brilliant and indulgent in equal measure, if not the best Queen album, it’s certainly the most Queen album.

Here’s how I summed the record up in my original review:

In retrospect, A Night at the Opera is a survival story, albeit one couched in glamorous camp. There’s plenty of absurdity on display throughout, but also a level of craftsmanship so impeccable, so unbothered by rules and tradition, that it couldn’t be anything less than timeless. By pushing the envelope as far as they did, they paved the way for modern pop theater as we know it today. From Lady Gaga to Muse, arena rock bombast wouldn’t have found its way to quite as exciting a place without Queen’s guidance. These were also four musicians who had both everything and nothing to lose at the same time, making them all the more dangerous when they’re as underestimated as they were back then.

If you’re looking for daring, look no further.

1. News of the World (1977)

News of the World is an incredible rock album, but not for the reasons many people might think.

You could point to the opening two tracks, which were frequently played back-to-back as a mini-suite of sorts, as being even more widely popular and career-defining than “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Think about how many venues, and in how many different contexts, you’ve heard “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” rattling through a set of speakers. When I was a wedding DJ, I once played it as the bride and groom were walking down the aisle, and you know what? Their guests absolutely ate it up. So there’s that, but those two songs are now so ubiquitous that hearing them clean feels almost impossible. They’ve been swallowed and regurgitated by professional and amateur sports so often that I can’t hear them as jock jams now, as good as they are. But push past that saturation, and the rest of the album opens up beautifully.

The middle stretch of News of the World is undoubtedly one of the strongest runs in their entire catalog. “Sheer Heart Attack” (the song) is raw and frantic, proof Queen could still run with (or, at worst, alongside) the nascent alt-rock and punk movements that were gaining increasing ground with rock fans in the US and the UK. It’s faster and meaner than anything they’d committed to tape before. On the other end of the spectrum, you have “Spread Your Wings,” a vehicle that gives Mercury room to deliver one of his most heartfelt performances ever, his vocals framed by these cavernous guitar textures from May. That combination makes the song feel like it’s happening in some gothic cathedral.

The signposts for Queen’s next phase also rear their heads at this point. “Fight From the Inside” and “Get Down, Make Love” flirt with funk, disco, and more overt sexuality, with the latter smashing Mercury’s winking growl against a grinding riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Prince record (now that’s a collaboration we should’ve gotten while all parties were still alive). The deeper cuts, like the bossa nova offshoot “Who Needs You” and the artful closer “It’s Late,” underscore how consistent Queen’s mid-to-late-70s material had become. Everything you hear on this album is the product of momentum building and not cheaply manufactured thrills. Placed in its historical moment, when excess was under fire and club acts were recapturing rock’s essence, it’s a fascinating response from an arena-sized act. They stripped things back without losing identity by focusing their ambition.

Up and down Queen’s tracklists from 1974 to 1977, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than half a dozen clunkers. Sheer Heart Attack is the starting point, A Night at the Opera is the envelope-pusher, and A Day at the Races is what happens when you hit the glass ceiling of overrefinement. To go from that point to a collection of songs this razor-sharp cements News of the World as the most staggering milestone in Queen’s catalog.

What’s your favorite Queen song or album? Sound off in the comments.

Genre: R&B, Neo-Soul

Label: Columbia

Release Date: April 2, 1996

Vibe: 😮‍💨

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

Maxwell presented his finished debut album to Columbia Records in the spring of 1995. The label heard it and promptly put it in a drawer.

There were other extenuating circumstances, of course. Columbia has gone through massive restructuring, which both stemmed from and amplified existing in-fighting that persisted in the months after Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite was submitted. But the most interesting (or laughable, depending on your disposition) aspect of the decision was the label’s sudden doubts about the record’s commercial potential. At the time, they didn’t think its sound dovetailed enough with the hip-hop/soul hybrid that was gaining steam on the charts, as witnessed by the sleek sample usage on Bad Boy singles. Instead of a product that slotted in seamlessly next to hits of the day, they had a 65-minute slow burn of an R&B record, one replete with jazz-inflected moments of sly seduction. Even the album cover was mysterious. No photo of Maxwell, just a pair of gold heels on a hotel carpet and a track listing. The label’s own Black music executives weren’t sure their audience would go for it.

It’s a curious case of buyer’s remorse in hindsight. Gerald Maxwell Rivera was a Brooklyn kid, raised by his mother after his father died in a plane crash when he was three years old. At 17, the self-taught instrumentalist began composing his own material, growing his yet-to-be-recorded catalog to over 300 songs. At 19, he was performing at venues all over New York, waiting tables to cover his rent. By his own account, he built a reputation from the ground up, which led Vibe to dub him “the next Prince” in the early-90s. In 1994, Columbia signed him to a deal and reluctantly gave him creative control. Despite all that promise, it looked for a minute that his career would be stalled by label insecurity. Uncertainty. Whatever you want to call it.

Then a funny thing happened: D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar broke through in 1995 and changed the industry-wide calculus of what soul (or, as it was already being dubbed, “neo-soul”) could accomplish. It wasn’t solely a question of aesthetic similarities, though you’ll find plenty of those if you listen to both of those studio debuts back to back. There was an auteurist angle to the mystique behind Maxwell and D’Angelo’s respective outputs. You can throw other artists into that mix, too, like Erykah Badu and J Dilla, but the notion of an uncompromising vision began to emerge as a selling point. Like D’Angelo, Maxwell was a perfectionist and understood that genuine greatness required him to treat this album as a suite, not a collection of pre-packaged singles. It had to be performed live, with real musicians, and respectful of the long line of soul gamechangers who’d blazed the trail for him. The fact that Urban Hang Suite was released on April 2, 1996, which would have been Marvin Gaye’s 57th birthday, was not accidental

The album opens with “The Urban Theme,” nearly three minutes of instrumental funk that establishes the temperature before Maxwell sings a note. Wah Wah Watson’s guitar and the saxophone lick create a distinctive space and let you luxuriate in it. The sequence then moves forward in a deliberate arc: attraction through “Welcome,” desire through “Sumthin’ Sumthin’,” declaration through “Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder),” consummation through “...Til the Cops Come Knockin’,” and then the longer, harder territory of commitment, doubt, and resolution through the album’s final third. It moves like a cohesive narrative, one where the tempo changes in relation to the central relationship’s progression. It’s a choice one critic specifically attributed to Stuart Matthewman’s production influence (he’d been assigned by Columbia to work on the record with Maxwell, but only ended up working on a handful of final tracks).

“Sumthin’ Sumthin’” is the first place where Maxwell’s musical range becomes fully visible. Leon Ware co-wrote it. Ware, who had co-written and produced Marvin Gaye’s 1976 masterpiece I Want You and co-written Minnie Riperton’s “Inside My Love,” brought chord structures more complex than most R&B was reaching for at that moment. The groove under “Sumthin’ Sumthin’” is deceptively sophisticated, built on a bass line that doesn’t resolve where you expect. Wah Wah Watson’s guitar is fluid and warm. Maxwell’s vocal stays restrained in the verses and opens in the hook just enough to let you understand the stakes. The song peaked at number 22 on the Hot Dance Music chart. Its success was modest given its quality, but its placement on the Love Jones soundtrack in 1997 considerably expanded its reach.

“Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)” was the record’s commercial engine. Co-written with Itaal Shur, it hit number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number 8 on the R&B chart. The single shipped 500,000 copies by October 1996, and its momentum lifted the entire album. The production here is lighter than the album’s center of gravity, built for radio in a way the surrounding tracks aren’t, but Maxwell’s falsetto on the chorus lands with a conviction that makes the song feel less like a calculated radio move and more like the one moment on the record where he lets the guardrail down completely. Then there’s “...Til the Cops Come Knockin’.” It was the track from his original demo that made it to the album, the one that creates palpable heat through compression rather than volume. The tempo locks in and never flinches, while Maxwell’s vocal delivery is closer to Teddy Pendergrass’ growl than to Gaye’s croon. The restraint that defines the rest of the record is borne from this composition, and the effect is utterly disarming.

Urban Hang Suite debuted at No. 38 on the R&B album chart and moved upwards from there. The first single, “...Til the Cops Come Knockin’,” while brilliant, only peaked at No. 79, which caused Columbia to waver internally. Then “Ascension” dropped in July, helping the LP earn a Gold certification by September of that year and hit Platinum status the following year, in 1997. The album spent 78 weeks on the Billboard 200, leading to Maxwell selling out Radio City Music Hall for three consecutive nights. At the Soul Train Awards, he won Best Male R&B/Soul Album, Best Male R&B/Soul Single, and Best New Artist. He was officially a fixture of R&B’s present and future. Astonishingly, the Grammy for Best R&B Album in his awards year went to The Tony Rich Project’s Words, a fine record that hasn’t left a cultural footprint anywhere as large as Maxwell has. Go figure.

The commercial story of this album extended long past its initial lifecycle. Along with Brown Sugar and 1997’s Baduizm (1997), Maxwell’s contribution to neo-soul is irreplaceable. Urban Hang Suite was a designed object, meant to be experienced as a complete thing. Artists who absorbed that lesson include The Weeknd, who has cited Maxwell directly as a formative influence, along with a broader wave of alternative R&B artists in the 2010s who took the emotional restraint and the negative space between notes as a production dogma. You can hear this album’s DNA in Frank Ocean’s formal ambitions, in Miguel’s approach to falsetto and arrangement, in the general proposition that R&B could be made to feel literary without losing its physicality.

What’s your favorite Maxwell song? Or 90s R&B? Call it out in the comments.

With well over 100 million records sold worldwide, 20 Billboard Top 10 hits, and 17 of their first 20 albums certified Platinum by the RIAA (good grief!), their commercial success is undeniable. Yet, when music conversations turn to the greatest rock bands of all time, Chicago gets mentioned far less than the usual suspects (e.g., the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones, etc.)

I think it’s a branding problem more than anything else. Hear the band’s name now, and most people jump straight to the soft-focus ballads that still get heavy playlist rotation. That’s not a knock. “You’re The Inspiration” is a genuinely good song. It just doesn’t tell the whole story.

Chicago didn’t survive shifts in pop and rock taste by accident. Their catalog spans far more than those two umbrella designations, from jazz fusion and political songwriting to disco-adjacent bangers and yacht rock balladry. Across six decades, they’ve done it all. This post is my attempt to get them the respect they deserve from casual fans who only know the hits.

It’s not a greatest-hits dump, either. Not entirely, anyway. Several of their biggest chart successes are absent from this list. Instead, I want to create a cross-section of what made them legends: their range, their control, their ambition, and their refusal to stagnate.

Enough blah blah. Hit that subscribe button if you want, but keep scrolling to begin your journey through Chicago.

In alphabetical order, let’s begin:

1. “25 or 6 to 4” (1970)

From the opening seconds where that guitar and bass riff come in, you know this song’s a moment.

It was the demarcation point where Chicago stopped being a promising rock fusion experiment and started sounding, for lack of a better word, inevitable. The central groove is electric, folding in on itself, phrase after phrase, without losing its energy or its ability to transfix. Terry Kath’s lead guitar work is outstanding, bending tone and timing until the tension becomes so palpable you can feel it in your bones.

What keeps this song alive more than 50 years later isn’t its volume alone. It’s, perhaps counterintuitively, the restraint it shows. The rhythm section never rushes and the horns punch without cluttering the center of the mix. Even the famously opaque title, Robert Lamm’s shorthand for the time of night he was trying to write on a 12-string guitar, reinforces that idea of restless momentum. The single peaked at No. 4 on the Hot 100, making it the highest-charting single from Chicago II, and the band’s first genuine statement of intent.

The song may also have answered a question that hung over the band’s early career: Could Chicago make rock that hit as hard as some of their contemporaries? No one would mistake the band’s sound for something bluesier and harder-edged like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, but there’s a part of me that thinks Kath and company had it in them, too. There’s a reason musicians who knew him personally still talk about him as one of the most gifted guitarists of his generation. Full stop.

2. “Beginnings” (1969)

“Beginnings” is a good example of how Chicago’s songs trust their audience. Many of their best cuts rely on patience and letting both melodies and hooks breathe, which aren’t qualities that necessarily lend themselves well to mainstream success. The song initially flopped on release and didn’t chart until Columbia reissued it in 1971, paired with “Colour My World.” The combined single climbed to No. 7 on the Hot 100, with “Beginnings” separately reaching No. 1 on the Easy Listening chart.

Not bad for a track people passed on the first time. Robert Lamm wrote this after watching Richie Havens perform at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, and the influence is audible. The groove does most of the heavy lifting (shout out to those tasty Danny Seraphine drum fills), with a Latin-tinged rhythm that never feels borrowed or ornamental. When everything finally opens up in the second half, it feels communal rather than flashy.

The fact that it needed a second release to find its audience is also worth mentioning. The debut album it comes from, Chicago Transit Authority, was itself a slow build, proving impossible to ignore once consumers acclimated themselves to the band’s forward-thinking brilliance. The LP would eventually spend 171 weeks on the Billboard 200, setting a then-record for rock album chart longevity.

3. “Dialogue (Part I & II)” (1971)

How many rock bands can turn anxiety into a structural device for such a memorable two-parter?

The eponymous conversation bounces back and forth between two sparring partners in Part I. One man (whose portion is sung by Terry Kath) is disturbed by recent sociopolitical developments, such as the Vietnam War and the fallout from widespread famine. Meanwhile, the second man (sung by Peter Cetera) maintains an even keel, insisting that everything will be alright in the end. It’s all delivered without any sloganeering or overly neat conclusions. Instead, you’re asked to sit with ideas that are left unresolved.

Then Part II shifts the axis entirely. The horns rally, floating over the percussion elements like a bright sunrise over a cold winter landscape. The harmonies break through soon after, full of hope and optimism. Refrains like “we can make it better” and “we can save the children” cut through the uncertainty spoken in Part I, outlining a clear call to action for anyone who wants to actually make a difference, not just sing about it. By the time the song ends on collective momentum rather than resolution, it’s made its point more forcefully than any anthem could.

4. “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” (1969)

This song’s a good opportunity to hav e Robert Lamm sidebar. One of Chicago’s founding members, he wrote many of the band’s best-known hits, including several of the tracks included on this list. His piano playing has also provided the backbone for several others penned by his bandmates, such as “Colour My World.” As of this writing, he’s still touring with the group, too. Arguably the most jazz-influenced player on a lot of Chicago records, Lamm’s contributions are integral to their bright, bold sound.

Case in point is “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” Lamm’s opening piano solo is a marvelously relaxed flex, tempering its bounce with laser-like precision. It’s also quite difficult to pigeonhole into one specific genre or style. It’s reminiscent of classical and hard bop, but also 60s pop and R&B, undercutting all those influences with the notion that the world is moving too fast for anyone to really enjoy the spoils it affords many of us.

Lamm said of this track: “[It’s] not a complicated song, but it’s certainly a quirky song […] I wanted to write something that wasn’t ordinary, that wasn’t blues-based, that didn’t have ice cream changes, and would allow the horns to shine and give (founding member) Lee Loughnane a solo. So all that was the intent.” Decades later, there are few artists (save for maybe Billy Joel, who’s borrowed a few tricks from Chicago over the years) who could craft something as impressive technically.

5. “Hard to Say I’m Sorry / Get Away” (1982)

I have a story for you.

Years ago, my wife and I went to see Earth, Wind & Fire (my favorite band of all time) and Chicago on tour. At first, she was concerned she wouldn’t know enough of the latter’s songs to fully enjoy the experience, to which I replied, “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll know the songs from radio airplay when we were kids.” And, lo and behold, I glance over at her as the band wrapped an outstanding rendition of “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” and she had this shocked look on her face. “I didn’t know I knew all these songs,” she said. That’s cultural ubiquity at work, folks.

If you strip away its easy listening reputation, this song is a masterclass in temporal and emotional pacing. The first half (the half you likely know the best) leans into insecurity by way of hesitation. Peter Cetera’s delivery is measured almost to the point of stillness, as if he’s processing how he feels about the couple’s past romantic foibles in real time. It’s a rare case of early-80s male vulnerability on record without unnecessary adornment. As a result, the song more than earns the payoff of a slow piano fake-out before the transition.

Then the second movement hits. “Get Away” is this fun epilogue to what came before. Rhythm enters, momentum returns, and the whole thing justifies its construction. You can do with just the ballad portion, but the extended album cut with both parts makes for a more enriching listening experience. When it reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1982 and stayed there for two weeks, it proved once again that Chicago really understood how to cater to mainstream radio without losing the relatability that ran through much of their material sung by Cetera.

6. “I’m a Man” (1969)

I like the original version of “I’m a Man,” recorded in 1967 by the Spencer Davis Group, more because I’m in awe of anything Steve Winwood wrote during that period of his life. But Chicago’s version vaults into this other sonic territory altogether. It’s looser and more communal, layered like a jazz-fusion jam session where everyone had a general understanding of the song and the chords they wanted to hit, but let the song take them where it wanted to go. There’s also a noticeable blues foundation in Lamm’s sawtooth keyboard playing and Kath’s swirling guitar interjections that keep it grounded in an edgier rock sensibility. It stretches and wails and sighs in ways so exhilarating they’ll take your breath away.

You also have Danny Seraphine’s drum performance, which is among his very best as a member of Chicago. With so many other incredible musicians that have graced the band’s roster over the years, Seraphine tends to get overlooked as one of the forces that shaped their music (he also left the group on less-than-stellar terms in 1990). It shouldn’t be that way, though. His ability to carry a groove on his shoulders and show off his free-flowing fill chops as he does in this song’s pummeling middle section deserves more recognition in the Chicago extended universe.

On another, deeper note, “I’m a Man” reveals important info about Chicago’s relationship with its influences. They were a band with a deep well of knowledge in rock, pop, jazz, and blues, but they never wore it as a “look at what we’re referencing” credential. The decision to cover a song written by Winwood and recorded with that singer’s signature vocal swagger, and then recast it with seven musicians playing off each other rather than funneling the energy through one individual, says a lot about what kind of band they were building in 1969. Collective musicianship over star power—it’s a theme that’s guided the band’s decision-making ever since, for better and for worse.

7. “If You Leave Me Now” (1976)

Peter Cetera’s tender, timeless ballad almost didn’t make Chicago X. He wrote it two years earlier, during the same sessions that yielded “Wishing You Were Here” on Chicago VII, and it was among the last tracks added to the former LP’s tracklist. Even the demo tape was cobbled together in an inauspicious way, with the band’s manager, James William Guercio, playing the acoustic guitar, assuming that Kath would finish it off the next time he was in the studio. Instead, his contribution is the one you hear on the final record.

Former Chicago saxophonist Walter Parazaider recalled hearing “If You Leave Me Now” on the radio and thinking it was McCartney-esque, and in general, he’s not totally off-base. Like a Sir Paul joint, nothing here is lazy. Every string swell is placed with care, augmenting the central French horn figure that oscillates between two notes and a refrain that’s compact enough to function as both the verse and the chorus. That level of restraint and concise construction takes a ton of confidence, not to mention craftsmanship, especially in a genre that, in the mid-1970s, tended to reward excess.

While some dismissed “If You Leave Me Now” as overly soft and sappy, the general public ate it up. The song became the band’s first-ever No. 1 single on the Hot 100, eventually selling 1.4 million copies in the U.S. alone and winning them the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. The easy-listening pivot it signaled was nonetheless fueled by the same discipline as their more complex, jazzier offerings. Cetera sang it with the kind of controlled fragility that’s genuinely hard to fake, and handed Chicago their commercial breakthrough in the process.

8. “Make Me Smile” (1970)

Here’s how you know Chicago was an incredibly ambitious rock outfit from the get-go: “Make Me Smile” began life as the opening movement of James Pankow’s “Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon,” a seven-part suite from Chicago II. It was eventually selected as part of that larger composition to be edited down into a standalone single, which was a good move for all involved. It became the band’s first-ever Top 10 hit on the Hot 100, peaking at No. 9, despite its endlessly restless nature. It dips and darts around sonic corners, continuously changing speeds and tone.

And yet, that fearless, fragmented nature is what makes it so compelling. It asks more of the listener than your average Chicago song, too, or certainly far more than the love song wing of their catalog. Kath sounds especially untethered here, pushing against structure with his lead vocals, invoking Little Richard and James Brown, all without letting the momentum flag. There’s a mesmerizing amount of trust between bandmates that’s readily apparent if you read between the lines. Everyone playing on the track was, at one point, asked to land transitions that shouldn’t work, but all do in this case. It’s controlled chaos at its most captivating.

The suite context matters, too. Chicago was one of a small handful of rock acts in 1970 willing to build a double album around an extended compositional structure rather than just a collection of ready-for-radio cuts. The Beatles had done it. The Who were doing it. Chicago doing it on their second album, before they had the kind of industry cred that would’ve made the experimentation more forgiving, was a genuine act of confidence. “Make Me Smile” works as a pop song, but it’s also an invitation: if you liked this, there are six more movements waiting.

9. “Saturday in the Park” (1972)

The most comforting of all the warm hugs that dot Chicago’s greatest hits, “Saturday in the Park” was a natural choice for the “Fun Song Friday” column I used to run as part of this newsletter. Robert Lamm wrote it after watching Fourth of July celebrations in Central Park in 1971, imbuing the lyrics with the wistfulness of witnessing a moving event as an innocent bystander. It peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in 1972, one of three Top 5 singles Chicago had that year.

For more on the song’s significance, check out ’s guest post about it from 2024. Here’s an excerpt:

“According to the song’s Wiki page, “the line ‘singing Italian songs’ is followed by ‘[Eh Cumpari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh,_Cumpari!)’ (the title of a song made famous by Julius La Rosa [in] 1953). Apparently, there’s been some debate about what follows next in the song, but in a video of Chicago performing ‘Saturday in the Park’ at the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago in 1972 (below), Lamm clearly sings, ‘Eh Cumpari, ci vo sunari,’ the first line of ‘Eh, Cumpari!’”: Just as that line can be heard in the hit Chicago recording!”

10. “Street Player” (1979)

Unfairly or not, critics despised Chicago 13 when it arrived in 1979. In their eyes, the band found themselves on disco’s mainstream assembly line, which struck reviewers and longtime fans alike as something more than opportunism. It was deemed a step down. Beneath their skill set and reputation. But what everyone missed was the intricacies from a harmonic and arrangement point of view that, frankly, and I say this as an out-and-out fan of the genre, plenty of disco practitioners couldn’t match, even if they tried.

The groove may be relentless, but it’s far from sloppy or hollow. A lot of disco and early house tracks would throw horns or other brass accents over top of a beat as window-dressing to brighten the whole affair up as much as they could. Because the brass section has always been so integral to Chicago’s sound, it flipped that instinct on its head. They drive the rhythm instead of being relegated to a supporting role. Years later, Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez lifted chunks of the track to build “The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall into My Mind)“ by The Bucketheads, which has lived on ever since as a house anthem. Without the source material, it’s far less exciting.

For those reasons, “Street Player” is one of the more satisfying redemption stories in Chicago’s catalog. The original critical and fan dismissal was so confidently dismissive that the taste gulf only looks more ridiculous in hindsight. You have to give it up to the band for essentially sticking to what made them great in the first place while updating their style to keep up with the times. They understood groove construction at a level most acts never approached, and producer Phil Ramone knew how to record rhythm with physical weight. They were building something that would matter long after the “disco sucks” backlash faded, even if they couldn’t have known it then.

Which Chicago song still holds up best? Sound off in the comments.

Genre: Punk, Rock

Label: Sire

Release Date: April 23, 1976

Vibe: 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

In February 1976, four guys from Forest Hills, Queens, went into Plaza Sound Studios above Radio City Music Hall and recorded 14 songs in 7 days for $6,400. They’d only been playing together for a little over a year before that session took place. The resulting record only sold about 6,000 copies in its first year and didn’t crack the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 album chart. Both singles, the ubiquitous “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” failed to chart. That’s the commercial story. Pretty straightforward and, at least in the beginning, straightforwardly unremarkable. But the other side of this LP’s story is how it irreversibly changed the course of rock and roll, influencing an untold number of musicians who wanted to break the mold with a sonic sledgehammer. Like the Velvet Underground and Roxy Music before them, it took the band a while to make their mark commercially. Plenty of studio efforts that matter culturally follow a similar path.

To understand why Ramones hit the way it did, it’s important to acknowledge what rock music sounded like in the spring of 1976. Titles like Hotel California, 2112, Frampton Comes Alive!, and Boston (the latter wasn’t released yet but was around the corner), were all of a piece of a broader, suffocating aesthetic: rock that was (or aspired to be) big, expensive to make, technically demanding, and, more often than not, designed to be played in arenas. Joey made the contrast himself several times. Those records that cost half a million dollars (or more) and sometimes took two-plus years to make. That was the norm, which is maybe why something like Hotel California feels, in large part, at the other end of the excitement spectrum from the Ramones. I’m not trying to slander the Eagles by saying that, either, but there’s a marked difference between a languid AOR that moves at a deliberate pace and this album, which hits you with track after track that, 50 years later (!), still sounds so alive and vital. To know that those two LPs coexisted in the same calendar year is fascinating.

Back to Queens for a second. The four members of the Ramones—Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and Tommy—had grown up in a middle-class neighborhood that didn’t exactly lend itself to rock mythologizing. They were outcasts who, after meeting as teenagers, threw a band together and figured everything out as they went. Tommy was managing the band before he ever climbed behind the kit to step in when they couldn’t find a suitable drummer. Joey, born Jeffrey Hyman, had also had a go-round on drums before Dee Dee decided he couldn’t sing and play bass at the same time. Joey decided he couldn’t sing and play drums, so he moved himself to the frontman position. In those early days, the whole operation had the dizzying logic of a falling-forward sprint. The four men would do anything just to keep the momentum going.

By the time Craig Leon saw them at CBGB in 1975, the Ramones had already made the rounds of the New York club circuit pretty extensively. Their live shows were marvels of economy and power, averaging around 17 minutes. They would play the same setlist multiple times in a night to fill their allotted stage time, but for their rapidly increasing fan base, it hardly mattered. It was Leon who brought the band’s demo to Sire president Seymour Stein during a period when the exec was more focused on signing as many European prog rock bands as he could. As Tommy later recalled, “Craig Leon is the one who got us signed, single-handed. He brought down [all these people]. He’s the only hip one in the company. He risked his career to get us on the label.” Sire offered to release a single, but the Ramones insisted on a full album. After some back-and-forth, the label agreed, which was a massive gamble. Had the partnership resulted in a one-and-done single, would we be talking about the band in the same way a half-century later?

One of the first aspects of Ramones that jumped out at me on a fresh listen was apparently deliberate as a recording technique: the odd separation in the stereo mix. According to Tommy, they’d been listening to early Beatles records and wanted to recreate the strange (and strangely charming) techniques used in those sessions. Craig Leon ran with it. Guitar and bass swerve left and right while drums and vocals ssit at in the middle. Overdubs add these slight echo effects that become integral to the Ramones’ sound. In a way, I’m sure it sounded kind of ancient and wrong in 1976, like a ‘60s pop record that got fed through the wood chipper from Fargo. But those anachronisms are a feature, not a bug. They’re a big part of what drives “Blitzkrieg Bop.” Dee Dee counts in, Johnny’s guitar drops, and the whole thing is more or less past you before you can even get your bearings. During the chorus, the thumping groove takes over one channel, while the iconic “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!” chant swells in the other. The chords are barely varied. It asks almost nothing of the listener, and its peculiar brands of thrills are basically perfect.

Darkness and comedy on this record coexist in a way that’s unique from that era of rock. I don’t think the Ramones were as self-serious as punk later became, both politically and sonically, but they were also not kidding around. It’s the delivery that obfuscates the meaning behind some of their songs. “Beat on the Brat” describes the urge to take a baseball bat to a spoiled middle-class kid with the meter and tone of a song that child might’ve sung in elementary school. “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” is thirty-nine seconds long and barely exists as a musical composition in the first place. “53rd & 3rd” is a supposedly biographical account of Dee Dee hustling a Times Square corner in the early 1970s, and, because it’s played at the same velocity as the jokier songs, comes across as much more disturbing. In 1976, the Ramones’ music was viewed skeptically for its length and allegedly unserious tone. But, like a lot of other music I cover in this newsletter, there’s plenty of substance lurking under the surface grime if you’re willing to look for it.

US audiences met Ramones with lukewarm indifference commercially. In the UK, it was a different story. The British music press had been paying closer attention to the CBGB scene than many of their American counterparts, so when Sire’s co-manager Linda Stein booked two London shows in July, there was genuine buzz. The first of those shows was July 4, the United States Bicentennial, at the Roundhouse in Camden, supporting the Flamin’ Groovies. Two thousand people came. The resulting show was later described as turning the venue into “the hottest, sleaziest garage ever.” Marc Bolan was in the audience and got invited onstage. There are varying (and disputed) accounts of the Clash and the Sex Pistols being at the second show, alongside the Damned, Chrissie Hynde, and most of the London punk scene. Tony James of Generation X put the impact plainly: “Everybody went up three gears the day they got that first Ramones album. Punk rock, that rama-lama super fast stuff, is totally down to the Ramones. Bands were just playing in an MC5 groove until then.”

Maybe what gets lost in the discussion of the Ramones is how much they loved pop music, not necessarily punk. They loved the Beach Boys, the Ronettes, and the Crystals. Tommy even cited Herman’s Hermits (lol) as a major influence. You can hear their knack for earworm construction in something like “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” where Joey’s vocal channels Ronnie Spector’s cadence and the guitars dig their heels in on either side of the soundstage, culminating in a three-minute bop with an aching, guileless center. At first blush, it doesn’t have as much in common with “Blitzkreig Bop” or some of the angrier cuts off this LP, but that cohabitation is one of the reasons I’ve returned to Ramones again and again over the years. It also makes me sad that the band never had a Top 40 hit in the US. The closest they ever got was “Rockaway Beach,” which peaked at No. 66. I know they were a product of the underground, but they were also so ahead of their time that they missed out on much greater success when they were all still alive. Tommy, the last surviving original member, left us in 2014.

Think about this: Green Day played at their 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Imagine those two bands switching places historically. Which are we talking about as leaving a greater cultural footprint for the average music listener? Apples to oranges, sure, but fun to ponder.

What’s the best Ramones song ever? Let me know in the comments.

I get that the vast majority of you probably know Rumours, or at least a handful of songs from it. But, like the Eagles with Hotel California or the B-52’s Cosmic Love, Fleetwood Mac have a far more nuanced, intriguing discography than their commercial apex might suggest. They started as a blues act, for goodness sake, and that was long before Buckingham or Nicks walked through a studio door to join them.

Hit after hit, era after era, they really should be talked about for what they are: one of the most important acts in music history, on either side of the Atlantic. This post is my small attempt to turn the conversational tides in that direction by putting some overdue respect on their name.

From Peter Green’s chaotic tenure as the band’s leader to the even more chaotic times that followed in the wake of Rumours, these are my picks for the songs that prove Fleetwood Mac is somehow, after all this time, likely underrated. They make their case with examples spanning songwriting range, emotional depth, sonic ambition, and cultural staying power.

If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, fix that before we go any further.

In chronological order, let’s go:

1. “Oh Well (Part 1)” (1969)

So unconvinced of its commercial viability, Peter Green, who composed “Oh Well,” thought the song would flop after it was chosen by the label as the lead single for Then Play On. He even lobbied to have Part 1 and Part 2 swap sides, but the release went ahead as planned and, in an amusing twist of fate, nearly hit No. 1 in the UK, staying on the singles chart for 16 weeks. It also became the band’s first-ever entry on the American Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 55.

Green had recorded the whole thing in four takes in London earlier that summer, building the song out of an eight-bar blues riff on a dobro-style resonator guitar that still slices through your speakers like an absolute buzzsaw. That chugging, brawny riff is so distinctive, I’ve heard it inspired several Led Zeppelin songs, including the following year’s “Black Dog.” The verses are almost perfunctory, coming out of nowhere and hanging in the air, waiting, like us, for the groove to return and explode into a rock shuffle.

Though he’s not talked about as much these days, Green earned a ton of respect from other guitarists in his brief stint with Fleetwood Mac. B.B. King, not someone who scattered praise lightly, once said of Green: “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard. He was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.”

2. “Rhiannon” (1975)

“Rihannon” began life in 1974, months before singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks and then-partner Lindsey Buckingham had joined the group. Nicks was inspired to write the song after reading what she called “a stupid little paperback [called] Triad.” The novel, written by Mary Bartlet Leader, tells the story of a girl who becomes possessed by the eponymous spirit. “I read the book, but I was so taken with that name that I thought: ‘I’ve got to write something about this,’” she explained.

At the time, Nick and Buckingham were in the process of writing material that was supposed to be a follow-up to their now-revered (but, on its initial release, mostly ignored) debut LP, Buckingham Nicks. Unbeknownst to the duo, their producer, Keith Olsen, had played a few of their songs to drummer Mick Fleetwood, who was impressed enough to ultimately take them both on as permanent members. The rest, as they say, is history.

What makes this track so special is how it lives as a self-contained piece of mythology. You don’t need to know of the obscure literary or Welsh cultural references to feel it deep in your soul. You only need to give yourself over to Nicks’s searing performance, one that she’d stretch to the breaking point live, sometimes spinning it into an eight or 10-minute epic. Rock and oldies radio still can’t get enough of it.

3. “Landslide” (1975)

A timeless ballad about processing and finding the strength to push through struggle, Nicks wrote “Landslide” at a time when she was considering quitting music completely. She and Buckingham had been dropped by Polydor, money was running out, and the motivation to keep plugging away was seriously waning. As you might expect from material that comes from such a personal reckoning, it’s beautifully, painfully restrained. There’s no production layer sitting between the listener and Nicks’s words. She sounds so close that you think you can reach out and tell her it’s going to be okay.

Of course, her vocal on “Landslide” is outstanding, one of her very best, but the more underrated aspect of this song is Buckingham’s fingerpicking style. Deeply influenced by Chet Atkins, it gives the instrumental an intimacy that almost no other recording from that era even attempted. No drums. Barely anything in the mix at all, save for the duo’s contributions. The nakedness of the composition has never landed quite the same way in other artists’ hands, though the Chicks did give it a game try in the mid-2000s.

Because it was never released as a proper single, “Landslide” spent decades as more of a concert staple than anything else, building its audience one stunning in-person moment at a time. A later version, recorded during a concert in Los Angeles, eventually made the Hot 100 when I was a kid in the mid-1990s. As the years march on, the line about time making bold and old, about seasons changing and standing at the precipice, has evolved from metaphor to front-line reporting.

4. “Go Your Own Way” (1977)

Despite its reputation as one of several angst-driven moments on Rumours, there’s a lot going on under the hood musically on “Go Your Own Way.”

Buckingham was reportedly inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” which you can hear in Fleetwood’s drum groove, though he adds more syncopation to give it added flavor. His initial demo was so intense, producer Ken Caillat wondered if they’d even be able to do anything with it. It was all rhythmic tension and not much else. But, after tuning his guitar down before recording and streamlining other, busier parts of the arrangements (like John McVie’s bass contribution), they ended up crafting an all-time rock classic.

One of several reasons for that is the track's restlessness. It powers every element you hear, including those chorus harmonies that manage to be bright and full of rage simultaneously. When Nicks recorded her vocal parts, she objected to several of Buckingham’s lyrical flourishes, but the guitarist and her ex-lover declined to change them. The fact that she sang them anyway, on a track that became as popular as it did, is part and parcel with the band’s delightfully messy creative process. If they’d had copasetic, easy relationships, I don’t think they would’ve made music nearly as compelling as they did. I don’t wish that on them, either, but I can’t see any alternative.

5. “Dreams” (1977)

One of rock’s most enduring bops, “Dreams,” started as a lark. Nicks wrote it in 10 minutes with a drum loop and a Rhodes piano pattern that came tumbling out of her. “Right away, I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me,” she said years later. When she presented the song to the band, they were less than enthused. Christine McVie, who was in the middle of separating from John while the ensemble was recording Rumours, thought it was simple to the point of being boring.

But, at Nicks’s insistence, a basic demo track was recorded the next day, with Nicks playing the piano and singing. Those elements made it onto the final cut of “Dreams” with minimal editing, even after she recorded nearly a dozen takes of the lead vocal. The rest of the band’s contributions, including Buckingham’s addition of three separate sections that play up the core three chords, as well as the three-part harmonies, were added later. Of all the singles off Rumors (all four of which cracked the Top 10 of the Hot 100), “Dreams” was their only No. 1, peaking in June 1977.

It’s all quite impressive and mystical—the stuff rock and roll legend is made of—but it’s not the whole story, either. This track has also benefited from several social media resurgences, most notably Nathan Apodaca’s viral TikTok video from 2020. On top of inviting a slew of parodies, including from Mick Fleetwood himself, the moment catapulted the song back into the mainstream conversation, re-entering the Hot 100 at No. 21, more than 40 years after its initial release. On the one hand, it’s the nostalgia industrial complex working its magic, but I think the infatuation with the song runs deeper than that.

Even if you had no concept of Fleetwood Mac or Rumours prior to that viral moment, it’s an easy track to fall in love with for the first time.

6. “The Chain” (1977)

Let’s move to a non-single that, for me, may be my picks for the band’s crowning achievement. When I first heard “The Chain,” I was ensconced in the harder-rocking sounds of nighttime rock radio. Some were Fleetwood Mac’s contemporaries, like Led Zeppelin and the Who, but many were 80s and 90s groups that imbued their music with an edgy nihilism Millennials are all too familiar with. I found enough similarities in this song that made me instantly perk up and take notice. It had an edge to it. There was this urgency at its core that I couldn’t shake, long after the station had gone in and out of multiple commercial breaks.

For something that leaves such a stark impression, it’s kind of shocking how much of an afterthought it was during the Rumours sessions. For most of the album’s recording, it was in some state of incompletion, starting life as a blues-rock number before the band reworked it multiple times with new verses and an intro Buckingham nicked from an earlier song he’d recorded with Nicks. That opening, while subdued compared to what comes after, carries a certain amount of foreboding. The group lets you ease into the song while also letting you know you should buckle up.

Then come the verses, with Nicks calm and controlled behind the mic, levitating above a groove that flexes its muscle during the chorus without bowling you over. Only when John McVie’s bass solo arrives does “The Chain” explode with the ferocity it’s been teasing for the better part of three minutes. Despite what’s preceded it, you’re not really prepared for that low, thunderous figure on first listen. It just lands, followed quickly by Buckingham’s searing guitar. As the BBC proved by making the track its Formula 1 theme music, nothing in Fleetwood Mac’s catalog hits quite like this turned all the way up.

7. “Tusk” (1979)

Looking back at Fleetwood Mac’s level of fame post-Rumours, you’d think they would’ve made anything but Tusk, this gargantuan double LP that, in many ways, was the diametric opposite of that smash hit. Pulling more from post-punk and new wave than anything in the band’s history, it’s divisive, largely incoherent, and intentionally strange, but those aspects are also part of its charm. It was recorded at great expense, using an early 24-track studio setup that put every bell and whistle at Buckingham’s restless creative fingertips. No one song exemplifies that despondent decadence more than the title track.

Built around this militaristic, marching band rhythm, it’s a haunting piece of work. The guitar element is almost as spooky as the half-whispered vocals, asking the listener to eavesdrop on a partner the writer suspects of infidelity. The horn section from the USC Trojan marching band comes in to lighten the atmosphere for a few seconds, but even that turns out to be a headfake, with the spell broken only a few seconds later by Fleetwood’s abrasive drum intrusion. None of it should work together nearly as well as it does, nor should it have been accepted as readily as it was by the general public. It’s too weird a composition.

And yet, somehow that’s what happened. Call it hubris after shattering vinyl sales records and earning an ungodly amount of money on tour, but “Tusk” ended up being one of the more impressive achievements in the Fleetwood Mac discography. The single peaked at No. 1 on the Hot 100, helping the album go 2x Platinum in the United States. Still popular and, for many artists, would’ve represented a positive. But, compared to Rumours, it was considered a disappointment.

And it only gets stranger from there …

8. “Gypsy” (1982)

On several fronts, “Gypsy” reaches back into Nicks’s past in search of simpler, more comforting times.

Initially penned in 1979 and intended for her 1981 solo debut, Bella Donna (which absolutely rips, by the way), this song became a tribute to her close friend Robin Anderson, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer while she was pregnant. After that incident shook Nicks to her core, she decided to shelve it until Fleetwood Mac’s next album, which turned out to be 1982’s Mirage. “Gypsy was [written] about the fact that she wasn’t going to see the rest of this,” Nicks explained. “I still see your bright eyes, it was like she wasn’t going to make it. And I was like the lone gypsy. This was my best friend from when I was 15, and so I was a solo gypsy all of a sudden, and it was very sad for me, and that’s sometimes when I write my very best songs.”

Indeed, it’s one of the most moving pieces of music Nicks ever made. It’s remarkable in its economy, not wasting any words yet remaining at least partially oblique about its true meaning. The entire stream-of-consciousness story takes place in one room, stripped bare except for the memories that loom large in the walls and floorboards. It’s about going back to your roots, whether you want to or not, and facing the reality that someone who had your back and was by your side through thick and thin won’t be able to continue the journey with you anymore. It brought me to tears when I went back to listen to it again for this write-up. It’s lost none of its power.

Mirage spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 1982, buoyed in part by “Gypsy,” which peaked at No. 12 on the Hot 100. I suppose that’s evidence that, even grappling with tragedy, Nicks could still weave it into a universal statement. If it’s not her most personal song, it’s surely up near the top of that list.

9. “Everywhere” (1987)

If you read the behind-the-scenes accounts from the band’s members, not to mention producer Richard Dashut and engineer Greg Droman, it’s a miracle Tango in the Night got made at all. Substance abuse, power trips, and fragmented interpersonal dynamics made the recording sessions exceedingly tedious. Collective patience wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the songs on that LP were recorded at half-speed to make them sound as light and airy as possible, which must’ve made for some excruciating demo track listens. But, like many of their other releases, the final product is clearly worth the struggle.

The most notable song off Tango, “Everywhere,” is infectious in an undemanding sort of way. The opening chord jangle is an early misdirect, a false start for a track that immediately settles into this effortless, quite effervescent groove. It’s kind of danceable, but more of a song you can sit and nod your head along to, letting your mind wander into the most blissful corners of the soundstage. There’s no decoding necessary here, nor is there an escalating sense of melodrama. As a result, it goes down incredibly easily.

“Everywhere” also represents Fleetwood Mac at the tail end of their extended commercial peak. They didn’t exactly chase rapidly shifting music trends during the 80s, but they weren’t as irrelevant as some made them out to be. This song hit No. 14 on the Hot 100 in the US, but it climbed as high as No. 4 in the UK, where it’s widely regarded as one of the defining singles of their career. One of four Top 20 singles from Tango, it’s the last great statement from a lineup that would splinter when Buckingham departed the group before the subsequent tour.

Which song makes the strongest case for you? And which one do you think belongs on this list that didn’t make the cut? Drop it in the comments.

But, after a recent overhaul to how and when I share playlists with this community, I’m confident that won’t happen again this year.

I’ve built a new shortlist of my favorite songs released so far in 2026. It includes everything that’s really stuck with me so far, pulled from wherever it showed up. No genre filter, no theme. Just the songs I’ve been vibing to on the regular.

It’s live now for paid subscribers.

While you’re in there, the paid library has been growing.

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• “Walking Around a City Alone After Midnight”

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• “The Greatest Opening 30 Seconds in Music History”

• Film scores built for writing sprints

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• GOAT bass grooves

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• A heist playlist that isn’t technically a heist playlist

Free subscribers aren’t left out. The library there has the 2025 favorites list, 80s funk, New Jack Swing, yacht rock, disco, and funk 12” gems, soft rock sing-alongs, late-night jazz, and more.

Dozens of playlists, all free, all waiting.

But the 2026 list stays paid-only for now. If you want in before it opens up wider, the subscribe button is ready for you.

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If you’re willing to peer behind the falsetto and glitter, you’ll hear what actually made the Bee Gees dangerous: their command of pop songwriting fundamentals. I’m talking melody that more than earns its moments and emotional clarity that never needs any additional decoration.

Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb arrived in 1967 as teenagers and spent three decades proving they could write through anything, be it early pop, baroque balladry, the soul-funk pivot of the mid-1970s, and the glossy AOR of the 1980s. They did it all without losing the instinct that held it all together.

This list isn’t a ranking. Let’s call it a syllabus for how to become an exceptional songwriter.

The criteria for this list are simple: I’ve included only songs written or co-written by the Bee Gees, whether it’s a hit they performed or a track that another artist popularized.

In alphabetical order, let’s begin:

1. “Emotion” (1978)

It was Samantha Sang who initially broke the Bee Gees’ “Emotion” into the mainstream. Sang released her version in 1977, a single that would eventually peak at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spend 21 weeks on the chart. It was a surefire success, if slightly understated, at the time. In a fascinating sliding doors moment, it was also one of the last songs cut from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

As pleasant as it is, Sang’s recording isn’t my favorite version of “Emotion.” That honor goes to the Destiny’s Child cover, which dropped in 2001. To hear the trio give it a soulful R&B rendition is to enjoy it in all its glory. Beyoncé and company added contemporary production elements that sit really well with the vocal line. The melody itself does the lion’s share of the work, so the lyric never has to overexplain.

By facilitating performances that rise and fall like a collective, satisfied breath, you have an example of how structurally sound the Bee Gees’ pop scaffolding still is. You can slow it down, modernize it, hand it to an entirely different generation of voices, and it still lands with the same authority.

2. “Heartbreaker” (1982)

Barry Gibb and his brothers had history with Dionne Warwick years before “Heartbreaker.”

It followed close on the heels of Barry’s success writing and producing Barbra Streisand’s Guilty, the 1980 smash hit that sold 15 million copies worldwide and remains Bab’s most successful studio effort. You can hear a lot of the same energy in “Heartbreaker,” the lead single for Warwick’s album of the same name, which peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went all the way to No. 2 in the UK.

The song earns that success by refusing to overdo it. The melody glides and Warwick’s phrasing never strains, in part because the lyrics keep it simple but right on the money. The chorus feels almost conversational, with her casual, knowing delivery carrying real weight. I’m describing it like it’s easy to pull off, but it’s not. Most songwriters reach for drama when they want to raise the stakes. The Bee Gees typically reached for comfort.

They understood Warwick’s voice operated best in the controlled middle register, not the rafters, and they built the song around that. They didn’t overwrite her elegance, and it’s an excellent bit of judgment.

3. “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” (1971)

It’s hard to believe now, considering their popularity during the disco days of the 1970s, but the first half of that decade was pretty rough for the Bee Gees.

Their more baroque late-1960s pop had run its course, prompting producer Robert Stigwood to push them toward a harder sound. But the resulting singles underperformed in Britain. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, next to that run, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” came out in June 1971 and hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 two months later. It was their first American chart-topper. You can’t make this stuff up.

I’m almost positive what kept it in that top spot for three weeks wasn’t gobs of production gloss or studio polish. It may be the opposite. This is heartbreak without theatrics. No begging, no grand emotional gestures, no moment where the vocalist kicks it up a notch or two and forces the listener to feel something. Instead, this song is among the most stark on this list, with a melody that drifts forward like it’s accepted the collateral damage already. Instead of chasing catharsis, it lets the weight settle.

Al Green covered it later that decade, and it fit his voice like a second skin, which speaks to the song’s transcendent quality.

4. “How Deep Is Your Love” (1977)

Everything about the context suggested this all-timer would be a filler track.

The Bee Gees were writing on assignment for Stigwood’s Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, working in Château d’Hérouville in France under pressure and a deadline. On a project that’s memorably anchored by thumping dancefloor material, “How Deep Is Your Love” was seen as just one of several they tossed in the pile with the rest of the chart hits from that record.

It hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1977 and spent three weeks there. More relevant might be the fact that it stayed in the Top 40 stateside for 17 consecutive weeks, an endurance feat for that era. Despite also being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song, critics at the time somewhat dismissed it as the obvious commercial play from Fever. Decades later, it’s arguably the song from that soundtrack that sounds the least dated.

There’s no irony in it. No ambiguity. The melody washes over you on first contact, imbuing every line with this romantic, heartfelt certainty. If “Mend a Broken Heart” captures resignation, this one bottles up the rare feeling of being completely sure, a luxury pop rarely delivers as cleanly as you’ll hear it here.

5. “I Started a Joke” (1968)

Robin Gibb said he wrote this on a British Airways flight somewhere over Europe. The engine drone apparently influenced how he heard the structure in his head. He’d later pass the story off as somewhat of a joke (no pun intended), so who knows how much of that is true. What I can say for certain is that, like a long-haul flight that keeps you up and sleep-deprived, this one’s got an ominous, dislocated energy to it. It’s not quite sad, but it doesn’t offer easy routes to closure either.

Released in late 1968, it reached No. 6 on the Hot 100 and became one of Robin’s defining vocal moments. It’s a song about failure observed from the inside, which, as far as his contributions to the group are concerned, fell squarely in his wheelhouse. In reality, the eponymous joke is the narrator. The melody softens the edges of that inward collapse as the words slowly close in. Robin’s vibrato makes the underlying melancholy trembling and earnest, and slightly too exposed for comfort.

It’s been covered well over a hundred times, including by Faith No More in 1998. Songs that survive that much translation survive on the strength of their messaging.

6. “Immortality” (1998)

Make fun of me if you want, but I’m a bit of a sucker for Celine Dion’s greatest hits. Do some of those towering ballads overdo it in the schmaltz department? Yes, but I’d argue that’s kind of the point. If you have a vocal talent like hers and you’re not asking her to play her brand of emotional earnestness to the back of the room, that’s like taking a car with a ton of horsepower out of the garage but never getting it out of first or second gear.

I digress, but only to try and tee up how much of a personal preference sweet spot “Immortality” hits for me. Dion was at her commercial peak when she recorded this Bee Gees-penned track with the trio. Her 1997 album, Let’s Talk About Love, has sold over 31 million copies worldwide, making her one of pop’s most revered talents. With three decades of experience under their belts at that point, the Bee Gees made for exceptional creative partners because they understood the scale of what she was going for.

It’s a song written for arena-sized performance, but the kind that rewards patience and a slower momentum build. The verses don’t oversell themselves. Each line sounds deliberate in its phrasing and pace, setting the chorus up to land with more impact than it might in lesser hands. The melody also stretches to accommodate Dion’s range without straining under that kind of pressure. If you’re into it, “Immortality” is pure adult contemporary bliss.

7. “Islands in the Stream” (1983)

Recorded in May 1983, this classic duet wasn’t initially written for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. It wasn’t even a duet. In later interviews, Barry Gibb revealed the group had written it first for Diana Ross, and that it was only after he began working with Rogers following the country icon’s success with “Lady” that it took on this other life. “We knew it was good, we knew it was potentially very strong, but we didn’t know it was a duet,” he said.

On the surface, it’s this lovely country duet that’s so effortlessly conversational, you don’t really hear the sexual desire buried in the lyrics the first few times you hear it. But, under the hood, it’s a marvel of pop engineering. The melody sits so comfortably in both singers’ ranges that it’s almost not to be believed. When that chorus hits and their voices meld together into this single, enchanting organism, you can’t imagine anyone else having a hit with it except them.

Rogers has admitted that the song wouldn’t have been the same without Parton’s energy. “It took on a personality of its own,” he said. For a song that’s dominated country, wedding, and adult contemporary playlists for four decades, its charm goes far beyond aesthetics alone. The writing is timeless; it works, no matter what crowd you play it for.

8. “Massachusetts” (1967)

Remarkably, the Bee Gees were still teenagers when they wrote this (okay, Barry was 20, but that’s basically the same thing). They’d only recently relocated from Australia to London and were penning singles at an extraordinary clip. Several of those were released in 1967, and of that material, “Massachusetts” became their first UK chart-topper that September. It also peaked just outside the Top 10 in the US, suggesting that American audiences could be just as dazzled by their talent.

At its core, “Massachusetts” is a simple enough song about homesickness. About wanting to return to a previous stasis where you felt more stable or free of obligation. Back then, there were three kids who were still figuring out where home was. As a nice contrast to their later hits, there are no massive vocal flourishes on this one. Instead, it circles back to the same idea across verses and choruses, letting repetition accumulate this underlying weight that fuels the deepest kind of longing. That low-ebb ache is deceptively effective.

As their fans got older, I’m sure the song took on a different kind of significance. It’s a song written for those who pine for a time when they weren’t so grown, so cynical, so disconnected from the people and places that once made them whole. And they wrote it before they could really understand any of that baggage.

9. “Nights on Broadway” (1975)

You could credibly call 1975 the most important year in the Bee Gees’ history. It signaled a major change in their style at the urging of Stigwood and producer Arif Mardin, moving away from the more stately orchestral arrangements that defined their early work and towards Philly-inspired funk and proto-disco. That bet on rhythm proved to be the correct one, with lead single “Jive Talkin’” catapulting them back to No. 1 in the US and essentially inventing the Bee Gees persona most listeners default to now.

But their album from that year, Main Course, is far more than a one-hit wonder. On a tracklist replete with gems, including “Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)” and “Baby As You Turn Away,” the best bit of songwriting belongs to another Top 10 hit for the group, “Nights on Broadway.” Paired with a darker, sweatier arrangement, the brothers’ words move like a body in a crowded room, fueled by anxiety and desire in equal measure. It’s never quite clear exactly what the male protagonist’s issue is, other than blaming it on “singing them love songs,” but the lack of clarity adds to the tension.

“Nights” is significant in another sense, too. It came from the recording session in which Barry Gibb stumbled upon the falsetto that would define the group’s sound from that point forward.

10. “To Love Somebody” (1967)

Though the specifics of how the request came to the Gibb brothers are kind of murky, it’s clear the Bee Gees initially wrote “To Love Somebody” for Otis Redding. However, the soul legend’s tragic death in a plane crash prevented him from ever recording it. The trio released their version in June 1967, and it did well in America almost immediately (it would eventually peak at No. 17 on the Hot 100), but played to mostly indifference in Britain.

The reason for its success is the way the emotional message is conveyed through the lyrics, which is direct and almost matter-of-fact. It’s a universal emotion at that. I love you, and it’s destroying me inside. That bluntness, which extended to the main melody, is what makes it work so well. The cover history underscores the power of its simplicity, making it flexible enough for countless artists to fashion effective performances from a single piece of songwriting. Pop, rock, and R&B giants like Rod Stewart, James Brown, and Michael Bolton all had hits with the song.

But my favorite (and it’s not close, really) is the Nina Simone version. It leans into the soulful side of the Bee Gees, the side that represented their best songwriting, while adding an earthy sensuality to the words. Brilliant stuff.

11. “Too Much Heaven” (1978)

Let’s close this list with one of the better backstories in the Bee Gees lore. The group donated their royalties from “Too Much Heaven” to the Music for UNICEF Concert in 1979, pledging the song’s earnings to global childhood vaccination efforts. The campaign ultimately raised over $50 million, with this song alone pulling in $7 million in publishing royalties. That philanthropic footnote only adds to the song’s gentle, delicate aura, featuring one of their most understated performances.

Written on the same day as “Tragedy” and “Shadow Dancing,” “Too Much Heaven” is the Bee Gees at the absolute peak of their songwriting powers. The lyrics radiate with unabashed romanticism, with visual metaphors like “I can see beyond forever” demonstrating how precise and economical their lyricism was. The single arrived at the height of their post-Saturday Night Fever run of commercial success, at a moment in history where they could’ve released anything and it probably would’ve been a hit.

Of all the songs in their arsenal, they chose this one, a ballad that features nine layers of a three-part harmony, creating an entire choir’s worth of voices in the mix. Nothing pushes or rushes. Instead, the restraint and feeling behind the words give it its heft.

What’s the GOAT Bee Gees track? Drop it in the comments.

Genre: Pop, R&B, Soul

Label: Virgin

Release Date: February 13, 1981

Vibe: 🥁🥁🥁🥁

👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

In 2008, Starlee Kine interviewed Phil Collins as part of a This American Life episode on heartbreak. The pair discuss “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now),” one of the first songs the pop and rock giant ever wrote on his own during the Face Value sessions, though it wouldn’t be released for another three years. This portion of their interview tells you all you need to know about his headspace at the time (I’ve edited the excerpt lightly for flow):

*Collins: That song, particularly, was written during my first divorce. My first wife and the kids had gone, and I was just left there. So it was written totally out of experience as opposed to “this is a what-if” song. You know what I mean?

Kine: Do you think you could have written that song if your wife hadn’t left?

Collins: Probably not. I mean, frankly, if that personal stuff had not happened to me at that time, I probably would never have made an album. And if I was to have made an album eventually, it would have been more of a jazz/rock thing because that was my output […] Without that stuff, I wouldn’t have felt the things I felt that made me sit at a piano night after night, day after day, writing stuff.

**Kine:**Did it help?

Collins: Well, it helped inasmuch as—it was kind of, well, when she hears this, it’s all going to be OK.

**Kine:**Really? Is that what you thought?

Collins: I did, yeah. Foolish, huh? I mean, I did.*

Later on, Kine observes: “If it hadn’t been for his wife leaving him in 1979, Phil Collins would never have become Phil Collins.” As painful as I’m sure it was, she’s probably right.

Starting with Face Value, the Genesis alum became the planet’s foremost authority on what I’ve seen called “divorced dad rock” online. The aesthetic peaked in 1985, when Collins scored hit singles like “One More Night,” the sad sack anthem from No Jacket Required, and “Separate Lives,” an improbable Hot 100 chart-topper from the White Nights film soundtrack. Apparently, the movie was an excuse to get Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines on the same bill, a very era-specific revelation. Anyway, the songs are about loneliness or, more specifically, how men grapple with the idea of suddenly being alone after a relationship crumbles around them. The dread that runs through this record and so much of Collins’s work is the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, it’s his fault, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

By the winter of 1979, his then-wife, Andrea, had had enough of the lack of compromise. Collins had been touring with Genesis for the better part of a year behind ...And Then There Were Three... Apparently, he went on tour even though he knew the relationship was on the rocks. After he came home to an empty house in Surrey, he set up an 8-track tape machine, a Roland CR-78 drum machine, and a Sequential Prophet-5 synthesizer and started recording. Collins has since professed that he wasn’t thinking about a solo album or making it big as his own artist. Instead, he was focused only on what to do with the anger, despair, and frustration that had nowhere else to go except into his music. The songs written during that low point in his life would eventually make up most of Face Value, the record that turned him into a superstar. It reached No. 1 in the UK, where it stayed for three weeks, and peaked at No. 7 in the US, higher than any Genesis LP had reached at that point. Commercially, the album was a happy accident.

You could argue that the previous few years fall into that same category for Collins’ burgeoning style, one we take for granted now because it literally took over the 1980s. It goes all the way back to 1975, when Peter Gabriel left Genesis, and the drummer took over as lead vocalist out of reluctant necessity. The move turned out to be the perfect one, and by 1978, the band was bigger than it had ever been, due in part to”Follow You Follow Me,” a ballad that broke them into the mainstream. Then, in 1979, while Collins was drumming on Peter Gabriel’s third self-titled album, engineer Hugh Padgham had been using the talkback mic on the console to communicate with the studio when he accidentally pressed the reverse talkback circuit while Collins was playing. The compressors and noise gates caught Collins’s drum hits and cut their reverb tails abruptly, creating a sound that was simultaneously enormous and punchy. Padgham described the moment in 2019: “Out came this outrageous drum sound and everyone in the control room went: ‘My god, what’s that?’”

Of all the enduring gated drum moments Collins and Padgham crafted in the 80s, the most famous is undoubtedly the iconic fill on “In the Air Tonight.” But it makes you wait for that famous moment. For the first three minutes and forty seconds, it’s a brooding, menacing piece of work. The CR-78 drum machine cycles through an almost languid disco preset with the snare removed, leaving the beat deliberately cold and skeletal. Collins’s vocal sits on top of it, a low burn of accumulated feeling he’s admitted was largely improvised. He didn’t even know what the song was about when he started singing. It was simply an outlet for “a lot of anger, a lot of despair, and a lot of frustration.” The tension is amplified by the fact that the melody barely moves as he moves through the track, making the words coil tighter and tighter, morphing into a confession we’re not exactly sure we should be hearing.

Then, like a lightning bolt piercing a darkened sky, the fill kicks in, and you get one of the most brilliant moments of catharsis in modern music. Those tom hits land like the world’s coming down on your head—not just because they’re loud, but because they roar into view with purpose. They’re announcing the arrival of a force of nature. The single tracked accordingly in a commercial sense, peaking at No. 2 in Britain and cracking the Top 20 stateside. The song got a second life in 1984, when Michael Mann dropped it over the best scene ever included in a Miami Vice episode, back when those types of pop needle drops weren’t normalized, mainly due to the expense involved in the execution. The track has been in our lives ever since.

What’s interesting about Face Value is how little the rest of it resembles “In the Air Tonight.” The Collins that backlash mythology has reduced to easy shorthand (the bland, corporate balladeer persona I referenced earlier), is more or less non-existent here. In actuality, this album is eclectic in a way that reads less like an artist showcasing range (which he had to spare, as it turns out) and more like someone who was writing in different emotional registers on different days and, in those flashes of inspiration, didn’t see any reason to sand down the contradictions. The tracklist leans more toward jazz and R&B than anything else, which makes sense given Collins’s brief history with Brand X and his obsession with Weather Report and soul music. By the end of the decade, the Phil Collins industrial complex dictated that he had to stay in more populist lanes, with the trade-off being that he never quite got to record an LP as daring and experimental as this one. I guess there’s still time left, but it feels highly unlikely he ever will again.

Other highlights include “Behind the Lines,” which retools the song of the same name from Genesis’ 1980 full-length, Duke, turning it from a stately prog number into something a lot more soulful. A big reason it succeeds is the Phenix Horns (Earth, Wind & Fire’s brass section), which lift it out of rock’s gravitational pull and drop it into a vintage funk zone that’s a real delight. “I Missed Again” runs a similar play, with the Phenix Horns back and Collins singing about how he keeps finding ways to blow it with the person he loves (I sense another pattern). The self-deprecation is strange in this cheerful manner it has. I’d like to say it’s an offbeat choice for a divorce record, but grief isn’t a straight-line endeavor, so I’ll leave it at that. The album’s sparest moments, like “The Roof Is Leaking” and “If Leaving Me Is Easy,” conjure a measured, deliberate sadness that operates in a past-anger mode. It’s what Collins or anyone else would have left when the argument is over.

The demos Collins recorded in that Surrey bedroom were raw enough that, when he played them for Atlantic CEO Ahmet Ertegun, he wasn’t pitching a solo career. He was merely showing another human what he’d created. Ertegun told him the songs were good enough to release, a response that apparently surprised Collins. Interestingly, after its release, Collins went right back to work with Genesis. There was no supporting solo tour, even if it would eventually sell over 5 million copies in the States. He was too busy recording Abacab, which came out later in 1981 and also cracked the Billboard 200’s Top 10. His solo career and the band’s trajectory ran in parallel for years, each feeding into the other, until 1986, when Collins started to feel like the main attraction over Genesis. Face Value predates “Sussudio,” the fax divorce mythology, and every other cultural shorthand written and said about the drummer since. What he made in 1980 and 1981 was built out of necessity, by someone who genuinely did not know he was making a massive statement.