-
Singer-songwriter Music
Build your taste profile and get better suggestions. You've rated 0 of 27 albums. Want more suggestions? Launch Quick Rate- Fearless
By Taylor Swift, 2008
Fearless is the 2008 sophomore album from Taylor Swift, the young Country singer/songwriter who charmed the hearts and charts of America beginning with her debut single 'Tim McGraw'. Her triple-platinum self-titled debut release has scanned over 3.4 million units and spent more weeks at #1 than any...
- The Immaculate Collection
By Madonna, 1990
The naughtily titled Immaculate Collection culls 15 of Madonna's Top 10 singles from 1984 to mid-'90, plus 2 new ones that continued the run (the dirty, trunk-bumping funk of "Justify My Love"--a Lenny Kravitz production that justifies his entire career--and the danceable desperation of "Rescue...
- Imagine
By John Lennon, 2000
The enduring legacy of John Lennon's best album has overshadowed a glaring historical irony: the Beatles' original architect was also responsible for some of the Fab Four's most erratic solo albums. His recording projects all too often held hostage to polemics both personal and political, Lennon's...
- The Essential Johnny Cash
By Johnny Cash, 2002
It's a great and perhaps impossible challenge to encapsulate the highlights of Johnny Cash's vast musical catalog in a two-CD, 36-song collection like this. Yet, though it barely scratches the surface, 2002's The Essential Johnny Cash--part of a series of compilations and reissues celebrating...
- The Essential Billy Joel
By Billy Joel, 2001
Early in his career, Billy Joel seemed cynical about fame, even as that distrust bore strange fruit: mainstream superstardom (thanks to "Just the Way You Are," "Honesty," and "My Life") and multiple Grammy awards, as well as the critic's-whipping-boy status that went with them. Maybe it was that...
- Bookends
By Simon & Garfunkel, 2001
Track for track, this is Simon & Garfunkel's best album. By 1968, Simon had shed his more precious tendencies as a songsmith. Meanwhile, the duo and coproducer/engineer Roy Halee had become adept studio technicians. "America" and "Mrs. Robinson" displayed the kind of sonic breadth that would...
- Blood on the Tracks
By Bob Dylan, 2004
Inevitably, when critics praise a new Dylan album, they label it the "best since Blood on the Tracks," and with good reason. Inspired by a crumbled marriage, and recorded after a tour with the Band had apparently re-ignited his creativity, Blood is among Dylan's masterpieces.
- Little Earthquakes
By Tori Amos, 1992
Emotionally and musically intense, Little Earthquakes shows that the piano is as much a rock & roll instrument as the guitar. Tori Amos's debut (if one disregards Y Kant Tori Read, as one would be well advised to do) is at once listenable and challenging; she takes on every topic, from sex to...
- Crash
By Dave Matthews Band, 1996
It's tempting to label the Dave Matthews Band as torchbearers of the Grateful Dead's moderate rock fusion and send them off on the next summer tour featuring either Blues Traveler or the Spin Doctors. But there is more at work here, particularly on the band's second major-label release.
- Graceland
By Paul Simon, 2004
Limited Edition European pressing of this album comes house in a miniature LP sleeve. WEA. 2006.The melding of South African styles and Simon's trademark sensibility made for one of the most intriguing albums--not to mention commercial hits--of the '80s.
- Grace
By Jeff Buckley, 1994
Resembling at times a soft-sung Robert Plant, Buckley was an intuitive vocalist capable of dizzying arabesques and choir-boy sweetness. He is joined here by a tight band for 10 tracks highlighting his stylistic range--Pearl Jam bluesy on "Eternal Life," impossibly serene on Leonard Cohen's...
- Blue
By Joni Mitchell, 1990
Joni Mitchell would go on from this '71 recording to make more popular, more ambitious, and more challenging albums, but she's never made a better one. Working with minimal accompaniment (Stephen Stills and James Taylor are two of the four sidemen), the Canadian thrush summoned an involving song...
- Tapestry
By Carole King, 1998
Limited Millennium Edition. Packed in a Heavy Weight Card Wallet that Faithfully Recreates the Original Vinyl Sleeve, Right Down to the Inner Bag. The Wallet Will Come in a Plastic Cover. Carole King was famous as a writer of girl-group hits in the '60s. In 1971, she became more famous. That's the...
- The River
By Bruce Springsteen, 1990
Despite the acclaim accorded Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, this is the album that broke Springsteen into the big leagues, thanks to "Hungry Heart," then his most pointedly commercial song; it had new fans swooning but some old ones grumbling for the "poetic" Springsteen of days gone...
- Heartbreaker
By Ryan Adams, 2000
Heartbreaker opens with an argument about a Morrissey song before the band kicks into the sloppy and rollicking "To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)," and certainly the gloomster's self-referential sadness hangs over Ryan Adams's songs. But Adams, the notoriously raucous frontman for the...
- Harvest Moon
By Neil Young, 1992
When Neil Young seems about to zig, he zags. Two years after 1990's loud Ragged Glory, he retreats to an old world of steel guitars, gentle folk melodies, and pristine country choruses. (That's Linda Ronstadt, who helped make 1972's Harvest a hit album, singing backup on the follow-up.
- Pink Moon
By Nick Drake, 2003
Pink Moon is the sound of Nick Drake cracking up. That's not exactly true--some have long thought that his death by an overdose of an anti-depressant was an accident, and not suicide--but this album, recorded over two late nights, certainly sounds like a fever dream. Peter Buck of R.E.M. has called...
- C'mon, C'mon
By Sheryl Crow, 2002
Sheryl Crow's first studio album in four years shows a woman if not on the verge of a nervous breakdown, then one who has gone a little off the rails and is in the process of pulling herself back on track again. For her past three studio albums, Crow has been known as the quintessential party girl...
- The Spirit Room
By Michelle Branch, 2001
Branch offers a well-produced pastiche of chiming and strumming guitars, hip-hop-lite beats, quiet-verse-to-louder-chorus templates, and positive thinking. At her best--"If She Only Knew," a propulsive love note to an ex--she rivals the likes of Sixpence None the Richer as likable radio-aimed...
- After the Gold Rush
By Neil Young, 2009
Neil Young's third solo album followed his Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young masterpiece Déjà Vu. Top 10 and double platinum, with the Top 40 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' and his condemnation of racism in 'Southern Man,' 1970's After The Gold Rush has been ranked among the '100 Greatest Albums...
- Horses
By Patti Smith, 1996
On her 1975 debut, Smith was full of piss and vinegar, seriously interested in bringing together high art and low three-chord rock & roll. The record was a key factor and major influence on the New York punk rock scene.
- Tea for the Tillerman
By Cat Stevens, 2000
Cat Stevens tends to be lumped in with the early-'70s singer-songwriter school led by James Taylor and Carole King, but he actually fits in rather neatly with such wistful English contemporaries as Nick Drake, Syd Barrett, and Donovan. Tea for the Tillerman's "Wild World," "Into White," and "Longer...
- Wintersong
By Sarah McLachlan, 2006
An album like this could cement Sarah McLachlan as a middle-of-the-road crooner ready for the Andy Williams Christmas Show, but there's more beneath the surface of Wintersong than just Christmas chestnuts, over-roasting on an open fire. Longtime McLachlan producer Pierre Marchand blurs the borders...
- One Man Band
By James Taylor, 2007
"One Man Band" tells the story of Taylor's songs through exclusive interviews and rare multi-media footage, including home movies and photographs from Taylor's personal archives. The result is an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind portrait of an artist, his renowned repertoire and the personal stories...
- Middle Cyclone
By Neko Case, 2009
The fifteen-track Middle Cyclone is Neko Case's first release since 2006's Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, the best-reviewed and best-selling album of her career. Middle Cyclone was produced by Case with Darryl Neudorf and recorded in Tucson, Brooklyn, Toronto, and Vermont.
- Berlin
By Lou Reed, 2008
Lou Reed's Berlin was released in 1973, just after Transformer and just before Sally Can't Dance, two records that to this day remain Reed's most commercially successful. Berlin's legend of failure was born almost immediately (Rolling Stone: "There are certain records that are so patently offensive...
- Telling Stories
By Tracy Chapman, 2000
With Telling Stories, her first album since 1995's New Beginnings, Tracy Chapman returns to the spare, unsentimental feel of her early work. In doing so, she recaptures some of the urgency and simple melodiousness that made her debut a soulful folk-rock classic.
