Jimmy Eat World: Invented (2010)

Frontman Jim Adkins got inspiration from photographs by Cindy Sherman and Hannah Starkey for this album's lyrics, imagining the lives and situations of the subjects. As such, Invented is Jimmy Eat World's most story-driven album. The diversity of subject matter fits well with the musical range of the album.

My Best Theory, Heart is Hard to Find, and Movielike are among the highlights, but nothing tops the eleven-twelve punch of the final two songs, Invented and Mixtape. Invented is a slow-burn swoon that bursts wide open at minute five. The hymnlike Mixtape uses the titular object as a metaphor for a busted romance: "Maybe we could put your tape back on / Rewind until the moment we went wrong."

Billy Joel: Turnstiles (1976)

The hits on this album were the coast-spanning New York State of Mind and Say Goodbye to Hollywood, but it's some of the lesser-known songs that stand out, namely the wistful Summer, Highland Falls, the propulsive (and insightful) Prelude/Angry Young Man, and the apocalyptic Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway). Seeing as we're creeping up on the latter, I hope Billy's predictive powers aren't as sharp as his songwriting skills.

Billy Joel: The Stranger (1977)

You'd be hard-pressed to find an album with a higher percentage of hits than this blockbuster from Mr. Joel. Five of the nine songs (Movin' Out, The Stranger, Just The Way You Are, Only The Good Die Young and She's Always A Woman) were bonafide hits and 3 others (Vienna, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant and Get It Right The First Time) deserved to be (the overlong closer Everybody Has A Dream wouldn't sound good on the radio). This is my first choice for an album to put on and sing along with from beginning to end.

Billy Joel: An Innocent Man (1983)

If we're being honest, An Innocent Man is the final album of Billy's amazing 6-album win streak that started in 1976 with Turnstiles. The fact that it's a pastiche to the musical styles of Billy's youth and adolescence (namely doo-wop and Motown) is probably a clue that his songwriting was on the wane. But when I was a kid I didn't know that and wouldn't have cared. Instead, I thrilled to Uptown Girl, Tell Her About It, and The Longest Time. And I think the title track is one of his top five songs ever.

Elton John: Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy (1974)

This album, which my mom owned, was always a object of childhood fascination for me, from the complicated cover art, the booklet and comic book that came with it, and the cryptic lyrics, I always puzzled over it when my mom took it off the shelf.

I didn't know at the time that the album is about Elton (the Captain) and lyricist Bernie Taupin (the Cowboy) and their early days trying to make it as songwriters and dreaming of stardom. Songs like Writing, Bitter Fingers, (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket address this directly. Other songs, such as We All Fall In Love Sometimes, the title track, and Someone Saved My Life Tonight (which is about Elton's near miss marriage) refer to the feelings and events of the time.

Lucy Kaplansky: The Tide (1994)

I saw Lucy Kaplansky in 1995 at Wesleyan University with my dad and step-mom. I was home on a break from my freshman year of college, where I'd been incredibly homesick. Watching her perform with just a guitar, I was charmed by Kaplansky's beauty, humor, poise, and (of course) songs. I took a tape of her debut album, The Tide, back with me to school and its folk-country melancholy vibe suited my own mood, especially in songs like Somebody's Home and You Just Need a Home.

Removed from that specific moment in time, I continue to appreciate the craft behind the album, from immaculate harmonies to the well-chosen covers (Richard Thompson's When I Get To the Border, The Police's Secret Journey) to the haunting atmospherics on the title track.

John Lennon: Plastic Ono Band (1970)

I suppose listening to singer-songwriters is almost always a bit like paying to hear someone else's therapy, but never has it been as raw and transparent as on John Lennon's first solo album. It's a credit to Lennon's songwriting and his charisma that we're actually interested in what he's going through. The record deals mostly in abandonment (Mother, My Mummy's Dead, Isolation) and bitter disillusionment (I Found Out, Working Class Hero, Remember, God), with some healing and self-help thrown in for balance (Love, Hold On, Look At Me).

Musically, the album is largely lean and sparse, recorded as a trio with Ringo on drums, Beatles friend Klaus Voormann on bass, and John on either piano and guitar. The simplicity further emphasized John's break from The Beatles, especially considering the album was released just as the string-laden Long and Winding Road was charting (ironically both were produced by Phil Spector).

Lincoln: Lincoln (1997)

The lead singer's voice is pretty nasally. The lyrics are smartass and clever. Is it any wonder that half of this band later ended up joining They Might Be Giants? However, unlike that band, there's a strong undercurrent of serious trouble beneath the nerd rock exterior. Songs like Straight, about an addict trying to remain on the right path, or Unhappy, about putting on appearances, are evidence of that.

The band's drummer went on to join Marcy Playground and the lead singer and songwriter, Chris Temple, has all but disappeared, leaving Lincoln as a lost masterpiece.

Madonna: The Immaculate Collection (1990)

From Holiday (song 1) to Vogue (song 15), this album is flawless. Though the chronological ordering offers little in the way of evolution, who needs growth when all the songs are so classic? The Beatles, Beach Boys, and Michael Jackson have had greater numbers of perfect hits, but no compilation thus far has captured an artist so well. Sure, Justify My Love (new song #1) is mostly just heavy breathing and Rescue Me (new song #2) is kind of boring, but they're just the comedown from an amazing high.

Madonna: Something to Remember (1996)

All of Madonna's biggest hits between Vogue (1990) and Ray of Light (1998) were ballads, so it's fitting that she released the compilation Something to Remember as a sort of a slow-song sequel to The Immaculate Collection. The two albums do share two tracks (Crazy For You and Live To Tell), but I'd never complain about hearing either of those too many times.

Otherwise, you've got a couple songs from her first four albums that weren't on Immaculate (Oh Father, Love Don't Live Here Anymore), hits from the albums between Immaculate and this one (Rain, Take a Bow, Forbidden Love), soundtrack songs (the title track, This Used to Be My Playground, I'll Remember), and three new songs (I Want You, You'll See, and One More Chance).

This and the Immaculate Collection together present a fairly complete portrait of the first half of Madonna's career.

Rhett Miller: The Believer (2006)

Read the review here.

A magnificent album that covers a lot of moods and styles but still feels cohesive. There's the pure pop of My Valentine and Help Me, Suzanne, the sad country give-and-take of Fireflies, the sweetness of Question, the clappy rock of Delicate, and the heartbroken eulogy (for Eliot Smith) of the title track.

Ronnie Milsap: 40 #1 Hits (2000)

I'd never heard of Ronnie Milsap until I shared an airplane with him on the way to my grandfather's funeral. It's a weird reason to get into an artist, but that's what happened.

Milsap is a blind, piano-playing country singer who doesn't write his own songs. He has had (as evidenced by the efficient title) 40 number one country hits, but there are actually 43 songs on these two discs. The songs are simple, but never fail to hit emotional highs and lows, thanks to Ronnie's brilliant interpretive arranging and singing.

The Monkees: Then & Now...The Best of (1986)

Read a review here.

Then & Now... was my first Monkees recording, so it holds a very soft place in my heart.

It somehow gets away with breaking a lot of the textbook greatest hits rules: It's in no way representative of their whole career, it includes two B-sides (luckily, they're both great), and three new songs that only half the band (Mickey and Peter) actually perform on.

But I didn't know any of that when I was 9-years-old, I just played the hell out if it! Though I've listened to a lot of Monkees records since, I'll probably alway expect to hear these songs in this order.

Motion City Soundtrack: Commit This To Memory (2005)

Read a review here.

A melodic buzzsaw detailing the neuroses, fears, and failings of a punk kid. The opening line from Make-Out Kids pretty much sums it up: "They carved a message deep within / of broken hearts that failed to mend."

Motion City Soundtrack: Even If It Kills Me (2007)

Read a review here.

On Even If It Kills Me, Motion City Soundtrack moved closer to a power pop sound and thus closer to my heart. No high concept; the album simply moves from highlight to highlight (okay, so maybe Antonia is not a masterpiece, but it's easy to forgive).

Olympic Hopefuls: The Fuses Refuse To Burn (2004)

Read a full review here.

Now that Olympic Hopefuls (later just The Hopefuls) have broken up, it all seems like a dream: A bunch of Twin Cities musicians get together in track suits and make crackerjack power pop. At least we have this album (and its almost-as-good follow-up) to remind us that it really happened. The Fuses Refuse to Burn contains ten tunes that latch onto your brain and don't let go. From an extended story of the birth and death of a relationship (Holiday, Drain The Sea, Whisper, Trust Fund, Stoned Again) to a lyrical ode to a nonexistent girlfriend (Imaginiary) to the pop rush of Shy and Motobike, the band's two songwriters take turns one-upping each other until they're exhausted and can rock no more.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Greatest Hits (1993)

So, Anthology: Through the Years is more comprehensive. If you want to go deep, get that one. But, essentially, everything you need to know about Petty and his Heartbreakers from 1976-1993 is here. It's got every major hit, plus Mary Jane's Last Dance. The only sore spot is the final song, a cover of Something in the Air. A 2008 edition tried to correct this by removing the song in favor of Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, but messed up by not putting it in its correct chronological place. New editions have since reverted back to the original. If you're interested in exploring Petty's latter day career, check this out.

Tom Petty: Wildflowers (1994)

Wildflowers was my first Petty album beyond the Greatest Hits, and it's still my favorite. The album defies convention in several ways in that it does a couple of things that typically prevent albums from ingratiating themselves. For one it's long: 15 tracks, 62 minutes. For another it's slow-song heavy; by my count at least 2/3 of the tracks are medium-paced or slower. Chalk it up to great melodies, interesting performances (by the Heartbreakers, even though they aren't officially credited), and expert sequencing. Standouts include It's Good to be King, You Wreck Me, Crawling Back To You, and A Higher Place.

Glen Phillips: Winter Pays for Summer (2005)

Dulcinea, an album I eagerly purchased after seeing Toad the Wet Sprocket perform Fall Down on Letterman, was THIS close to landing on the favorite albums list. Unfortunately it doesn't quite hang together as a complete listening experience.

Toad frontman Glen Phillips' 2005 album Winter Pays for Summer, however, doesn't have that problem. It's packed from beginning to end with gentle melodies, strong harmonies, and worn-in nuggets of wisdom.

P.M. Dawn: Jesus Wept (1995)

Read a review here.

P.M Dawn had a lot of success with their hip-hop/R & B/pop hybrid on their first two albums, and that gave them the captial to follow their muse on Jesus Wept. So Prince Be went into singer-songwriter mode. Having already abandoned any pretense of being "rappers" in favor of harmony and melody on their previous record, this album finds them mixing in live instrumentation (most prominently Cameron Greider's electric guitar) with their sampling. Lyrically, Prince Be goes into full-on navel gazing mode, mostly contemplating human divinity and his place in the universe.

The combination of being musically non-categorizable and lyrically portentous ensured the album's commercial failure, but artistically it's a complete success. It moves the head, heart, and ass, and serves as a fascinating document of the right way to use your carte blanche.

Prince: Purple Rain (1984)

Read about it here.

Entertainment Weekly's July 2013 Top 100 Albums of All-Time put this at number 2. Now I give fuck-all about those lists as anything definitive, but the magazine did not overrate this album. It might just be the most perfect album ever. Great singles ("When Doves Cry," "Let's Go Crazy," "I Would Die 4 U," the title track), a weird-ass accompanying film, and no filler. A studio album with no filler is largely a mythological artifact, but Purple Rain is one of the rare exceptions. Some people point to the strange "Computer Blue" as counterpoint, but the amazingly pretty guitar solo at the end of it makes its case convincingly

.

Prince: Dirty Mind (1980)

Prince's keyboard-driven new wave album is one of his best, comprised of the ideal balance of singles ("Uptown," "When You Were Mine," and the title track) and unforgettable album tracks (including "Gotta Broken Heart Again," "Head," and "Partyup."). And at just over 30 minutes long, it's pretty much the ideal length for an album.

Prince: The Gold Experience (1995)

A sleeper in the vast Prince catalog, The Gold Experience actually sums up his odd appeal in 12 energetic tunes. It covers everything from civil rights (We March), petty grudges (Billy Jack Bitch), feminism (P Control), sex (Shhh), gangsta love (Shy), Al Green (The Most Beautiful Girl in the World), and being reincarnated as a water-dwelling mammal (Dolphin).

John Lennon: The John Lennon Collection (1982)

Compilations are rarely as well-curated as this one. It's chronological (mostly; the CD has a couple of out-of order bonus tracks at the end) and the tracks are expertly chosen.

A good "best-of" should both serve as an introductory overview of an artist AND cover every base for the listener whose not going to go deeper. By those measures The John Lennon Collection is perfect. There's not a single significant Lennon solo track missing.

R.E.M.: Automatic For The People (1992)

A beautiful, perfectly sequenced, haunting record by a band at the height of their powers. One tends to think of it as a ponderous and melancholy affair, mostly thanks to the powerful quartet of Everybody Hurts, Sweetness Follows, Nightswimming, and Find the River, but the album has lots of dimensions, from the political (Ignoreland) to the light-hearted (The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight) to the biographical (Man on the Moon) to the ill-fated romantic (Star Me Kitten).

R.E.M.: New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996)

The final album featuring the original line-up (drummer Bill Berry left after the recording), New Adventures in Hi-Fi represents a melding of musical sensibilities that came before. To be pithy and reductive, it's the songcraft of Automatic for the People delivered with the muscle of Monster. But as with all of my favorite albums it comes down to sustained mood, immaculate sequencing, and killer tunes. My favorites include The Wake-Up Bomb, Leave, Bittersweet Me, and Electrolite, but, truly, they're all great.

REO Speedwagon: The Hits

REO Speedwagon got their start in Champaign, Illinois, just a short 45 minutes from where I grew up. I'm convinced that this local connection got them more than the usual amount of radio play. So when I bought The Hits my freshman year of college, I already pretty much knew every song by heart. It doesn't follow my preferred rules of compilations, and in fact openly flaunts them. It opens not with one but TWO "new" songs (thankfully both are pretty great), and then proceeds through a non-chronological smattering of tunes. It's also not comprehensive by any means. Even so, I'll probably always expect to hear these songs in this order.

Roxy Music: Avlaon (1982)

I once saw a quote where lead singer Bryan Ferry admitted that he and the band were on copious amounts of drugs when Avalon was recorded. Not surprising. I've never done heavy drugs, but I'd like to think this album is what it'd be like: Dreamy, hazy, fantastic.

The cover features an armor-clad warrior and his hawk looking out over a vast body of water, with the clouds reflecting in it. It seems like a lost scene from an early Ridley Scott movie, and it fits the music perfectly. From the amazing "More Than This" to dreamy instrumentals like "India" and "Tara," there's a sustained otherworldly quality to the album.

Rush: Moving Pictures (1981)

This is the record where Rush put it all together, a tight seven-song set that features a perennial radio favorite (Tom Sawyer), a sci-fi short story (Red Barchetta), a blazing instrumental (YYZ), a level-headed examination of fame (Limelight), an 11-minute epic (The Camera Eye), a prescient condemnation of the Fox News mindset (Witch Hunt), and a reggae experiment (Vital Signs).

(I downloaded the entire album on Rock Band and get great joy out of playing it all the way through).

Simon and Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

A couple of weird things about this amazing album:

1) It was the final Simon and Garfunkel album. You just don't often see a group have massive success (it's their best-selling album by far) and then immediately hang it up, but Bridge Over Troubled Water was still on the charts when Paul and Art decided to call it quits (it stayed there for the following two years, as well).

2) By all accounts it was an extremely involved and complicated recording process. Being that the results are so beautiful and perfectly formed and seemingly straightforward, it's strange to think there was actually a process behind making these songs, let alone a contentious one. It seems as though songs like the title track, The Boxer, and The Only Living Boy In New York always existed, fully formed.

Paul Simon: Hearts And Bones (1984)

Read a full review here.

In the grand tradition of singer-songwriter divorce albums comes Hearts And Bones. Being a divorce album the theme is, of course, heartbreak and loss. In Allergies Simon likens falling in love to an allergic reaction. When Numbers Get Serious, Song About The Moon, and Cars Are Cars are all bouncy tunes that stretch metaphorically. They are respectively about divorce settlements, writing about your pain, and wishing for simplicity. Train In The Distance is a grass-is-always-greener rumination on Simon's first marriage. Finally, Hearts And Bones sums up Simon's marriage to Princess Leia, wherein the couple falls in love, runs into trouble, then splits to "speculate who had been damaged the most." It's the kind of story song Simon excels at. In fact, he spends this entire unappreciated album excelling.

Sloan: The Double Cross (2011)

Quick and precise, Sloan's 10th album is also their most cohesive. All four band members write and sing, but their songs blend together into a perfect 12-song-suite. My favorite moment is on "Shadow of Love" when each band member takes turns singing the title line ("Living in the shadow of love / Is all some people can do") before joining together in four part harmony. It's a rare kind of chemistry that serves as a microcosm for the whole record.

Sloan: Never Hear the End of It (2007)

Read about it here.

Never Hear the End Of It is a basically survey of everything Sloan does well, with a 30 song sandbox for the band's four songwriters to play in.

But what really brings this to greatness for me is the sequencing, both in the fact that there are no gaps between the tracks and in the way the songs seem to speak to one another.

Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream (1993)

When I first bought this record (in high school) it sounded completely alien to my ear, and I was scandalized by the fact that there was actually a song called Silverfuck. So it took awhile to get through to me, but once it clicked I couldn't imagine anything more powerful or beautiful.

This is a record that I love so much I bought it again when they re-released it with expanded liner notes. Liner notes! And barely comprehensible ones at that. That's the thing about your favorite records; you'll look for any excuse to buy them again, and even when you see them at the store, you just have to pause for a second.

Using the quiet loud dynamic to great advantage, this album features songs that straight-out rock, like Rocket and Geek U.S.A., and songs that are more introspective and quiet, like Quiet and Mayonnaise. The album is profane, sacred, alien, and all about love, appropriately enough.