Popular Music CDs for Adults
Hundreds of CDs are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Music CDs for adults.
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Trustfall
Bouncing back after the relative stumbles of her late-2010s efforts, P!nk recaptures her spirit and voice on the cathartic Trustfall. Her ninth studio effort overall, the set is a motivational therapy session that hinges on themes of change, self-acceptance, loss, and love, reminding listeners (and herself) that everything will be OK if there's faith in the face of fear and the unknown. Buoyed by this spiritually liberated energy, P!nk pushes her vocals to higher highs with shiver-inducing results, backed by some of the most thoughtful messages in her catalog. As with past releases, she blends sentimental moments of introspection with grand pop highs, tugging the heartstrings one minute and inspiring physical release the next. Dancing and singing through tough times, P!nk delivers the album's gospel message on the pulsing title track, a synth-washed, Robyn-esque pop sparkler where she implores, "Picture a place where it all doesn't hurt/Where everything's safe and it doesn't get worse." The equally uplifting Max Martin/Shellback entry "Never Gonna Not Dance Again" is one of those euphoric singalong crowd-pleasers that is custom-built for an eternity at school dances and weddings, while the fast-paced, '80s synth blast "Runaway" pushes the urgency to the fore and the rollicking "Hate Me" jolts the album to life with a punk-rocking gang chorus, sinister riffs, and abrasive percussion. These more immediate earworms are scattered throughout to appease anyone looking for a radio-ready hit, but they cede the bulk of the album to more reflective fare that provides a different kind of spiritual nourishment. On the wistful "When I Get There," she mourns her late father with tender vulnerability atop contemplative piano and string backing, while the pensive "Lost Cause" boosts the same piano/strings approach with dramatic choral harmonies. The Lumineers, First Aid Kit, and Chris Stapleton make appearances across a trio of folk- and country-tinged tracks, but the spotlight shines brightest whenever P!nk is at the fore. Additional midtempo standouts include the stunning "Last Call," which laughs the pain away atop bittersweet twang and a swelling chorus, and the stirring piano ballad "Our Song," which packs a powerful gut-punch with a show-stopping vocal performance destined to bring the house down. In the end, Trustfall leans firmly on these powerful moments of personal growth, sidestepping P!nk's sometimes headstrong brattiness in favor of a confident defiance that speaks to triumph and maturity in a way that she hasn't done before. ~ Neil Z. Yeung (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Playing the piano: Out of noise
In 2009, Universal International released Ryuichi Sakamoto's Playing the Piano, a collection of solo piano pieces he calls “self-covers”; that is, a newly recorded collection of his own compositons and themes performed solo. The set contains 12 selections. They are mostly themes from the films The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and The Sheltering Sky, with cues from others including "Bolerish," from Brian DePalma's 2002 film Femme Fatale. For the most part, it is a spare and lovely beauty of an album, with few surpises save for the elegance that Sakamoto performs these indelible pieces with. In 2010, Decca Records in the U.S. re-relased this album as a deluxe edition with a new one entitled Out of Noise, recorded during 2009. It, too, contains a dozen selections, all but one composed and recorded the year of release. This disc is the real surpise in the specially packaged and priced set. It concerns itself where music fades and enters into noise, and the no man's land where noise sorts itself out into a system recognized as music. Unlike Playing the Piano, Out of Noise is a more challenging, yet more compelling listen. While it begins with the poetic, atmospheric solo piano piece "Hibari," as a coda to Disc 1, it quickly launches into "Hwit" and "Still Life," both recorded with the U.K.-based viol ensemble Fretwork. The ambient "In the Red," with field-recorded voice samples, features guitarist Christian Fennesz. In 2008, Sakamoto participated in the Cape Farewell Disko Bay Expedition to study and observe climate change; there he visited Greenland's fastest moving glacier. Three of the pieces here -- "Disko," "Ice," and "Glacier" -- reflect the place where Sakamoto claims he left part of his soul. In them, the sounds of the glaicer and the surrounding landscape were recorded, then treated in the studio and added to by other musicians, including guitarist Keigo Oyamada, vocalist Karen H. Filskov, and Skúlli Sverrisson, who plays dobro on the final one of these. "To Standford" is a solo jazz piano piece, or rather has inside its grain, the beauty and ternderness of great jazz pianists from Bill Evans to Errol Garner to Kenny Drew. Ultimately, it's Out of Noise that makes the entire package worth buying for the first time, or purchasing Playing the Piano again. Despite revealing already known dimensions of Sakamoto's musical persona, it also uncovers new ones. ~ Thom Jurek (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Songbook
Gordon Lightfoot is a legendary singer-songwriter with fifteen Juno Award wins and five Grammy Award nominations to his credit. Along with his classic hits, like Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, this four disc set features previously unreleased material. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Simply the Best
Simply the Best is surrounded by some of the best situations a compilation can hope for. Tina Turner's work for Capitol past Private Dancer was spotty, she made a bunch of appearances on soundtracks and other artists' albums, and most of the tracks on Private Dancer are good enough to own twice. Almost half of Private Dancer shows up on Simply the Best, but you don't have to endure the way the original album spiraled down into slick fizzle. Instead you have to endure a misguided, pumped-up house remix of "Nutbush City Limits," but that's it. Everything else here is either top-notch or campy, certifiable fun. A duet with Rod Stewart on "It Takes Two" supplies the fun along with the new track, "I Want You Near Me" (Turner to lover: "You're so good with your hands/To help me with a hook or zip"). The two other new tracks tacked to the end beat out most of the album cuts the collection passes on, plus you get the bombastic "We Don't Need Another Hero (Thunderdome)" without having to buy a dull soundtrack. The oldest cut by years is the monolithic "River Deep-Mountain High," which is a bona fide classic but sonically out of place here. Reprogram the disc to play it at the beginning or end, skip the new "Nutbush" completely, and you've got sparkling, nearly perfect overview of Turner's postcomeback career. ~ David Jeffries (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Radical Romantics
"Wish me courage, strength, and a sense of humor," Karin Dreijer sings on Radical Romantics, but that's not necessary -- their third Fever Ray album shows they have these virtues in abundance as they love on their own terms and even dare to have fun with it. Musically, Radical Romantics may not be quite as revolutionary as its predecessor Plunge, but the way Dreijer strips away anything that gets in the way of expressing love, lust, and need still feels adventurous. Indeed, the album's joyous neon heart offers some of Dreijer's most radiant music since the Knife's "Heartbeats." It's no coincidence that they reunited with their brother and former bandmate, Olof Dreijer, who helped Karin build a studio in Stockholm to create this "love album" and co-produced several of its finest tracks. On "Kandy," the duo streamlines the lilting, tropical tones and tumbling beats fundamental to the Knife's music to their barest essences, pulling listeners in with an alluring mix of longing and seduction. They sound even bolder on "Shiver"'s queer eroticism, letting streaking synths and flowing beats provide a supple backbone as Dreijer whoops and draws out the word "shiver" into an eloquent phrase of its own. Radical Romantics is a homecoming of sorts, but it also finds Fever Ray casting a wide creative net. They team with Vessel on "Carbon Dioxide," an ecstatic journey towards true love that traverses classical, disco, and rave while Dreijer follows their heart wherever it takes them, while Plunge collaborator Nídia heightens the airy, searching sweetness of "Looking for a Ghost." These dazzlingly light and bright songs make Radical Romantics' darker moments that much deeper. With its shuddering beat and looming synths, "What They Call Us" is quintessential Fever Ray, echoing "If I Had a Heart" in its despair and slow-building tension (it's also one of the few times Dreijer pitches down their vocals on the album, emphasizing the weary weight it brings to their music). When Dreijer ventures further into love's shadow side, the results are striking. Dedicated to the bully of one of their children, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross collaboration "Even It Out" captures the feral protectiveness of parental love -- something rarely expressed in pop music -- in its fierce, brassy stomp. Conversely, "Tapping Fingers" distills the profound loneliness of contemplating mortality next to a sleeping partner with its cavernous tones. Despite these dramatic highs and lows, Dreijer often seems more relaxed and more forthcoming on Radical Romantics than on Fever Ray's previous albums. Fans may have anticipated another epic like Plunge, but the more approachable, more personal choices Dreijer makes here are often just as risky and just as rewarding. ~ Heather Phares (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-hop and Rap
This collection includes 129 tracks on 9 CDs and a book with original design by Cey Adams, artist and founding creative director of Def Jam Recordings, as well as essays by some of hip-hop's leading writers and critics and hundreds of photographs spanning decades of history. Through the music, writing, and extensive liner notes, the Anthology reveals the many trends within this multifaceted genre, its social and political implications, and its influence on popular culture.
Format: Music CD
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The Songs of Bacharach & Costello
The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, compiled by Elvis Costello, brings together all of the published songs that Costello has written with Burt Bacharach and celebrates the three decade songwriting partnership between them. The 2CD set features the newly remastered album, Painted From Memory (1998), on CD1, while CD2 features the entirety of Taken From Life, including unreleased songs from the proposed "Painted From Memory" musical score and three newly recorded compositions.
Format: Music CD
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Now That's What I Call Proud
Format: Music CD
Availability: On order
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Amnesiac
Features songs that were recorded during the sessions for Kid A, which gives the album the same experimental sound and feel. The album includes the tracks Knives Out; Pyramid Song; I Might Be Wrong; and more. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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