Sourced and spun.
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Franz Ferdinand
The band said they wanted to make records girls could dance to, and rehearsed in a derelict Glasgow warehouse they had taken over.
1928 Sessions
Hurt cut these, sold almost nothing, and went back to farming. A folklorist found him thirty-five years later using a lyric as an address.
Elvis
His second number one album in a single year, cut in Hollywood between films, with Elvis himself at the piano on several tracks.
Masses
Byrd was a Catholic in Protestant England, and wrote these to be sung in secret at private houses. They were printed without title pages.
West Side Soul
Sam played through a tremolo unit that puts a shiver on every chord, and he sang in a high, urgent voice most bluesmen avoided.
The Bluegrass Sessions
Fleck plays banjo in styles bluegrass had no name for, surrounded by the best acoustic players alive, none of whom show off.
Missa Pange lingua
Josquin takes a plainchant hymn and dissolves it into four voices that imitate each other continuously, so the tune is everywhere and nowhere.
Leader of the Pack
Their producer Shadow Morton put real motorcycle engines and seagulls on the records, and the singers were teenagers from Queens acting out small tragedies.
Live Bullet
Seger had been playing for ten years with no national hit when this was taped over two nights at Cobo Hall in Detroit.
Ice Pickin'
Collins tuned his guitar to a minor chord and moved a capo around it, which no one else did, and it accounts for the sound.
Concert by the Sea
Garner could not read music, and the tape came from an amateur recorder someone happened to be running at the back of the hall.
Close to You
Karen Carpenter was the drummer, and sang from behind the kit until someone persuaded her to come out in front of it.
Alive!
It is billed as a live album but a good deal of it was rebuilt in the studio afterward. It saved the record label from bankruptcy.
After Midnight
By 1956 Cole was a pop star who rarely played piano. Here he sits back down at it, with a small group, after hours.
Modern Vampires of the City
Rostam Batmanglij pitched the vocals up and down until they sound like other people, which is why the record keeps slipping out of focus.
Live Wire Blues Power
Recorded at the Fillmore in front of a rock crowd who had mostly never heard him, which is why he explains the blues between songs.
Aha Shake Heartbreak
Three brothers and a cousin, raised on a Pentecostal preaching circuit, playing scrappy Southern garage rock. Britain loved it years before America noticed.
Stand By Your Man
She and her producer wrote the title song in about fifteen minutes, and she spent the rest of her life explaining what it meant.
Uptown Saturday Night
Named after a 1974 Sidney Poitier film. Luchini is built on a Dynasty record, and the pair's slang was obscure enough that listeners traded translations.