An industry that sells change, and calls it taste.
Scary Monsters… and Super Creeps is Bowie’s most controlled record: hard-edged, lyrically unsparing, sonically precise. It uses the Berlin Trilogy’s tools — fragmentation, repetition, synthetic texture — but abandons their distance. It lands because it refuses to cushion its blows.
Glassworks is a six-movement chamber work Philip Glass wrote for the recording studio after his large concert and stage pieces, released by CBS in 1982 on LP and on cassette, each with its own mix. It was meant to bring his music to a wider audience, and it did: the album sold well and made his name widely known.
20 Golden Greats was first issued in Britain in 1978, collecting recordings associated with Buddy Holly and the Crickets from 1956–58. It also circulated as Buddy Holly Lives. The release date belongs to the retrospective, not to a newly assembled performing group.
Released in 2008, 808s & Heartbreak followed the death of Kanye West's mother and the end of his engagement. His fourth studio album shifts much of its emphasis from rapping to singing. That change makes the handling of the voice the central question of the record.
Faces' third album was their second release of 1971. Glyn Johns shared production duties, helping shape a programme shorter and more concentrated than its predecessors. Rod Stewart's growing solo profile is part of the context, but Ronnie Lane's three lead vocals make the group's broader identity essential.