Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
Artist: Jimmy Buffett
Community Score: 8.50

Buffett's biggest-selling regular release contains his biggest hit single, "Margaritaville." It's also a peak in terms of songwriting, both for the artist himself and in his covers of the work of Steve Goodman and Jesse Winchester, among others. Funny, wistful, and celebratory, the album is the definitive statement of Buffett's worldview. ~... Read More

El Mirage
Artist: Jimmy Webb

Jimmy Webb, best known as a songwriter ("MacArthur Park," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"), recorded three albums for Reprise Records between 1970 and 1972, and a fourth for Asylum in 1974, without commercial impact, before subsiding into the background work of writing, producing, and arranging for other artists. But he came back to the forefront... Read More

Terence Boylan
Artist: Terence Boylan

On his eponymous debut for Asylum, Terence Boylan gave the label everything it could possibly have wanted from one of its artists in 1977: confessional singer-songwriter ballads, slick Steely Dan-style L.A. jazz-pop, Eagle harmonies, and a bevy of L.A. session heavyweights. Boylan doesn't really offer anything particularly new here, but he is... Read More

Still Crazy After All These Years
Artist: Paul Simon
Community Score: 7.34

The third new studio album of Paul Simon's post-Simon & Garfunkel career was a musical and lyrical change of pace from his first two, Paul Simon and There Goes Rhymin' Simon. Where Simon had taken an eclectic approach before, delving into a variety of musical styles and recording all over the world, Still Crazy found him working for the most... Read More

The Best of Leon Russell - DCC/SHELTER
Artist: Leon Russell

Pianist/composer/arranger Leon Russell has a resumé that would be the envy of most musicians: as an L.A. session player, he's recorded and toured with Jerry Lee Lewis, the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Glen Campbell, and Bob Dylan, among many others. In addition, Russell came through the ranks of Phil Spector's... Read More

Nilsson Schmilsson
Artist: Harry Nilsson
Community Score: 9.00

Nilsson had a hit, a Grammy, and critical success, yet he still didn't have a genuine blockbuster to his name when it came time to finally deliver a full-fledged follow-up to Nilsson Sings Newman, so he decided it was time to make that unabashed, mainstream pop/rock album. Hiring Streisand's producer Richard Perry as a collaborator, Nilsson made... Read More

Shaved Fish
Artist: John Lennon
Community Score: 5.00

At the time of its release, Shaved Fish didn't attract as much attention as any compilation of John Lennon's work would have either a few years before or a few years after. Lennon had just issued the somewhat disappointing genre album, Rock 'n' Roll, and was only a year from Walls and Bridges, not one of his strongest albums, and had also grown... Read More

The Stranger
Artist: Billy Joel
Community Score: 9.60

Billy Joel teamed with Phil Ramone, a famed engineer who had just scored his first producing hits with Art Garfunkel's Breakaway and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years for The Stranger, his follow-up to Turnstiles. Joel still favored big, sweeping melodies, but Ramone convinced him to streamline his arrangements and clean up the... Read More

Turnstiles
Artist: Billy Joel
Community Score: 10.00

There's a reason Turnstiles begins with the Spector-esque epic "Say Goodbye to Hollywood." Shortly after Streetlife Serenade, Joel ditched California -- and, by implication, sensitive Californian soft rock from sensitive singer/songwriters -- for his hometown of New York. "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" was a celebration of his move, a repudiation of... Read More

52nd Street
Artist: Billy Joel
Community Score: 7.86

Once The Stranger became a hit, Billy Joel quickly re-entered the studio with producer Phil Ramone to record the follow-up, 52nd Street. Instead of breaking from the sound of The Stranger, Joel chose to expand it, making it more sophisticated and somewhat jazzy. Often, his moves sounded as if they were responses to Steely Dan -- indeed, his... Read More

Jackrabbit Slim
Artist: Steve Forbert

Although Jackrabbit Slim was Steve Forbert's best-selling album, containing his only Top 40 hit, "Romeo's Tune," and his only other chart single, "Say Goodbye to Little Jo," it took Nemperor (formerly part of CBS, now part of Sony) 17 years to put it out on CD (on September 3, 1996). It sounds as good as it did before, thanks both to Forbert's... Read More

Alive on Arrival
Artist: Steve Forbert

Steve Forbert's youthful features and boyish voice certainly become misleading once his lyrics are heard. His folk-rock styled songs are usually centered around life's ups and downs and the problems of adulthood, portraying him as an artist who's just trying to get by. Alive on Arrival is an album full of earnest tunes about loneliness,... Read More

CSN
Artist: Crosby, Stills & Nash
Community Score: 10.00

The times had certainly changed since Déjà Vu's release in 1970. Nevertheless, there was a hunger in audiences for a return to the harmony-soaked idealism with which the trio had been catapulted to popularity, and CSN consequently reached number two on the charts, behind Fleetwood Mac's megasuccessful Rumours. The music here is very good, though... Read More

Leon Russell and the Shelter People
Artist: Leon Russell

Leon Russell's accolades are monumental in a number of categories, from songwriting (he wrote Joe Cocker's "Delta Lady") to session playing (with the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, just to name a few) to his solo work. Unfortunately, it's the last category that never really attracted as much attention as it should have, despite a multitude of... Read More