Hearts and Bones
Artist: Paul Simon
Community Score: 10.00

Hearts and Bones was a commercial disaster, the lowest-charting new studio album of Paul Simon's career. It is also his most personal collection of songs, one of his most ambitious, and one of his best. It retains a personal vision, one largely devoted to the challenges of middle-aged life, among them a renewed commitment to love; the title song... Read More

Empty Glass
Artist: Pete Townshend
Community Score: 9.50

Pete Townshend was heading toward collapse as the '70s turned into the '80s. He had battled a number of personal demons throughout the '70s, but he started spiraling downward after Keith Moon's death, questioning more than ever why he did what he did (and this is a songwriter who always asked questions). Signs of that crept out on Face Dances,... Read More

All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes
Artist: Pete Townshend
Community Score: 8.25

If Empty Glass, an album filled with songs that could have been performed by the Who, was a solo album because it was too revealing and personal, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes was a solo record since it's impossible to hear anyone but Townshend wanting to indulge in this deliberately arty, awkwardly poetic bullsh*t. Where his other... Read More

Scoop
Artist: Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend's demos had grown legendary among Who collectors well before the official release of the double-album Scoop in 1983. On each demo, Townshend worked out full arrangements, which the Who would often follow exactly. He also recorded a wealth of songs and instrumental pieces that never made it to record. Over the course of two albums,... Read More

Night and Day
Artist: Joe Jackson
Community Score: 9.55

1982 will forever be known as the year that the punks got class -- or at least when Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello, rivals for the title of Britain's reigning Angry Young Man -- decided that they were not just rockers, but really songwriters in the Tin Pan Alley tradition. (Graham Parker, fellow angry Brit, sat this battle out, choosing to work... Read More

John Lennon Box Set - PARLOPHONE
Artist: John Lennon & Yoko Ono

This is a nine-LP boxed set containing the albums Live Peace In Toronto 1969, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, Sometime In New York City, Mind Games, Walls and Bridges, Rock 'N' Roll, and Shaved Fish in their entirety. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read More

Watch Dog
Artist: Jules Shear

His first solo album following the breakup of the Polar Bears, Watch Dog, features a new-found maturity in songwriting with an eclectic mix of styles from ultra-smooth pop to R&B-inflected rockers. Shear sounds much more comfortable on his own, even under Todd Rundgren's heavy-handed production. Highlights includes "All Through the Night" (a hit... Read More

The John Lennon Collection
Artist: John Lennon
Community Score: 8.60

This 15-song collection (expanded to 19 in 1989 for the CD), released just short of two years after Lennon's death, provided a very generous overview of his solo career on a single LP, drawing on most of the major singles and also on songs that were widely covered, and from all periods of his career, from his late-Beatles-era solo political... Read More