The Robert Cray Band · 1983 Spin it Again - Robert Cray proved that blues could be young and urgent again without pretending the 60s never happened.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers · 1982 Spin it Again - A bar band that never left the bar — and made an album that proves staying put was the right call.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble · 1984 Spin it Again - Nine minutes of 'Couldn't Stand the Weather' contains more guitar ideas than most guitarists have in a career.

Stevie Ray Vaughan · 1983 Spin it Again - Stevie Ray Vaughan walked into a studio with nothing to prove and left with a guitar tone that still knocks drywall off its rails.

Prince · 1988 Spin it Again - Prince, fresh off scrapping the Black Album, went in the opposite direction and made his most optimistic record.

Janet Jackson · 1986 Spin it Again - She fired her father, hired two guys Prince just fired, and made one of the definitive pop albums of the 1980s.

Prince · 1987 Spin it Again - This is the album that should have been his *Thriller* — the one where the radio hits and the deep cuts are equally unhinged, and the air between the instruments matters as much as the notes.

Echo & the Bunnymen · 1980 Spin it Again - Recorded in six days with a producer who had never made a record — it still sounds timeless.

R.E.M. · 1984 Spin it Again - Recorded in two weeks with no compression, it's the sound of a band figuring out pop songs without losing the static.

The Chameleons · 1983 Spin it Again - Four men in a cold room in Rochdale made the bass sound like the floor was falling away. That is enough.

R.E.M. · 1983 Spin it Again - Peter Buck's Rickenbacker jangles through a fog of reverb, Mike Mills's bass rumbles like a train in the next county, and Michael Stipe sings about—well, nobody really knows.

Pat Metheny Group · 1982 Spin it Again - This proves that even ECM’s pristine jazz could rock a Roland GR-300 without losing its chill.

Pat Metheny Group · 1980 Spin it Again - Four guys in a room, no safety net, and Jan Erik Kongshaug miking the drums like it's a garage band — which it basically was.

John Mellencamp · 1982 Spin it Again - He changed his name back and made an album that still sounds like a midwestern summer night. Heartland rock with its sleeves rolled up and no apologies.

Roxy Music · 1982 Spin it Again - Bryan Ferry took the band to the Caribbean to make a record that sounds like a lifetime of nights in one hour.

Dire Straits · 1982 Spin it Again - Mark Knopfler went to Montserrat and made a record that sounds like a novel you don't want to finish.

Fushitsusha · 1989 Spin it Again - Keiji Haino's debut is a document of a man trying to pull the sound out of his amplifier with his bare hands.

Keiji Haino · 1981 Spin it Again - Haino recorded this alone in his apartment, and you can hear the walls sweat.

Keiji Haino · 1988 Spin it Again - Keiji Haino's 1988 solo set strips guitar to its elemental scream: microtonal bends, feedback, and vocal wails recorded in a single night with no overdubs and no safety net.

Kraftwerk · 1981 Spin it Again - Four German men in neckties singing about pocket calculators, and somehow it's still the most prescient electronic album ever made.