Gregory Abbott · 1986 Spin it Again - Harvard degree, one number one, and a bassline so patient it practically raises an eyebrow at you.

Brian Eno · 1978/1983 Spin it Again - Brian Eno built a record out of tape loops and Conny Plank's farmhouse ceilings, and somehow it sounds like the inside of your head at 2am.

Wham! · 1984 Spin it Again - Every song on here was built by a twenty-one-year-old who understood the architecture of longing better than almost anyone working at the time.

Eighth Wonder · 1988 Spin it Again - The number seven single that should have been a number one, from a year when the machinery was working perfectly and nobody quite noticed.

Eighth Wonder · 1989 Spin it Again - Pet Shop Boys produced the best track, nobody gave Patsy Kensit credit for the performance, and this record has been sitting in your collection doing nothing about it.

Anita Baker · 1986 Spin it Again - Anita Baker made this after escaping a bad label deal, and you can hear the relief in every unhurried note.

Vicki Brown · 1985 Spin it Again - She spent twenty years being the best voice in someone else's room, and they only let her make one record of her own.

Vicki Brown · 1987 Spin it Again - She spent twenty years making other people's records sound better, then made one of her own, and almost nobody noticed.

Lionel Richie · 1983 Spin it Again - Eighty million dollars in sales later, critics still can't figure out why this one hurts.

Anita Baker · 1986 Spin it Again - Nathan East on bass, Ricky Lawson on drums, and a singer who never once oversells it — this is what sophisticated looked like before that word got ruined.

Tears for Fears · 1983 Spin it Again - They were twenty years old, they had read the primal therapy guy, and somehow that produced one of the coldest-sounding warm records the eighties ever made.

Soft Cell · 1981 Spin it Again - They recorded this in a hurry on a budget that showed, and somehow that's why it still sounds dangerous.

Belouis Some · 1985 Spin it Again - The record you bought for one single and never actually played.

U2 · 1987 Spin it Again - Bono was writing about America from Ireland, and that distance is what made it hurt.

Babyface · 1989 Spin it Again - Babyface turned down the lights, turned down the volume, and somehow turned up everything that matters.

Cyndi Lauper · 1983 Spin it Again - Thirty years old, one failed band behind her, and she walked into Media Sound and made every song sound like she'd lived it twice.

Madonna · 1984 Spin it Again - Nile Rodgers came in off Bowie's 'Let's Dance' and his rhythm guitar on the title track is doing more work than most people have ever noticed.

Tina Turner · 1984 Spin it Again - Mark Knopfler wrote the title track for Dire Straits, passed on it, then played guitar while Tina Turner turned it into something neither of them could have made alone.

Half Japanese · 1981 Spin it Again - Two brothers from Ohio who didn't know how to play guitar made something more honest than most people who did.

Half Japanese · 1980 Spin it Again - The lo-fi kids of the nineties all owe a debt here, and none of them paid it back in full.