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.

Miriam Makeba · 1967 Spin it Again - She sang joy in America while her country burned, and made it sound like the only reasonable response.

The Beach Boys · 1966 (Released 2011) Spin it Again - The album that never was, finished forty-five years later—a document of ambition meeting commercial reality, and almost winning.

Prince · 1985 Spin it Again - He made Purple Rain a year earlier and could have done anything; instead he locked himself in the studio and made something genuinely strange.

The Beatles · 1968 Spin it Again - They recorded it while falling apart, and you can hear every argument in the mix.

Mariah Carey · 1995 Spin it Again - She'd already won five Grammys off one album; this time she decided to actually become the voice everyone claimed she was.

The Mamas & the Papas · 1966 Spin it Again - Lou Adler made them sound like they'd rehearsed in a cathedral and learned from Broadway, and somehow it became the year's biggest record.

The Beatles · 1965 Spin it Again - By the time Rubber Soul closed, the screaming had stopped mattering, and what they were actually writing about began to matter instead.

Anna Jantar · 1989

Kayah · 1990 Spin it Again - Poland's debut electronic pop record, and it sounds like no one told them it was supposed to be rough around the edges.

Kayah · 1988

George Michael · 1987 Spin it Again - A twenty-four-year-old made this alone in a studio, played every instrument, and somehow wrote songs so guarded they felt like secrets even when twenty-five million people were listening.

Diana Krall · 2001

Mariah Carey · 1991 Spin it Again - She made the debut at twenty-two and everyone thought that was the story. Emotions is what happens when she stops performing her own voice and starts directing it.

Janet Jackson · 1989 Spin it Again - Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis built Janet Jackson a machine that sounded exactly like 1989 but could have been made for any year.

Michael Jackson · 1991 Spin it Again - Jackson was already untouchable by 1991—so he made an album that wouldn't soothe anyone, wouldn't settle into a groove, and proved that pop mastery meant making something that still sounds restless three decades later.

Haircut 100 · 1981 Spin it Again - A band with one chance to make the record right, working with an engineer who understood that layering four instruments doesn't muddy a song if you know where to place each one.

Juice Newton · 1981 Spin it Again - Rod Argent produced this like he understood that Juice Newton's restraint was the whole point.