ABBA · 1981 Spin it Again - They wrote about divorce while the world held its breath — and made it sound like a night drive through a snowstorm.

Yellow Magic Orchestra · 1978 Spin it Again - A Japanese answer to Kraftwerk that accidentally created an entire genre.

Kraftwerk · 1978 Spin it Again - Every synth on this record sounds like it was tuned with a ruler and a calculator.

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.

Prince · 1982 Spin it Again - He recorded it alone in a basement in Minnesota and somehow made it sound like the future was starting right there.

Duran Duran · 1982 Spin it Again - Colin Thurston's production and John Taylor's bass lines proved that 1982's pop didn't have to be disposable.

Spandau Ballet · 1983 Spin it Again - They spent two years in four different studios to understand how to be the thing they sounded like they wanted to be. This is where they figured it out.

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.

Mitski · 2022 Spin it Again - Four years of near-retirement produced an album about performing okayness until the performance becomes the only thing left.

Japanese Breakfast · 2021 Spin it Again - Three albums in, Michelle Zauner stopped writing about grief and started writing about wanting things — turns out that's harder, and she's better at it.

Susanne Sundfør · 2015 Spin it Again - The record Sundfør made before everyone found her — colder, stranger, and more honest about what she was reaching for.

The Human League · 1982 Spin it Again - A remix album that has no right being this good — Rushent went back into the Dare tapes and found rooms no one knew were there.

Depeche Mode · 1981 Spin it Again - The principal songwriter left before the second album, and somehow that's when Depeche Mode actually started.

Eurogliders · 1984 Spin it Again - Grace Knight sang jazz standards later in life, and once you hear this record properly you understand exactly why that was always inevitable.

Kate Bush · 1985 Spin it Again - Side two is a drowning woman surviving the night, and she produced every second of it herself in 1985.

Duran Duran · 1981 Spin it Again - Colin Thurston had just come off Bowie's Berlin trilogy and then produced this — which tells you it was never just a pretty-boy record.

Scritti Politti · 1985 Spin it Again - Green Gartside spent years in a Welsh breakdown, then came back and made the most philosophically loaded pop record of 1985 — with Marcus Miller on bass.

The Human League · 1981 Spin it Again - Martin Rushent almost left 'Don't You Want Me' off the album entirely.

Bronski Beat · 1996 Spin it Again - The one Bronski Beat album nobody talks about is quietly doing more interesting things than the one everybody talks about.

Kraftwerk · 1977 Spin it Again - Four Germans in suits built the skeleton that every DJ, hip-hop producer, and synth band has been draping flesh on ever since, and most of them still haven't caught up.