Leonard Cohen · 1967 · The voice you either fall into or never understand — but the writing is beyond question.

Gil Scott-Heron · 1971 · Bernard Purdie, Ron Carter, and a man who refused to sing.

Odetta · 1960 · She married the American folk tradition and made a live album that still dares you to breathe.

Bob Dylan · 1963 · He was 21, wearing a corduroy cap, and about to spend the rest of the century answering for the songs he wrote in one winter.

Judy Collins · 1961 · Judy Collins before she was anybody. Just a voice, a guitar, and songs that had been around for centuries.

Sandy Denny · 1971 · She had already written 'Who Knows Where the Time Goes' and was the only guest vocalist on Led Zeppelin's 'The Battle of Evermore'. This album is quieter and stranger than all of that.

Laura Nyro · 1969 · She married the grit of New York to the ache of gospel and called it a tendaberry.

Rachel Grimes, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova, Sarah Kirkland Snider · 2019 · Carolyn Forché's poetry gets the chamber treatment it always deserved—no filler, no nostalgia, just twilight in stereo.

Bill Withers · 1973 · He walked out nervous, cracked a few jokes, then turned Carnegie Hall into a living room. This is the sound of a man who knew he had nothing to prove, and proved everything anyway.

Ann Peebles · 1969 · Ann Peebles didn’t need to scream – she just opened her mouth and the Memphis Horns did the rest.

Townes Van Zandt · 1968 · A drunk poet walks into a Nashville barn and records the saddest songs you'll ever hear.

Kris Kristofferson · 1970 · A man who flew helicopters and swept floors before writing songs that feel like confessions.

John Prine · 1971 · The mailman who wrote 'Sam Stone' and 'Angel from Montgomery' before anyone knew his name.

Jessica Pratt · 2019 · She recorded this in a Brooklyn closet on a two-track. It sounds like secrets.

Adrianne Lenker · 2020 · She set up two microphones in a rented cabin and didn't let herself fix anything.

Leonard Cohen · 1988 · He traded the acoustic guitar for a synth and somehow got darker and funnier.

Jennifer Warnes · 1987 · A backup singer who knew Cohen's notebooks better than most of his producers steps in front of his band and makes you realise the songs were always perfect — you just hadn't heard them right.

Pearls Before Swine · 1967 · Tom Rapp recorded this in a room where you could hear the floorboards, and it never left that room.

Moses Sumney · 2020 · Non-binary, double LP, massive orchestration via a single voice.

Little Simz · 2021 Spin it Again - A rapper who could have taken the easy route instead hired the London Symphony Orchestra and made an album about anxiety.