Prince · 1981 Spin it Again - A twenty-two-year-old asking who he is over the only sound that matters: his own.

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.

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.

Various Artists · 1968 Spin it Again - The moment Brazilian music decided it didn't have to choose between bossa nova and chaos.

Os Mutantes · 1970 Spin it Again - The album that made everyone wonder if the Mutantes had lost their minds, and eventually proved they'd just found somewhere further in.

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

Fela Kuti and Africa 70 · 1972 Spin it Again - Recorded in Lagos in 1972 with Tony Allen behind the drums, this is the album where Fela's vision crystallized — a relentless polyrhythmic statement that proved a continent had its own way of moving.

Steeleye Span · 1969 Spin it Again - Before anyone else figured it out, Steeleye Span proved that English folk songs and electric guitars could occupy the same space without one destroying the other.

Ry Cooder · 1976 Spin it Again - He listened so hard to other people's music that he became invisible in his own record, and somehow that's when he sounded most like himself.

Blondie · 1979 Spin it Again - A 1979 record from Blondie that rewards close listening.

The B-52'S · Spin it Again - A timeless record from The B-52'S that rewards close listening.

Labelle · 1974 Spin it Again - Allen Toussaint produced a masterclass in letting three voices own a groove and a room at once.

Dee Harris · 1985 Spin it Again - Talk Talk's restraint meets Soft Cell's sensuality on a record nobody's heard but everyone with taste should own.

Cate Le Bon · 2012 Spin it Again - A Welsh guitarist discovers that architecture and silence say things melody never could—recorded alone in Wales and built from the refusal to fill space.

The Beatles · 1966 Spin it Again - A 1966 record from The Beatles that rewards close listening.

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.

Kayah · 1988

Rottin · Year Unknown Spin it Again - A deep cut from the regional crunk era that sounds better the second time through, when you're listening alone and can actually hear the architecture underneath the bounce.

Mr. Bungle · 1991 Spin it Again - John Zorn produced a metal band that played lounge jazz, prog arrangements, and avant-garde deconstruction in the same breath, and somehow made it cohere.