Highlighting Dionne Warwick's quiet and more contemplative moments, Love Songs is a solid overview covering not only her later years on Arista, but also material from various other labels and her collaborations with Burt Bacharach. Many of the moments remain untarnished with the passage of time, with the original recordings of "Walk On By," "Alfie," and "I Say a Little Prayer" cleaned up and sounding clearer than ever. While "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and other earlier performances would have been ideal for inclusion, later songs like "That's What Friends Are For" and "Heartbreaker" help to bring things into the later years nicely. And though the song sequencing is a bit erratic, that's something easily overlooked and can be manually corrected. Love Songs is not a collection for the die-hard fan, but casual listeners will find it immediately accessible and an enjoyable listen from start to finish.

The singularity of Dionne Warwick is defined by what the singer isn't as much as what she is. Although Warwick grew up singing in church, she is not a gospel singer. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are clear influences, but she is not a jazz singer. R&B is also part of her background, yet she is not really a soul singer, either, at least not in the sense that Aretha Franklin was. Sophisticated is a word often used to describe Warwick's musical approach and the music she sings, but she is not a singer of standards such as Lena Horne or Nancy Wilson. A pop singer of a sort with an aching yet detached alto voice, In all likelihood, Warwick could only have emerged out of the Brill Building environment of post-Elvis Presley, pre-Beatles pop in the early '60s. That's when she hooked up with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, songwriters and producers who tailored their unusually complicated songs for her distinctive instrument.

A brief, 12-track trip through the Orb's singles archive, U.F. Off includes mixes of just about every single from "A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain" through "Toxygene" (though not in strictly chronological order). Singles compilations for electronic artists hardly ever fit the bill for longtime listeners or neophytes, yet this one is put together well and remains a solid addition to any collection. The double-disc version includes additional remixes plus a few unreleased tracks ("Mickey Mars," "Pi").

An AOR band from Finland, Brother Firetribe was founded in 2002. Influenced by the glory days of such stadium rock giants as Journey and Van Halen coupled with the glam of such acts as Skid Row, Brother Firetribe has been both critically and commercially successful in Finland. With their fourth album ‘Sunbound’, Brother Firetribe offer something that harks back to the golden days but also shows that there is plenty of life left in the genre.

Sabbrabells were counted, alongside heavy metal stalwarts Anthem (Jpn) and Reaction (Jpn) as being among the most important bands in the Kanto (East Japan, Tokyo-Yokohama area) metal movement, which was seen to be a rival movement to the Kansai (West Japan, Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe area) metal movement.

Exciter is Depeche Mode's tenth studio album, which was released on 14 May 2001 in the UK and May 15 in the US. It uses more digital music technology compared to their other albums. It was produced by Mark Bell of Björk and LFO fame. The album also launched the Exciter Tour, which was one of the band's most successful tours.

An amazingly rich cross-section of the reggae world pays homage to the great Bob Marley in this essential triple-CD collection. With a total of 50 tracks featuring an eclectic mix of artists like Ruddy Thomas, the Maroons, Sly & Robbie, Johnny Clarke, Inner Circle, John Holt, Horace Andy, Max Romeo, Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, and Dennis Brown, TROJAN BOB MARLEY COVERS BOX SET is a must for any reggae fan, and a testament to Marley's vast influence and crossover appeal within the reggae community and beyond.

The Gospel According to the Meninblack (sometimes referred to as just The Meninblack) is the fifth album by English rock band the Stranglers, an esoteric concept album released 9 February 1981, on the Liberty label. The album explores conspiratorial themes involving alien visitations to Earth, the sinister governmental men in black, and the involvement of these elements in well-known biblical narratives. This was not the first time the Stranglers had used this concept; "Meninblack" on the earlier The Raven album and subsequent 1980 single-release "Who Wants the World?" had also explored it.

Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in 1977 in Sheffield as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Since 1992, the band has consisted of Rick Savage (bass, backing vocals), Joe Elliott (lead vocals), Rick Allen (drums, backing vocals), Phil Collen (guitar, backing vocals), and Vivian Campbell (guitar, backing vocals). Therefore, this is the band's longest-standing lineup.

Survivor was an album of agendas. Destiny's Child were always going to release a third album following the success of The Writing's on the Wall, no matter what the line-up was. There had to be something put out to show that the group could continue in spite of two line-up changes within the space of weeks. But Survivor was also a vehicle for Beyoncé, as you could argue Destiny's Child always was. Survivor was a statement that the group could continue because of her. But it was also Mathew starting to build Beyoncé's portfolio. On The Writing's on the Wall, writing credits were split pretty evenly between the members of Destiny's Child. But on Survivor, Beyoncé is listed as a songwriter on all but one song, with Kelly and Michelle only being listed as songwriters for the album outro, where the girls literally just recite the Thank You's which are printed in the inlay.

This promo CD makes sense to download only for those who have not heard Joshua Redman's music before, for the first acquaintance with the musician's work. All tracks are presented here in the same versions as in the albums specified in the tracklist.

Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown, 1973–1980 is a compilation album released in 2001. It consists of soul and R&B-styled songs recorded by Jamaican reggae artists, including a number of covers of contemporary American singles.

Spanning the entirety of Luther Vandross' solo career, Lovesongs is stacked full of quiet storm favorites from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. All 17 selections are hits, and like practically everything Vandross ever sang, they're all love songs. Lovesongs is the third in a series of Vandross best-of collections released in the wake of his 2005 passing. The first of those compilations, The Ultimate Luther Vandross (2006), covers his greatest hits chronologically, rounding up 16 songs and then tacking on two previously unreleased ones at the end. Then there's Love, Luther (2007), a 56-track box set filled with previously unreleased material for hardcore fans and completists. Like The Ultimate Luther Vandross before it, Lovesongs is a single-disc collection that goes from the singer's first album, Never Too Much (1981), to his last, Dance with My Father (2003).

The Atlanta, Georgia, band was started in 1977, when keyboardist / vocalist Jason Bryant, saxophonists Billy Ellis and Willie "Sonny" Killebrew, guitarist Bruno Speight, bassist John Alexander Simpson, drummer James Earl Jones III, and lead vocalist Mary Davis formed a group called Sounds of Santa Monica that played at Atlanta nightclub the Regal Room.

Doyle Bramhall II put his solo recording career into hibernation following the 2001 release of Welcome, choosing to concentrate on his thriving career as a sideman and producer. It was hard to blame him for deciding upon this route, not when Eric Clapton picked him as a lieutenant guitarist and Elton John, Sheryl Crow, and Derek Trucks all regularly came calling. Bramhall channels all this experience into Rich Man, his first album in 17 years and also his best.