Classic Albums. Hosted by Stevie Nix

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King of America is an album born out of retreat and reset, following a period when Costello himself felt he’d lost the thread. It feels like an artist stripping everything back to find out what still matters. Even the name “Elvis Costello” barely appears: the songs are credited to Declan MacManus, the band is listed as The Costello Show, and the whole presentation suggests a deliberate act of distance from the persona he’d built over the previous decade. Musically, he moved away from the tightly wound punch of the Attractions and into a looser, roots-based sound, guided by producer T Bone Burnett. The players were veterans whose résumés stretched back through rock, jazz, country and early rhythm and blues, giving the album a sense of history and weight without ever sounding nostalgic for its own sake.
Featured songs:
I'll Wear It Proudly
Our Little Angel
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Indoor Fireworks
Jack Of All Parades
American Without Tears

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Graceland introduced global sounds to mainstream Western audiences in a way that felt organic rather than exploitative. The conversations about cultural appropriation, artistic responsibility, and the relationship between art and politics continue to resonate. Simon's approach — collaborative rather than extractive, respectful of his influences while transforming them into something new — has become a model for thoughtful cross-cultural artistic endeavours. Yet the complex questions raised by the album's creation remain relevant in a world still grappling with power imbalances and cultural exchange. 
Featured songs:
The Boy In The Bubble
I Know What I Know
Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al
Homeless
Graceland

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The album's power lies in its refusal to play by the rules of either folk purity or contemporary indie rock. These weren't musicians interested in archaeological authenticity or preserving some imagined folk tradition in amber. Instead, they took the instrumentation and structural vocabulary of folk, bluegrass, and country music and weaponised it with the dynamics and emotional intensity of arena rock. The result was something genuinely new: songs that could pack the intimate storytelling of traditional folk into explosive, cathartic builds that hit with the force of a stadium anthem.
Featured songs:
Sigh No More
The Cave
White Blank Page
I Gave You All
Timshel
Little Lion Man

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When Phil Collins released Face Value in February 1981, few could have predicted that this deeply personal debut would launch one of the most successful solo careers in pop music history. The album emerged from one of the darkest periods of Collins' life — a crumbling marriage that left him alone with his pain and a drum machine — and transformed that raw emotional devastation into something far greater than a simple breakup album. It became a watershed moment that proved Collins was an artist with a singular vision willing to take risks.
Featured songs:
In The Air Tonight
This Must Be Love
The Roof Is Leaking 
I Missed Again
You Know What I Mean
Tomorrow Never Knows

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The Stranger permanently altered the trajectory of Joel's career, transforming him from a struggling piano man to a stadium-filling superstar. More importantly, it established him as a serious artist whose work could connect with both critics and mainstream audiences. The album balances nostalgia with clear-eyed recognition of limitation and compromise. Its complex relationship with time and memory feels quintessentially American in its tension between idealism and pragmatism.
Featured songs: 
Movin’ Out [Antony’s Song]
The Stranger
Just The Way You Are
Vienna
Only The Good Die Young
She's Always A Woman