The Rolling Stone Magazine

90-Stevie Wonder, Talking Book/Tamla, 1972/

“I don´t think you know where I´m coming from,”Stevie Wonder warned Motown executives in 1971.”I
don´t think you can understand it.” Indeed, the two albums Wonder released in 1972-Music of My Mind
and Talking Book-rewrote the rules of the Motown hit Factory.Talking Book was full of introspection and
social commentary, with Wonder producing, writing and playing most of the instruments himself.But it’s
still radiant pop.”Superstition” and “You are the Sunshine of My Life” were Number One singles; “Big
Brother” is political consciousness draped in a light melody: “You´ve killed all our leaders/I don´t even have
to do nothin’to you/ You’ii cause your own country to fall.”

89-Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis/Atlantic, 1969/

London-born Dusty Springfield was a great soul Singer hidden inside a white British pop quuen-racking up
Motown-style hits such as “I Only Want to Be With You”-when Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her
way down South, to Memphis, to make this álbum.She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with
sesión guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Wilson Picket hits that she never actually managed to
sing a note there(“I always wanted to be Aretha,”she recalled years after),Her vocals were overdubbed
later, when the sessions moved to New York:But the result was blazing soul and sexual hosnesty
(“Breakfast in Bed,” “Son of a Preacher Man”)that transcended both race and geography.

88-Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison/ Columbia, 1968

By the late Sixties, Johnny Cash was ignored by country radio and struggling for a comeback.At Folsom
Prison was the gold-selling shot in the arm that revived his career.A year later,he was writing liner notes
for Bob Dylan’s countrified Nashville Skyline and logging four weeks at Number One with his second prison
álbum, at San quentin.But at Folsom Prison is essential Cash.Backed by his tough touring band, including
fellow Sun Records alum Carl perkins on guitar, Cash guffaws his way through “Cocaine Blues,” 25 Minutes
to Go”(a countdown to an execution) and “Folsom Prison Blues,” with its line about shooting a man just to
watch him die.The 2,000 inmates in attendance roar their approval.
87-Pink Floyd, The Wall, Columbia, 1979/
Pink Floyd’s Most elaborately theatrical álbum was inspired by their own success: the alienating enormity
of their tours after the Dark Side of the Moon(see No.43).As the band played arenas in 1977, bassistlyricist
Roger Waters first hit upon the Wall as a metaphor for isolation and rebellion.he finished a demo of the
work by July 1978; the doublé álbum the Took the band a year to make.Rock’s ultimate self-pity opera,The
Wall is also hypnotic in its indulgence.the totalitarian thunder of “In the Flesh?,the suicidal languor of
“Comfortably Numb,” the Brechtian drama of “The Trial” and the anti-institutional spleen of the album’s
unshakable disco hit,”Another Brick in the Wall, pt.2 “ Rock-star hubris has never been more electrifyng.

86-Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A./ Columbia,1984/

Bruce Springsteen wrote many of these songs in a fit of inspiration that also gave birth to the harrowing
Nebraska[see No.226] “Particulary on the first side,[Born] is actually written very much like Nebraska,” he
said.”The characters and the stories, the style of writting-except it’s justo n the rock-band setting.” It was a
crucial difference: The E Street Band put so much punch into the ironic title song that millions misheard it
as mere flag-waving instead(conservative pundit George Will wrote a rhapsodic column titled “A Yankee
Doodle Springsteen”). The Inmortal forcé of the álbum is in Springsteen’s Frank mix of soaring optimism
and the feeling of, as he put it, being “handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford.”

85-Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul/Atlantic, 1968/

Aretha Franklin’s third Atlantic álbum in less tan two years is another classic, with”(You Make Me Feel)
Like a Natural Woman,””Ain’t No Way” and a slynky versión of the Rascals” “Groovin,”.It awas released in
ayear of triumph and turbulence for Franklin: Although she made the cover of Time, the magazine reported
details of her rocky marriage to Ted White, then her manager.But Franklin channeled that frenzy into
performances of funky pride and magisterial hurt.Among the best:the grand-prayer treatment of Curtis
Mayfield´s “People Get Ready,” the reved-up longing of “Since You’ve Been Gone(Sweet Sweet Baby)” and
her explosive anguish on the hit cover of Don Covay’s “Chain of Fools.”
84-Aretha Franklin,I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You/Atlantic,1967/
Aretha Franklin’s Atlantic debut is the place where góspel collided with R&B and rock& roll to make soul
music as we know it today.The Detroitborn preacher’s daughter was about $80,000 in debt to her previous
label, Columbia-where she had recorded a series of somewhat tame early-Sixties albums-when Atlantic
producer Jerry Wexler signed her in 1966.”I took her to church,”Wexler said,”sat her down at the piano,
and let her down at the piano, and let her be herself.”She immediately cut the album’s title hit, a slow fire
of ferocious sexuality, while her atorefrontchurch cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect”-Franklin’s first
Number One pop single-became the marching song for the women¿s and civil rights movements.

83-The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love/Reprise, 1968/

Jimi Hendrix’s first álbum remade rock&roll with guitar magic that no one hade ver dreamed of; his second
álbum had even more sorcery.It started with some musing on extraterrestrial life, then got really far-out:
jazzy drumming, funky balladry, liquid guitar solos, dragonfly heavy metal and the inmortal stoner’s maxim
from “if 6 Was 9”:”I´m the one who”s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life
the way i want to.” All over the álbum, hendrix was inventing new ways to make the elctric guitar roar, sing,
talk, shriek, flutter and fly.And with the delicate “Little Wing,” he delivered one of rock’s most cryptic and
bewitching love songs.

82-Neil Young/Harvest/Reprise/1972/
Harvest yielded Neil Young’s only Number One hit,”Heart of Gold”, and helped set the stage for the
Seventies soft-rock explosión-both James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt singo n the álbum.Along with Young,
they were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash’s ABC-TV variety show the first weekeng that Harvest was
being cut with an odd group of accomplished sesión musicins that included bassist with james
Brown(Ypung’s bandmates Ceosby, Stills and Nash also appeared on the álbum).The sound, om tracks like
“Old Man” and “The Needle and the Damage Done,” was Americana(Steel guitar, slide guitar, banjo)
stripped down and rebuilt with every jagged edge exposed.