Within the span of five years, Ringo Starr was able to muster up seven Top Ten singles, with three of them coming from the self-titled Ringo album. Taking all of these tracks and adding three more, Blast From Your Past ends up being a worthy ten-song collection of Starr's best solo tunes…

Strange Behavior is an album by Animotion released by Casablanca Records. It was the last album to be released by Casablanca before the record label folded. The single "I Engineer" hit #2 in Germany and #6 in Switzerland in 1986. The single "I Want You" hit #27 in Germany and #84 in the United States. The album went to #21 in Switzerland and reached #71 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Band on the Run is the third studio album by Paul McCartney and Wings, released in December 1973. It marked the fifth album by Paul McCartney since his departure from the Beatles in April 1970. Although sales were modest initially, its commercial performance was aided by two hit singles – "Jet" and "Band on the Run" – such that it became the top-selling studio album of 1974 in the United Kingdom and Australia, in addition to revitalising McCartney's critical standing. It remains McCartney's most successful album and the most celebrated of his post-Beatles works. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 75 in its list of the "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". In 2012, Band on the Run was voted 418th on Rolling Stone's revised list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". A contemporary review by Jon Landau in Rolling Stone described the album as "with the possible exception of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles".

Entitled McCartney II because its one-man band approach mirrors that of his first solo album, Paul McCartney's first record since the breakup of Wings was greeted upon its release as a return to form, especially since its synth-heavy arrangements seemed to represent his acceptance of new wave…

This release from the BGO label combines two of Gino Vannelli's albums for A&M, Powerful People (1974) and Storm at Sunup (1975). Both releases peaked in the Top 60 of the Billboard 200, while “People Gotta Move” – the lead song on the former – was one of Vannelli’s biggest singles and narrowly missed the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. Those who pick up a well-chosen Vannelli compilation can get the essential songs, but soft rock diehards can obtain a fair amount of Vannelli’s choice album-bound material right here.

The Seer is the third studio album by the Scottish band Big Country, released in 1986. The album featured very traditional Scottish musical settings, reminiscent of the band's debut album The Crossing (1983). Kate Bush worked on the title song in a duet with lead singer and lyricist Stuart Adamson. The album's first single, "Look Away", was an Irish number one, and was also the group's biggest hit single in the UK, reaching #7. The album reached number 2 in the UK Albums Chart.

Brandon Flowers' solo debut, 2010's Flamingo, seemed to make the case that the line between a Killers album and a Flowers album was blurry at best. Largely a continuation of the anthemic Springsteen-influenced sound of the Killers' 2006 effort Sam's Town, Flamingo also revealed Flowers' inclination toward glossy, synth-heavy, '80s adult-contemporary productions. For his sophomore solo outing, 2015's The Desired Effect, the line between the man and his band begins to sharpen. Produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Madonna, Vampire Weekend, HAIM), the album finally finds Flowers achieving an unmistakable sound of his own, with the kind of effortless sophistication that a seasoned musician hopes for. Flowers long ago expanded his musical palette from the Killers' early, Duran Duran-influenced brand of dance-rock, but he's also become much more adept at combining his disparate musical influences and poetic narratives into a cohesive, emotionally resonant approach to expansive pop songwriting.

Beat Avenue is 60-year-old Eric Andersen's most ambitious album, a 90-minute tour de force that encapsulates his musical and lyrical concerns over a lifetime. The music is often-dense rock dominated by a rhythm section led by guitarist Eric Bazilian of the Hooters. Equally dense is Andersen's highly poetic versifying, which he sings in his gruff baritone. Andersen is world-weary in these songs, roaming the globe haunted by the past and fearful of the future. He confesses to a reckless youth, but acknowledges that he can no longer afford such license. "What once was Charles Bukowski," he sings in "Before Everything Changed," referring to the free-living beat poet, "is now Emily Dickinson." The ballads and love songs "Song of You and Me," "Shape of a Broken Heart," "Under the Shadows," and "Still Looking for You" are rendered tenderly, but they are also full of regret and loss, past-tense reflections that recount memories of love long gone. The first disc of Beat Avenue is complete and formidable unto itself, but there is a second CD consisting of two lengthy songs. The title track, running more than 26 minutes, is a beat poem with jazzy accompaniment by Robert Aaron in which Andersen recalls a poetry reading he attended as a 20-year-old on the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

MCA Special Products' California Dreamin' boasts a blend of hits and album tracks, highlighted by "Monday, Monday," "Sing for Your Supper," "Glad to Be Unhappy," and the title track…

Child Is Father to the Man is keyboard player/singer/arranger Al Kooper's finest work, an album on which he moves the folk-blues-rock amalgamation of the Blues Project into even wider pastures, taking in classical and jazz elements (including strings and horns), all without losing the pop essence that makes the hybrid work. This is one of the great albums of the eclectic post-Sgt. Pepper era of the late '60s, a time when you could borrow styles from Greenwich Village contemporary folk to San Francisco acid rock and mix them into what seemed to have the potential to become a new American musical form. It's Kooper's bluesy songs, such as "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" and "I Can't Quit Her," and his singing that are the primary focus, but the album is an aural delight; listen to the way the bass guitar interacts with the horns on "My Days Are Numbered" or the charming arrangement and Steve Katz's vocal on Tim Buckley's "Morning Glory." Then Kooper sings Harry Nilsson's "Without Her" over a delicate, jazzy backing with flügelhorn/alto saxophone interplay by Randy Brecker and Fred Lipsius.

Morten Harket is a Norwegian vocalist and musician, best known as the lead singer of the synthpop/rock band A-ha, which released ten studio albums and topped the charts internationally after their breakthrough hit "Take On Me" in 1985. A-ha disbanded in 2010 after they played their last gig in Oslo. In 2015, after each member pursued his own artistic path, A-ha reunited to produce a new album, Cast In Steel, and perform a world tour, kicking off at Rock in Rio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 27 September 2015. Harket has also released six solo albums. Before joining A-ha in 1982, Harket had appeared on the Oslo club scene as the singer for blues outfit Souldier Blue. Morten Harket is known for his extraordinary vocal range, which some sources have claimed spans five octaves, although Harket himself said in 2009, “I’ve never counted, quite honestly”. His voice is capable of "The greatest falsetto in the history of pop music EVER…" according to NME's Sylvia Patterson, to an "unyielding groan" as described in Entertainment Weekly. Harket has released six solo albums: 1993 - Poetenes Evangelium; 1995 - Wild Seed; 1996 - Vogts Villa; 2008 - Letter From Egypt; 2012 - Out Of My Hands; 2014 - Brother.

Elton John once claimed that he could remember The One among his latter-day albums because it was the first he recorded without drugs or alcohol. If true – and there's no reason to doubt him – that could be the reason why this has more character than most of his albums since the early '80s, holding together well in its deliberately measured, mature songcraft by Elton and Bernie Taupin…

The Truth About Love is the sixth studio album by P!nk, released on September 14, 2012, by RCA Records. The Truth About Love samples rock music influences and is generally themed about relationships, breakups and the different stages and cases of love, while tackling issues of feminism, sexual prowess and social exclusion. It features guest artists Eminem, Lily Allen and Nate Ruess of American band Fun. In the United States, the album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart.

The Hurting is the debut studio album by the British rock/pop band Tears for Fears. It was released on 7 March 1983, and peaked at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart in its second week of release. The album was certified Gold by the BPI within three weeks of release, and reached Platinum status in January 1985. The album contains Tears For Fears' first three hit singles – "Mad World", "Change", and "Pale Shelter" – all of which reached the Top 5 in the UK. It also contains a new version of the band's first single, "Suffer the Children", which had originally been released in 1981.