Popular Music CDs for Adults
Hundreds of CDs are added to the Library's collection each month. Here are the most popular Music CDs for adults.
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Before and After
The very title Before and After suggests Neil Young is in a contemplative mood on this acoustic set from 2023 and, sure enough, a good portion of the record finds him looking back at his very beginnings. A number of songs he wrote for Buffalo Springfield are here, balanced by a few rarities -- chief among them "If You Got Love," which was pulled from Trans at the last minute -- selections from Sleeps with Angels, Mirror Ball, and Ragged Glory, albums that retrospectively can be seen as written during a particularly restless middle age. Before and After isn't agitated or electric, though. The album features no other musician than Young, who supports himself with an acoustic guitar, harmonica, and, occasionally, a pump organ. The starkness of the arrangements helps draw attention to the distance between the origin of a song and Young's present. Now creeping toward 80, he doesn't sound fragile, yet his vocals display some age-related raggedness. Embracing his weathered, keening voice, Young highlights the tender yearning that runs throughout these songs. They may have been written at various stages in his life, but they're united by his iconoclasm, his dedication to the earth, and his quest for universal love, common threads that are emphasized by how the 13 songs are segued as a suite, allowing listeners to immerse themselves in Before and After as a holistic experience. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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Speak Now: Taylor's Version
Taylor Swift reimagines her third album along with the addition of vault tracks with Paramore's Hayley Williams and Fall Out Boy. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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![How to Know A Person: [the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen]](https://secure.syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=9780593790786/MC.GIF&client=sepup&type=sepup&oclc=)
How to Know A Person: [the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen]
Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and from the worlds of theatre, history, and education, to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. He helps listeners become more understanding and considerate towards others, and find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way he offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is a profoundly creative act: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves?
Format: Audiobook CD
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Fearless: Taylor's Version
Taylor Swift left her longtime home of Big Machine in 2018, setting up shop at Republic Records. Usually, such changes in label are only of interest to trainspotters, but once Swift departed Big Machine, the label was acquired by a group owned by Scooter Braun, a nemesis of Taylor's. The singer attempted to regain rights to her original recordings to no avail, leaving her with one option: she could re-record her records, thereby undercutting the value of her catalog in terms of syncs, placements, and licensing. Swift carried through on the promise in April 2021, releasing Fearless (Taylor's Version), a brand-new version of her 2008 breakthrough. Swift recorded all 19 songs from the 2009 Platinum Edition of Fearless, adding a new version of "Today Was a Fairytale" from the Valentine's Day soundtrack, then six additional songs ("From The Vault") -- songs that were written around the time of Fearless but not released. These tracks are of greatest interest, as they certainly have a younger, dewy-eyed perspective but were recorded with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, the producers of Swift's mature work. The blend of youth and experience is appealing, and it can also be heard in the newer renditions of the Fearless material. Swift largely re-creates the arrangements and feel of the original 2008 album, yet her voice and phrasing has aged, giving the music a hint of bittersweet gravity. That said, it's only a hint; Fearless (Taylor's Version) serves the purpose of offering new versions that could be substituted for the originals for licensing purposes. It's to Swift's credit that the album is an absorbing (if long) listen anyway. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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EVOLUTION (CD)
Nine-time Grammy Award winner and 2023 Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Inductee, Sheryl Crow, will release her eleventh full length studio album. The album comes as a welcomed surprise after Crow publicly stated that she would not release another full-length album after Threads (2018) and kicks off with her lead single 'Alarm Clock," which is perhaps Sheryl Crow's most radio-friendly pop song since "Soak Up The Sun."
Format: Music CD
Availability: On order
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Tom Lake: A Novel
In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.
Format: Audiobook CD
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Laugh Track
The surprise companion to the National's April release, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, is the band's most freewheeling, all-hands-on-deck album in years. If Frankenstein represented a rebuilding of trust between group members after 20-plus years together, the vibrant, exploratory album is both the product of that faith and a new statement of intent. Reveling in the license to radically upend its creative process, the National honed most of this material in live performances on tour and captured those invigorated versions in impromptu sessions at producer Tucker Martine's Portland studio. Two nights later in Vancouver, the nearly eight-minute album closer Smoke Detector was recorded during soundcheck, completing a body of work bristling with spontaneity and vintage rock energy that makes a perfect complement to the songs found on its more introspective predecessor. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
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BLUE ELECTRIC LIGHT (CD)
Timeless. Explosive. Romantic. Inspiring. How else to characterize Lenny Kravitz's twelfth studio album? Kravitz's mastery of deep-soul rock 'n roll is a long-established fact. As a relentless creative force, musician, writer, producer, actor, author, designer, he continues to be a global dynamic presence throughout music, art and culture. This album is an impassioned suite of songs, which broadens this distinction and is the latest contribution of a man whose music, not to mention his singular style, continues to inspire millions the world over. On the album, Kravitz's talents as a writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist resonate as he wrote and played most of the instruments himself, with long-time guitarist Craig Ross.
Format: Music CD
Availability: On order
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Guts
Three-time Grammy Award winner Olivia Rodrigo is back with the follow-up to her smash hit debut album, SOUR. This album sees her exploring changes in her life. Includes the single Vampire. (syndetics)
Format: Music CD
Availability: All copies in use
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