Last Crack Albums

[Umbelina Baublitz]

Rock bands tend to peak early in their life cycles, riding the wave of youthful inspiration. It's hard enough to keep a project going for years. It's almost impossible to make great albums up through the end.

We took an objective approach in compiling the Stories Behind 41 Classic Rock Final Albums. The LPs are sorted chronologically, rather than being ranked by quality. And you'll notice that, in some cases, we applied the phrase "final" liberally: While the Doors and Lynyrd Skynyrd both continued to record after L.A. Woman and Street Survivors, respectively, both of those LPs marked the end of distinctive musical eras.

It can never hurt to add it here, if it is a valid release. I have some albums showing up for me where the album name and order clearly came from me and my scrobbles. The syntax of them is not what MB shows and I had not conformed them to a standard format before they were scrobbled. These were added there prior to there change to perpetual beta.

Here is an example album: +Stan/Unlocked:+Deluxe+Edition
YOu can see on this one I am the only listener, at this time. You can also see that there are 2 others of the same name on the artist album page. Please note that what you stated is confirmed here, it does not appear on the artists albums page, but the album is there. I was not looking at it in that detail, just in the matter of getting the album recognized. As far as the album artist page, I would not know how they qualify to get there or not.

The tension between principle songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart was increasing, and it seemed only a matter of time that the Twin Cities three-piece would disband. That eventually happened in the wake of this sixth Hsker D album, and subsequent tour. While it's only appropriate to celebrate the band's entire catalog, Warehouse: Songs and Stories is another example of the maturity that the band displayed on its later records. Of course, the group's collective volatility also fueled its musical greatness. Highlights include "Could You Be the One?" and "She's a Woman (And Now He Is a Man)."

Another example of a band bringing it to the end. Jack and Meg put out just six albums together, and the last should be considered one of the band's best. Tight, mature and brilliant on various levels, it reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (the best of any album from the band) and won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. While the title cut is 4-plus minutes of The White Stripes' excellence, "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)" could very well be the greatest song the duo ever released. Yes, we're willing to make that claim.

A Chicago native, Jeff Mezydlo has professionally written about sports, entertainment and pop culture for parts of four decades. He was an integral member of award-winning sports sections at The Times of Northwest Indiana (Munster, Ind.) and Champaign (Ill.) News-Gazette, where he covered the NFL, PGA, LPGA, NCAA basketball, football and golf, Olympics and high school athletics. Jeff most recently spent 12 years in the editorial department at STATSPerform, where he also oversaw coverage of the English Premier League. A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Jeff's work has also appeared on such sites at Yahoo!, ESPN, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated and NBA.com. However, if Jeff could do it again, he'd attend Degrassi Junior High, Ampipe High School and Grand Lakes University

"It's almost a dying art form in that people cherry-pick songs and put them on playlists and so, I don't know that the listening audience really ever gets the sense of the full artistic statement," Sheryl Crow says. Dove Shore/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

If you've turned on your radio anytime over the past quarter century, there's a decent chance you heard the voice of Sheryl Crow. From "All I Wanna Do" to "If It Makes You Happy," the Missouri-born music-maker has been consistently pumping out feel-good pop rock for more than three decades. Now, after nine Grammys and more than 50 million albums sold, the singer-songwriter says her 11th album, Threads, out Aug. 30, will be her last. For the momentous occasion, Crow called on friends whom she considers to be her bucket list collaborators: Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan and Sting, to name a few.

Crow spoke with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly about personally making calls to legends for the album, songwriting as an outlet and putting out music in the age of streaming and playlists. Hear the radio version of their conversation at the audio link, and read on for more that didn't make the broadcast.

We had a great experience last year with "Wouldn't Want To Be Like You." We put out a song that meant something at that moment in the immediacy and didn't wait for a full length record. And it was kind of liberating to be able to do that. So I think that's what I'll aim for. Then, if people want to put together an album, they can do that; they can put together a compilation or their own playlist. But I like the idea of being able to write in the immediate and putting it out when it really matters.

No, this was completely organic. It started off with a session with Kris Kristofferson, who, I think most people know, is in the throes of either Alzheimer's or Lyme disease [and] not making recent memories anymore. I worked with him in the studio and I just felt like, "This is important. This is what I want more of. I want to pull in the people that inspired me before I knew them, who have become a part of my life." And so I started reaching out personally to people and everyone said yes.

We made the record flying places, bringing people in. We did it through technology with people who were in England like Eric [Clapton] and Sting. And then by the end of 3 1/2 years, we just said, "You know what, we're done."

Anybody surprise you by how fun or how challenging they were to work with? Somebody where you knew you loved their music, but you hadn't actually sat down and tried to record with them before?

The song is recorded with Johnny Cash and clearly, he's no longer with us. He had recorded in 2003 right before he passed. About two months before he passed, he recorded a song I wrote called "Redemption Day" and recording with him in the studio with his vocal in my headphones was just an incredible experience. I can't even explain it. It was so emotional. He felt so present to me and I wasn't prepared for how emotional that would feel.

You've talked about how when Emmylou Harris hit her 50s, she set the bar on how a woman can get more beautiful, more sexy, more meaningful with age. Talk to me about ["Nobody's Perfect"] and about working with Emmylou Harris.

Well, strangely my voice has gotten better. I mean, there are a lot of people that lose their range. I think my range has really increased. I am from a long line of singers and my mom has unequivocally the most incredible voice. She could have sung opera I'm convinced. She's 83 and her voice is as gorgeous and as controlled as it ever was.

I know! I dragged her into the studio to record some things with her and put together a combo and stuff so I have that. She would kill me if I ever put it out. All that's to say hopefully, genetically, I'm going to be able to enjoy what she's still enjoying.

You know, it's just an interesting process in the last 10 years to be writing music on the planet as the mom of two children because there is a sense of urgency. Also, with my age there is also a real sense of liberation in the fact that I'm not competing at pop radio. I don't see my audiences as the 13-to-26 demographic that basically inhabits that space. So I write from a sense of urgency about what really matters to me.

I try to make music fun. Music, for me, is my outlet. It's the thing I love most. I go to it with all of my emotions. I guess at the end of the day, it's unavoidable for me to at least acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Well, you know, I turn on the TV and I see that the rainforests are burning. I'm an environmentalist at heart; so are my children. They ask me the hard questions. My 9-year-old asked me the other day if we were going to cut down all the trees until we couldn't breathe anymore. I think about a 9-year-old and what a 9-year-old should be thinking about and that's not his mortality. So I can see writing a song about children and the load they're bearing right now. In fact, I may go home to do that now. [Laughs]

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My way of listening to music is usually one album at a time. I am listening to one album right now and I know which one I would like to listen to next. What do I do to have the next album play automatically after the current one finishes?

And this leads me to answer my own question: I need to set the first album playing not by playing it via a click on the first track, but by adding it to the queue. *Then* the simple "add to queue" indeed adds an entire album/playlist at the end of the currently queued album/playlist.

I.e. an album that is just playing (but not added to the queue) comes from a different queuing entity than the queue. I guess that's what's called "Next from" in the apps, and "collection-album" in the web player. Still very confused by this. (Compare my other posts.) And I consider myself not easily confused by software.

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