Tomorrow, Record Store Day is once again upon us! It's that time of year where music lovers and vinyl flippers get together at their favorite physical music retailers and wait in line to snag some treasured albums - almost all of which are pressed on vinyl instead of CD (or, you know, sold on secondary marketplaces for above their retail value). This year, the list tops out at over 300 titles, so there's very nearly something for everybody. It wasn't easy to narrow our choices down to around
Universal Music Group's 2025 Record Store Day roster is heavy on British rockers: Elvis Costello, John Lennon, Elton John, Sting, Queen, Mark Knopfler, and The Verve among them! But there's also some highly-anticipated items from The Killers and Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and Passengers, a.k.a. U2 and Brian Eno, among the other highlights. Visit RecordStoreDay.com for the full list of participating retailers you can visit on Saturday, April 12, to join in the festivities. Elvis
As fans prepare for the release of the new Disney+ documentary Beatles '64, chronicling The Fab Four's legendary inaugural trip to America, U.K. label Ace Records has an exciting release coming that same weekend, featuring nearly two dozen Black artists paying tribute to a series of songbooks that owed so much to soul music and rhythm and blues traditions. Here, There and Everywhere: Black America Sings Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, available November 29, is the seventh of Ace's "Black
Welcome to another edition of The Weekend Stream, The Second Disc's review of notable catalogue titles (and some new ones, too!) making digital debuts. The Christmas creep may continue, but we've got plenty more where that came from: a new spin on a John Lennon classic, rare remixes from David Bowie, a live triumph from Céline Dion, some thrills and chills from the Alien universe - and first off, a charitable compilation built for a good cause in the wake of our country's severest storms of
This year's Beatles catalogue title will showcase the albums that introduced American audiences to the sound of the Fab Four. 1964 U.S. Albums in Mono will include new vinyl remasters of six albums distributed by Capitol Records within the first year of the British band's arrival in New York City. Uniquely drawn from the first four Beatles albums in the U.K. and other single and EP material, these albums will be pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in faithful reproductions of their original
It's been quite a while since the last John Lennon "Ultimate" box set. Imagine arrived in 2018, followed by Plastic Ono Band in 2021; the multi-disc solo anthology Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes was released in between, in 2020. Anticipation justly ran high for this year's Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection, a 6CD/2BD set exploring every aspect of the solo Beatle's 1974 fourth album. (The politically-charged Some Time in New York City, a hybrid live/studio LP from John and Yoko, has
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up, featuring a selection of the new titles available today! As an Amazon affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. John Lennon, Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection (Capitol/UMe) 6CD/2BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 9LP/6CD/2BD Super Deluxe Box: Official Store 2CD (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP (includes contents of CD 1 and 6, below): Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon
John Lennon's fourth solo album Mind Games will receive a deluxe box set this summer packed with new mixes of the album's contents as well as a dozen unreleased outtakes. Available July 12, the 6CD/2BD box will take a new, immersive look at Lennon's sessions at New York's Record Plant in the summer of 1973, a turbulent time that resulted in a somewhat divisive effort in his post-Beatles discography. Included in the set are many assemblies of the original 12-track album, produced by Lennon and
Tomorrow, Record Store Day is once again upon us! It's that time of year where music lovers and vinyl flippers get together at their favorite physical music retailers and wait in line to snag some treasured albums - almost all of which are pressed on vinyl instead of CD (or, you know, sold on secondary marketplaces for above their retail value). This year, the list tops out at over 350 titles, so there's very nearly something for everybody. It wasn't easy to narrow our choices down to around
Continuing our look through this year's Record Store Day list, here is a glance at twenty-one releases from the Universal family of labels. All descriptions are taken from the labels. If you are interested in any of these titles, they will be available at your local record store on April 20. Head over to recordstoreday.com for a list of participating retailers. U.K. readers, please visit recordstoreday.co.uk and Canadian readers, please visit recordstoredaycanada.ca. The Beatles, "I Saw
On April 2, 1973, the first career-spanning compilations by The Beatles - broken up for three years - were released. Nicknamed for the colored borders around Angus McBean's iconic photos of The Fab Four (taken six years apart) leaning over a stairwell at EMI's offices in London, the "Red" (The Beatles 1962-1966) and "Blue" (The Beatles 1967-1970) albums offered on eight sides of vinyl a holistic view of the group's unbelievable discography: 54 hit singles, B-sides and treasured album cuts that
Welcome to The Weekend Stream, a relaxing review of notable digital-only catalogue titles. There may be no CD or vinyl, but there's plenty of great new/old music to float you into the weekend. There's a plethora of breakouts from box sets new to streaming, from John Lennon to Prince - plus rare remixes by Cyndi Lauper and a surprise treat from a beloved theme park. John Lennon, Imagine (The Ultimate Mixes / Deluxe) / Imagine (The Elements Mixes) / Imagine (The Evolution Documentary) / Imagine
I took a ride, I didn't know what I would find there... George Harrison's snarling takedown of the "Taxman" opened The Beatles' Revolver with a powerful sting. The so-called Quiet Beatle took on the first-person role with the relish of (and a musical nod to) a Batman villain. Though 1965's folk-rock-influenced Rubber Soul had seen the Fab Four's songwriting grow by leaps and bounds, Revolver matched the songwriting strides with revelatory studio processes including ADT (Artificial Double
The Beatles' seventh studio album - and the bridge between Rubber Soul and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - 1966's Revolver is recognized as one of the Fab Four's most groundbreaking as well as significant albums. With producer George Martin, the group employed studio wizardry to bring their new songs to life - tape loops, automatic double tracking, close miking, use of varispeed and reversed tapes, among other techniques that would soon be imitated by countless others - as well as
Everybody had a hard year/Everybody had a good time... The Beatles' twelfth and final studio LP may have been titled Let It Be, but that particular admonition has been all but ignored over the years. The album - recorded before, but released after, 1969's Abbey Road - was in some respects a step backward from the band's previous, experimental LPs as they sought a "back to basics" sound that didn't involve overdubs and studio wizardry. Ultimately, though, that approach was rejected. The
A book about a film about an album? The new coffee table book from Callaway Arts and Entertainment and Apple Corps, The Beatles: Get Back, is essentially that: a hardcover, 240-page tome based on the film footage shot in the buildup to The Beatles' final album, 1970's Let It Be. Get Back was, of course, the name of the first version of Let It Be. It's also the name of director Peter Jackson's upcoming three-part, six-hour documentary (the first part of which premieres November 25 on the
While The Second Disc prides itself on connecting people to reissues and box sets they can keep on their shelves, it's no secret that listening audiences are also digital - catalogue music lovers, too - and our passion is connecting people to music from the past that they might adore. So we've introduced a new feature: The Weekend Stream, which focuses on hidden gems that recently made it to digital channels that might make your playlists a little brighter! The Beatles, Get Back (Take 8) EP
Ace Records has had quite a 2021, from collections spotlighting the songs of Lou Reed and Donovan through this past week's releases from Petula Clark, late producer Norman Whitfield, and the ladies of Motown. Today, we're taking a look at a pair of recent releases from the venerable label. Lincoln Wayne "Chips" Moman (1937-2016) may never have become a household name, but the music he helped create certainly did. A guitarist, producer, songwriter, and engineer, Moman pioneered the sound of
More than 50 years after its May 1970 release, The Beatles' Let It Be - the Fab Four's final original studio album - remains anything but the last word on the band. While the LP topped the charts in multiple countries including the U.S. and U.K., and included such beloved now-standards as "The Long and Winding Road," "Across the Universe," "Get Back," and the title track, the road to its release was anything but a smooth one. It was previously announced that the story would be chronicled this
David Hepworth's 2017 book Never a Dull Moment: The Year That Rock Exploded set forth the author's belief that the year crystallized the "rock era," producing more enduring recordings than any other year in the genre's history. It's difficult to argue with any year that yielded John Lennon's Imagine, The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, Carole King's Tapestry, Joni Mitchell's Blue, Elton John's Madman Across the Water, Carly Simon's Anticipation, Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin'
Welcome to this week's Release Round-Up! John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band (Capitol/UMe) 6CD/2BD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 1CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada 2LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada The 6-CD/2-BD John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band: The Ultimate Collection contains everything recorded by John and Yoko during the sessions for John's 1970 Plastic Ono Band LP, totaling 159 tracks on CD and 131 on
While The Second Disc prides itself on connecting people to reissues and box sets they can keep on their shelves, it's no secret that listening audiences are also digital - catalogue music lovers, too - and our passion is connecting people to music from the past that they might adore. So we're introducing a new Saturday feature: The Weekend Stream, which focuses on hidden gems that recently made it to digital channels that might make your playlists a little brighter! Watch this: not a whole
The July 1969 single release of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" marked the first time that the name of the Plastic Ono Band appeared on a record label. Lennon and his new wife Yoko Ono - they'd married in March - resolved to use the flexible band handle for whichever group happened to be playing with them; the onstage document Live Peace in Toronto 1969 was credited to the band, as was the harrowing single "Cold Turkey." "Instant Karma!" modified the name slightly to "John Lennon and Yoko
On January 8, Parlophone will celebrate what would have been David Bowie's 74th birthday with a special 7" single featuring his covers of John Lennon's "Mother" and Bob Dylan's "Tryin' To Get To Heaven." "Mother" had been prepared for a Tony Visconti-led John Lennon tribute album that went unreleased, while "Tryin' To Get To Heaven" was recorded at Sony Music Studios during the mixing sessions for the LiveAndWell.com compilation (itself recently announced for release, find out more here). The
Today sees the streaming release of the documentary film Zappa from director (and Bill in the Bill & Ted series of films) Alex Winter. Taking into account the many sides of the late, iconoclastic artist - from musician to activist, from boundary-breaking rock-and-roller to innovative composer - the movie has already received widespread acclaim. Fully authorized by the Zappa Family Trust, Winter's portrait of the artist incorporates rare archival footage alongside interviews with key family