Flashback is the second box set compilation by Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), released in 2000. In 2000, Jeff Lynne found a new impetus to work on the music of his old band and returned to the recording studio to work on an ELO project for the first time in some 15 years just prior to the comeback album Zoom in 2001. This work resulted in a digitally remastered compilation released in late 2000. Unlike its predecessors, this project, Flashback, was personally approved and endorsed by Lynne. The set includes songs featured from all 11 studio albums up to that point, including an edit of "Great Balls of Fire" from their live album The Night the Light Went On in Long Beach, plus some new recordings amongst the band's extensive back catalog, most notably a reworking of Lynne's only UK number one hit "Xanadu". The album includes liner notes by David Wild with quotes on each song from Lynne and a booklet inside.

Norway's a-ha took "Take on Me" to the number one spot on Billboard's Top 40 in 1985, thanks to the award-winning animated video that accompanied it. Still, a-ha contributed rather accordingly to the '80s pop sound, drenching their music with bouncy riffs and employing the keyboard as the foundation to their colorful formula. Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of a-ha assembles all of their singles together, a definite one-stop for all of their music. Combining ballads and radiant '80s pop, this set includes their most fervent offering in "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.," which hit number 20 in 1986 and originated from Hunting High and Low, the same album that included "Take on Me."

This incredibly diverse collection was Chicago’s sixth studio album and their final studio-recorded double album to date. Cited for its jazz excursions, Chicago VII reached No. 1 in the US and included three stand-out hits including Searchin’ So Long, Wishing You Were Here and the first single penned by trumpeter Lee Loughnane Call on Me, which reached No. 6 in the US.

Drama is the tenth studio album by the English rock band Yes, released on 18 August 1980 by Atlantic Records. It is their only album to feature Trevor Horn as lead vocalist, following the departure of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in March 1980 after unsuccessful recording sessions for a new album in Paris and London. Horn was joined by keyboardist Geoff Downes, his partner in the new wave band The Buggles. Drama was recorded in a short amount of time as a tour was already booked prior to the change in personnel. It marked a departure in the band's musical direction with songs more accessible and aggressive, and featuring the use of modern keyboards and a vocoder.

String Driven Thing may have disintegrated when Chris and Pauline Adams departed, but Graham Smith didn't let that deter him. He rebuilt the band from the foundation up and shifted the focus from progressive folk to a more straight-ahead rock & roll format, a sonic sensibility helped along by vocalist Kim Beacon, whose Rod Stewart-styled vocals provided a front to the heavy-hooked guitar-driven songs. The new format didn't win many points with the band's old fans, but String Driven Thing's more pop-oriented sound fit perfectly with the mainstream marketplace's own drift away from the prog-tinged seas that the band once sailed so masterfully.

Let's Talk About Love is the fifth English-language studio album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 14 November 1997, by Columbia/Epic Records. The follow-up to her commercially successful album Falling into You (1996), Let's Talk About Love showed a further progression of Dion's music. Throughout the project, she collaborated with Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Luciano Pavarotti, Carole King, George Martin, Diana King, Brownstone, Corey Hart and her previous producers: David Foster, Ric Wake, Walter Afanasieff, Humberto Gatica and Jim Steinman. Let's Talk About Love includes Dion's biggest hit, "My Heart Will Go On". Written by James Horner and Will Jennings, and serving as the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, "My Heart Will Go On" topped the charts around the world, and has become Dion's signature song.

Animals is the tenth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd, released in January 1977. A concept album, it provides a scathing critique of the social-political conditions of late 1970s Britain, and presents a marked change in musical style from their earlier work. Animals was recorded at the band's studio, Britannia Row, in London, but its production was punctuated by the early signs of discord that several years later would culminate in keyboardist Richard Wright leaving the band. The album's cover image, a pig floating between two chimneys on Battersea Power Station, was conceived by bassist and writer Roger Waters, and photographed by long-time collaborators Hipgnosis.

Delivered in the wake of Phil Collins' massive success as a solo star, Invisible Touch was seen at the time as a bit of a Phil Collins solo album disguised as a Genesis album, and it's not hard to see why. Invisible Touch is, without a doubt, Genesis' poppiest album, a sleek, streamlined affair built on electronic percussion and dressed in synths that somehow seem to be programmed, not played by Tony Banks. In that sense, it does seem a bit like No Jacket Required, and the heavy emphasis on pop tunes does serve the singer, not the band, but it's not quite fair to call this a Collins album, and not just because there are two arty tunes that could have fit on its predecessor, Genesis.

Simon & Garfunkel's second album, Sounds of Silence, was recorded 18 months after their debut long-player, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM – but even though the two albums shared one song (actually, one-and-a-half songs) in common, the sound here seemed a million miles away from the gentle harmonizing and unassuming acoustic accompaniment on the first record. In between, there had been a minor earthquake in the pop/rock world called "folk-rock," which resulted in the transformation of their acoustic rendition of "The Sound of Silence" into a classic of the new genre, complete with jangling electric guitars and an amplified beat that helped carry it to the top of the charts.

The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute took place on 11 June 1988 at Wembley Stadium, London, and was broadcast across 67 countries to a worldwide audience of 600 million people. Mandela was still an imprisoned anti-apartheid revolutionary at the time of the concert, but the event is considered a pivotal step leading to the eventual release of Mandela, in February 1990, following 27 years of incarceration. Unlike the Live Aid concert a few years earlier, the 1988 concert was not primarily a fundraiser (even though it made £5million) but an event intended to raise the awareness worldwide of the injustice occurring under the apartheid regime in South Africa at the time. Most pertinently, it was staged to highlight the lengthy imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and others senior ANC members, who had been arrested and held for attempting to change the system almost in the country 30 years before.

In 1998, it would have been a cheap joke to say that Mariah Carey had no other kind of hits than ballads, but in the ensuing decade she steadily remade herself into an R&B diva, obscuring if not quite erasing the well-mannered adult contemporary singer of the '90s. The 2009 compilation The Ballads – released just before Valentines Day 2009 – attempts to turn back the clock by focusing just on those AC tunes – 18 of them, in fact, including such mammoth hits as "Hero," "One Sweet Day," "Vision of Love," "I'll Be There," "I Still Believe," "Dreamlover," and "Always Be My Baby."

Is Candy Dulfer a jazz saxophonist with a feel for funk or a funk player with a jazz side to her musical personality? On FUNKED UP, she leans toward the latter. While there is some smooth melodious jazz here, most of this set is geared to paying tribute to old-school funk–Parliament, Funkadelic, James Brown, and the earliest efforts by Kool & the Gang and Rick James. There’s some rapping along with overtones of reggae rhymes and Latin rhythms, but for the most part FUNKED lives up to its title, with Dulfer’s heated sax shining throughout. This special edition of FUNKED UP! also includes a second disc of Candy Dulfer "chill-out" instrumentals.

When it comes to good time R&B played by top class musicians, you can’t beat the sound of Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings. After Bill quit the Rolling Stones in 1993, the bass player set about forming his own all-star band. As well as touring the world, the Rhythm Kings released a succession of fine albums, beginning with ‘Struttin’ Our Stuff’ in 1998. We have selected the hottest tracks from this debut album, as well as songs from subsequent albums ‘Anyway The Wind Blows’, ‘Double Bill’, ‘Groovin’ and ‘Just For A Thrill’.

Though not nearly as celebrated as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, or Deep Purple, Budgie was one of the finest heavy metal bands of the early to mid-'70s. The British power trio, formed in 1968, was influenced by Cream in the beginning, but by the time this self-titled debut album was released in 1971, Budgie was obviously paying close attention to Sabbath and Zep. In fact, it's hard to miss the impact that Robert Plant had on Budgie lead singer/bassist Burke Shelley. For those seriously interested in metal's development, bombastic treasures like "Homicidal Suicidal,"and "Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman" are essential listening.

Mick Taylor is the debut studio album by the former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor, released in 1979. Though the album was acclaimed by critics, the album's blues-based style was somewhat unfashionable at the time of release, when punk and new wave were becoming more popular. Taylor had tried to get his former band The Rolling Stones to record "Leather Jacket" on Multiple occasions. The Rolling Stones version can be found on many bootleg records.