March 23, 2015
On her second album, Lonelady's Julie Campbell proves why she's one of the post-punk revival's best-kept secrets. Inspired by Manchester's decaying outskirts, she makes lost and abandoned spaces -- physical and otherwise -- sound vital with bracing punk-funk and acoustic pop that's remarkably playful and sensual.
September 23, 1978
Blondie turned to pop producer Mike Chapman for their third album, on which they abandoned any pretensions to new wave legitimacy and emerged as a pure pop band. But it wasn't just Chapman that made it the group's best album, it was their own songwriting, including Deborah Harry and Chris Stein's "Heart of Glass" and Harry and then-new bass player Nigel Harrison's "One Way or Another." The result was state-of-the-art pop/rock circa 1978, with Harry's tough-girl glamour setting the pattern that would be exploited over the next decade by a host of successors led by Madonna.