Not strictly a "greatest-hits" collection, Love Songs contains Elton John's most famous ballads, from "Your Song" and "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" to "Can You Feel the Love Tonight." Featuring two new songs, including the single "You Can Make History (Young Again)," Love Songs is designed for the casual John fan who is familiar with his songs through adult contemporary radio…

The Farm were never one of the great Madchester bands, writing only one truly memorable single ("All Together Now") and turning out a bunch of pleasant, nondescript baggy. The Best of the Farm collects all of the singles and highlights from the group's three albums. There aren't any hidden treasures here, but anyone nostalgic for the pleasures of loping beats, baggy clothes, neo-psychedelia and buckets of Ecstasy should be pleased with this collection.

Within a matter of months after Kurt Cobain's suicide in April of 1994, fans started asking for the official release of all the demos, stray songs, alternate takes, and rarities in Nirvana's vaults. Due to various legal disputes between the surviving bandmembers and the Cobain estate, this long-awaited set of unreleased material did not appear until late 2004, when the three-disc, one-DVD box With the Lights Out finally appeared…

First Blood harks back to the glory days of the '60s blues-rock boom – Mike Henderson and the Bluebloods' gritty sound is far from original, but years on the Nashville bar band circuit have honed their skills to a razor-sharp point, and the record is refreshingly raw and direct, distinguished by rock-solid musicianship.

This is a great reminder of what the best 1980s pop/rock sounded like. It includes most of Pat Benatar's hits, with the unfortunate omission of I Need A Lover, the passionate melodic churner from 1979. It also includes her best album tracks like the poignant Hell Is For Children but her excellent version of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is missing. Benatar specialised in powerful rock numbers with strong power chords and catchy hooks, delivered to full effect in her belting voice, like Heartbreaker, Hit Me With Your Best Shot and Love Is A Battlefield. In this sense Benatar was something like a female Meat Loaf and in fact not too far from Bonnie Tyler. But there were also the quiter songs in a more tender voice, like the synth-driven We Live For Love, a pop classic. With 18 tracks, this is a better compilation than Best Shots with its 15 tracks.

Collecting Nightwish's first three albums and the EP "Over the Hills and Far Away" (which includes six additional songs that were not on the original spinefarm edition) into one package, this boxed set is a nice addition to any fan's collection…

In the summer of 1956, the famed Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell arranged for Dizzy Gillespie to embark on a worldwide goodwill-ambassador tour sponsored by the State Department. Gillespie and an all-star big band featuring trumpeter Quincy Jones, the late trombonist Melba Liston, alto saxophonist Phil Woods, and tenor saxophonist Benny Golson performed in Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil to frenzied, beret-wearing fans. Recordings were made but they weren't commercially available and were played only for a select group of musicians before Gillespie's death in 1993. Now the sides have been released, showcasing Dizzy at his bebopping best.

This box set devoted to Pink Floyd was somewhat frustrating at the time of its release. Priced at over 100 dollars, it included nine CDs drawn equally from their EMI and Columbia Records, starting with their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets. That seemed to confuse a lot of people who regard that transitional album as a lot less important and alluring than its predecessor, Piper at the Gates of Dawn…

During the mid-'70s, Germany's Kraftwerk established the sonic blueprint followed by an extraordinary number of artists in the decades to come. From the British new romantic movement to hip-hop to techno, the group's self-described "robot pop" – hypnotically minimal, obliquely rhythmic music performed solely via electronic means – resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late- 20th century, and as pioneers of the electronic music form, their enduring influence cannot be overstated…

Former Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover's first true solo album is an ambitious concept built around the properties and powers of the four elements – earth, wind, water, and fire – with the four principle tracks dedicated to each one in turn. Recorded with the Munich Philharmonic, plus an impressive arsenal of keyboards, percussion, and wind, the sound of the album is vast, yet never so prepossessing as to leave the listener feeling at all alienated by another ham-fisted attempt to meld rock with the classics. Rather, the Wagnerian scope of the music, and the immensity of the orchestra itself, are both wholly ingested into Glover's traditional knack for writing well-arranged, dynamic pop/prog rock.