My Aim Is True is the debut album by English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello. In 1977 Rolling Stone magazine named the album one of the best of the year. In 2003, the TV network VH1 named My Aim Is True the 80th greatest album of all time. In 2003, the album was ranked number 168 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2004, it was ranked 37 of the top 100 albums of the 1970s by Pitchfork which reported the album to be "held by many as the most impressive debut in pop music history." In 2007, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame…

Despite its rather cheeky title, Greatest Hits 1977-1990 is a good place to sample the entire Stranglers output. From the squalor of the late-'70s material, to the smoothed-out gloom pop of songs like "Skin Deep" and other mid- to late-'80s neo-goth rock, this is a solid anthology that values substance over style and exhaustive track selection. For sure, a well-edited Stranglers anthology is the only way to enjoy them; they recorded way too much dross to spend time searching out all of their plentiful, marginal records.

The Jam's enduring, eternal popularity in the U.K. meant an ever-increasing number of archival releases that cropped up over the years, with Live Jam, a fine counterpart to the other official concert album, Dig the New Breed, turning up in 1993. Like that earlier effort, it draws together a slew of tracks from shows ranging from 1979 to 1982, including some cuts from the band's almost-farewell headlining bows at Wembley Arena. Quite happily, there's no track overlap at all with Dig the New Breed, making the two perfectly complementary recordings in ways. The real treat, thanks to the expanded space on CDs, is the inclusion of nine songs from two December 1979 shows in London, the best portrait of what an actual specific show must have been like.