Adele's 2009 debut album, 19, was a Grammy-winning smash hit that revealed the British singer/songwriter's knack for bittersweet soul and folk-infused love songs that brought to mind an infectious mix of Dusty Springfield and Terry Callier. The album earned her a ton of fans, and interest was high for the inevitable follow-up. In many ways, her sophomore album, the similarly age-appropriate-titled 21, is a continuation of the sounds and themes Adele was working with on 19. She is still the bluesy pop diva with a singer/songwriter's soul and seemingly bottomless capacity for heartbreak. If the tastefully organic production and overabundance of well-known co-writers come off a bit too on-the-nose in terms of delivering to fan expectations, then the best thing the album does is to showcase Adele's titanic vocal ability, which – more than a few times on 21 – is simply spine-tingling.

Since 2008, Adele has allowed listeners to peek into her world, carrying them through the major stages of her life as a shoulder to cry on and a relatable presence. With her fourth set, 30, she grants more access than ever before, detailing one of her most painful seasons with poise and grace. Charting the aftermath of her 2019 divorce, 30 is not a fiery breakup album. Rather, focusing on acceptance, growth, and owning her mistakes, she's created a time capsule for her son, Angelo, to understand what his mother was going through at this pivotal time. After the curtains part on the dramatic, Judy Garland-inspired overture "Strangers by Nature," she addresses the split with "Easy on Me," redirecting her focus as a plea for patience and understanding from her son.

Since 2008, Adele has allowed listeners to peek into her world, carrying them through the major stages of her life as a shoulder to cry on and a relatable presence. With her fourth set, 30, she grants more access than ever before, detailing one of her most painful seasons with poise and grace. Charting the aftermath of her 2019 divorce, 30 is not a fiery breakup album. Rather, focusing on acceptance, growth, and owning her mistakes, she's created a time capsule for her son, Angelo, to understand what his mother was going through at this pivotal time. After the curtains part on the dramatic, Judy Garland-inspired overture "Strangers by Nature," she addresses the split with "Easy on Me," redirecting her focus as a plea for patience and understanding from her son.

Rag‘n’Bone Man’s second album opens with hope. It’s in the sound of birdsong, filtering through the dawn sky in Nashville, where the artist born Rory Graham wrote these songs. It’s in the lyrics – words of love to friends, family, his young son, and himself. And it’s in his unmistakable voice, grown all the richer from experience as he delves into his past, present, and future. This is an album, as Graham puts it, about growing up.

First aired ten days prior to the release of Girl on Fire, Alicia Keys' VH1 Storytellers program featured six songs. While this set expands the set to 11 songs, it does not present the full performance. Heavy editing was involved; certain portions of Keys' dialogue re hacked up, crowd noise is unnaturally lowered and raised in volume, and there is little evident effort to make the songs flow. Keys' first words here, the lead-in to "No One," are "We were at the end of the album, and it was finished, and…" – so it provokes the feeling of walking into the venue as the gig is in progress.

CAMERA SOUL is a powerful jazz-funk ensemble, produced by Mr. Marco Rossi of Azzurra Music (Verona) and released and marketed in the Americas by Kathryn Ballard Shut of TIMKAT Entertainment (Denver, Colorado). Inspired by legendary horn line, soul, R&B, and jazz-fusion artists such as Earth, Wind and Fire, The Commodores, Tower of Power, and Stevie Wonder, as well as neo-soul grooves by Incognito, Erykah Badu, and Jamiroquai, the group is based out of southern Italy (Bari), and led by veteran composer-arranger brothers Piero and Pippo Lombardo.

The sophomore effort from Georgia-raised, Britain-based vocalist Kristina Train, 2012's Dark Black is a brooding, atmospheric collection of slow-burn pop songs that put her burnished, sultry croon at the fore. Picking up where 2009's Spilt Milk left off, Dark Black finds Train once again working with British singer/songwriter Ed Harcourt, as well as songwriter/producer Martin Craft. Together, they've come up with an album that builds upon Train's twangy Southern roots layered with a baroque, cinematic aesthetic. Train's vocals are often drenched in an echo-chamber sound, often backed with boomy, resonant percussion, languid piano parts, eerie orchestral sections, shimmering baritone guitar lines, and even some light electronic flourishes. In that sense, the album brings to mind the work of such similarly minded contemporaries as singer/guitarist Richard Hawley and neo-soft rock singer Rumer as much as it does the classic soul-inflected '60s sound of Dusty Springfield.

'Three Little Words' concludes Dominique Fils-Aimé's album trilogy exploring the roots of African-American musical culture. Each album carries with it a lesson that has been learned and then moulded into each subsequent volume. This final album is Fils-Aimé's adaptation of soul music in the truest sense of the term: music that comes from the depths of her soul and is meant to challenge and enrich the souls of her listeners. It is at once both an acknowledgement and an appreciation of the different musical genres that live within her head and flavour her own soul. In music, as in with life, the best prognosticator is looking to the past.

Human, is the debut album from global phenomenon Rag'N'Bone Man, whose real name is Rory Graham, a singer songwriter from Uckfield, East Sussex, England. The album features the title track, "Human," an emerging worldwide hit that has achieved # 1 Singles Chart status in Austria, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, and is now moving up charts in the United States. The single is certified GOLD in Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden and Platinum in Switzerland. Rag'N'Bone Man's artistry began with the blues. He discovered the genre as a child, with the rhythmic troubles that rang out from his parents' record player and planted a stubborn seed in this kid's head.