Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

By now, the world is familiar with the artistry of England’s Florence Welch, the powerful vocalist-frontwoman of the popular indie-rock band that bears her name. She’s partial to laying down her massive, layered gospel voices over soaring orchestral synths and booming percussive flourishes. Less familiar is the more subdued side of the London-born singer. On her band’s fourth album, Welch strips her music back to its bare essentials. “Grace,” a touching tribute to her younger sister, is just piano and vocals. “No Choir,” as the title suggests, also eschews anything but voice and keyboards. There are tracks with lusher instrumentation, including “Hunger,” a confessional about her teenage eati...

Drake became a global superstar by baring his soul, expressing personal truths about relationships rather than boasting about guns and drugs. His fifth album, named after his zodiac sign, continues the tradition, with the biggest revelation being his admission of fatherhood on two separate tracks. On “Emotionless,” Drake raps: “I wasn’t hiding my kid from the world, I was hiding the world from my kid.” “We only met two times," he says of Sophie Brussaux, the Frenchwoman who’s rumored to be the mother of his son, before expressing angst about being a single parent. Elsewhere, Drake takes aim at his rivals in the hip-hop world on “Survival” and sums up his success on “Sandra Rose” with the lin...

Uneven albums and a long stint as a coach on TV’s The Voice kept Christina Aguilera from cementing her status as one of pop’s most gifted singers. Now she’s broken free and found her way with this, her eighth album and first in over five years. Mixing hip-hop, reggae and dance elements with her signature power ballads, the 15-track collection is Aguilera’s unwavering statement of independence and self-discovery. Always adept at picking collaborators, she teams up with Kanye West on the infectious “Accelerate” and “Maria” and with Anderson. Paak on the edgy “Sick of Sittin.’” “Right Moves” is a sexy island-flavoured workout, while the Julia Michaels-penned “Deserve” is an anguished r&b co...