Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

1. Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer She’s made two conceptual albums featuring her alter-ego, the time-traveling android Cindi Mayweather, and starred in two films: the Oscar-winning Moonlight and Hidden Figures. And yet a major commercial breakthrough has so far eluded her. But this could be Monáe’s moment. Working with Prince before he died in 2016, Monáe went on to create a strikingly personal album. The sensual “Make Me Feel” is a direct homage to Prince’s “Kiss,” while “Americans” resembles the free spirit of his “Let’s Go Crazy” and the finger-popping “Pynk” channels the Purple One’s sexually liberated anthems. Monáe uses her new album to explore themes of femininity, LGBTQ and blac...

At 76, Sir Paul could be forgiven if he slowed down and kicked back in his slippers with a nice cuppa. But that’s not Macca’s way. In fact he’s as busy as ever, going viral with James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke and launching another world tour Sept. 17 in Quebec City. On his 17th solo studio album, McCartney sounds still in his prime—feisty, frisky and having fun. The flirtatious “Come On to Me” is a delirious rocker, while “Fuh You,” produced by hitmaker Ryan Tedder, is sexy and infectious. The rest of the album, produced by Greg Kurstin (Beck, Adele), ranges from the Latin jazz of “Back in Brazil” and the bouncy “Happy With You” (about his wife Nancy Shevell) to the cautionary political...

From its upside down cover photo to the off-kilter music inside, Grande’s fourth album is clearly meant as the ponytailed pop singer’s Mature Artistic Statement. The quirkier tracks come courtesy of singer-rapper-producer Pharrell Williams, of “Happy” fame, while the more straightforward offerings are the work of Swedish hitmaker Max Martin. Grande makes no direct reference to the terrorist attack at her May 2017 Manchester concert that killed 23 people and injured another 500, although one bubbling, infectious Williams number has Grande half-rapping “The light is coming to give back everything the darkness stole.” She addresses her clinical anxiety on “Breathin’” and “Get Well Soon,” the la...