"Let the music of your life / Give life back to music." Released 13 years ago yesterday, this is fourth and final studio album by disco/electronic duo Daft Punk. After the success of their Tron: Legacy soundtrack, they came back with this long album full of songs that spanned many genres and featured many collaborations with other artists. When you think of electronic music or maybe you've heard the popular singles from this album such as "Get Lucky" or "Lose Yourself To Dance", you might think it's mostly a pop record with electronic elements, and that's there, but it's more than that. Songs like "Within" and "The Game Of Love" are more slow-tempo rock with heavy keyboards and vocals sung through a vocoder. "Giorgio By Moroder" honors electronic music pioneer Giorgio Moroder with the longest track of the album; the first half slower and featuring audio of Moroder telling his personal life story to some music, and then it ends with an extended jam of synthesizer music. Like you might expect from electronic music, many of the tracks are 5 or 6 minutes long and are a fun vibe. The most popular songs have vocals from Pharrell Williams, and a few songs feature guitar from Nile Rodgers of Chic. And the song "Touch" has long musical interludes but features the vocals of Paul Williams, and his vocals almost sound like it might be from some Broadway musical or something. Throughout, Daft Punk keeps you guessing musically, melding disco, electronic, soft rock, funk and pop, and this album is a fun going-away party for the duo who announced Daft Punk was no longer recording or performing in 2021.

Release Year: 2013
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Released 28 years ago today, this is the first special event album by Michael W. Smith's record label Rocketown Records, and it was a massive hit in Christian music. Around this time, modern worship music was becoming more and more well-known, and Exodus paired that trend with some of the most popular Christian music artists of the day. Jars of Clay, Sixpence None The Richer, and dc Talk contributed original songs with a more worshipful tone than most of their other music of that time. Michael W. Smith co-writes a song with Cindy Morgan, who sings it here. The Katinas and Crystal Lewis cover modern worship favorites and make them their own. Third Day covers Michael W. Smith's "Agnus Dei", which was a chorus on Michael W. Smith's 1990 album and was already becoming a worship staple by this release, and I love their guitar-heavy reinvention of it. Michael W. Smith opens the album with an instrumental track to add a very cinematic but also worshipful feel to it, and a reprise closes out the album briefly. But before that, Michael W. Smith closes out the album with a beautiful cover of Rich Mullins's "I See You" only 9 months after Rich died in a car accident. Exodus is a beautiful collection of songs that fit well together despite the disparate artists and styles, and it proved the top CCM artists could make big waves if they get into worship music. Like many special event/compilation albums of the time, this does not exist on streaming, and you might have to find it on CD. And I love the CD packaging, too, as Jimmy Abegg has beautiful artwork including illustrations of each of the artists along with the lyrics and credits in the booklet.

Release Year: 1998
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Wow! This is a blast from the past. Released 30 years ago yesterday, this is the major-label debut album by pop singer Jaci Velasquez. Though she was only 16 years old when this was released, she had already released three albums before this. This is mostly Christian pop music, though a few of the songs have a bit of a Latin pop flavor hinting at the singer's heritage. Almost none of these songs are written by Velasquez herself, but are instead written by some of the best songwriters working in Nashville's Christian pop scene at the time. I haven't listened to this album in at least 25 years and Jaci Velasquez was never really a musical favorite of mine, but my sisters definitely had this album and listened to it a lot in the late '90s. So I listened to it with them and remember all these songs pretty well, as it's a well-written ten songs of pop. OK, maybe I even listened to it once or twice when they weren't around too. Jaci would go on to sell over three million albums in the U.S., also release pop music in Spanish, and even have a few acting roles in movies throughout her career.

Release Year: 1996
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Released 8 years ago today, this is the second album by rapper Jackie Hill Perry. She delivers fast-moving verses and, on this album, there are musical interludes between songs that are classic hymns or Gospel music, slowing down the album and adding moments of contemplation for the listener. Songs like "Hymn" feature a bunch of guest rappers and definitely is all about preaching the Gospel. But other songs use Jackie Hill Perry's personal experiences to talk about where she can improve while also pointing to God as her Lord and Savior. I love the production style here from a slew of Producers including the guys running the Humble Beast label which released this album. The album mixes a variety of styles and brings a lot of musicality to that is not there when it's all Jackie rapping. It's fitting to have an album with such a musical title to have such dynamic swings in musical elements. I haven't liked her production on her new Reach Records releases as much, but I hope she continues to create hip-hop because the raps are excellent.

Release Year: 2018
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