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1. Joni Mitchell 
Blue (Reprise, 1971)
After nearly fifty years, Blue remains the clearest and most animated musical map to the new world that women traced, sometimes invisibly, within their daily lives in the aftermath of the utopian, dream-crushing 1960s. It is a record full of love songs, of sad songs; but more than that, it is a compendium of reasonable demands that too many men in too many women's lives heard, in 1971, as pipe dreams or outrageous follies. "All I really, really want our love to do, is to bring out the best in me and in you, too," Mitchell sang to an elusive partner on the album's first track. That line, like so many of the melodic and lyrical gestures throughout Blue, is simple, but so radical. With the counterculture collapsing under the weight of its machismo-driven mythologies, women pushed forward with calls to imagine genuine equality in real life — in the private places where love and art is made. Blue articulates that demand and its effects more clearly than any other work of art. Musically, it reflects Mitchell's belief in what she's called "the feminine appetite for intimacy," with her nearly naked guitar playing, Appalachian dulcimer and occasional piano dominating the mix. Yet its rhythms and unexpected flights of melody also reveal Mitchell's movement toward the deeper improvisational waters of jazz, a sonic illustration for her love of crossing lines, the "white lines of the highway" or the generic ones of the recording studio. Lyrically Blue communicates both the cool of Joan Didion and the rawness of Sylvia Plath, and reminds us that emotional writing is only powerful when it is punishingly precise. The way Mitchell made the album was also revolutionary: She produced the sessions herself, directing a small band that included rival/peers like James Taylor (one of several lovers honored and exposed by her observations) and Stephen Stills. Mitchell would travel much farther on the lonely road she identifies in "All I Want," but Blue is her crossroads, where she bests her devils and invents a mode of expression that every singer-songwriter must master, but none can truly imitate. —Ann Powers (NPR Music)
@lolakimono wrote:3. Nina Simone
I Put A Spell on You (Philips, 1965)Nina Simone knew her own power. Not only did she cover the song "I Put A Spell on You," but she also used it as the title of her autobiography. The song, originally released in 1956 by Jay Hawkins, cemented his "Screamin" moniker.
Oh thank you for this. I answered a post earlier this week. I was trying to think of this song and the man who sang it. Boom! There it is!
still love Laura Nyro 
@namaste000 wrote:still love Laura Nyro
NY Tendaberry is #82. Didn't see Eli.
Portishead's Dummy is #79.
There are some other gems in the higher numbers.
Nice that Patti Smith's Horses made #7.
@lolakimono wrote:as compiled by NPR-
Countdown from #10-
10. Carole King
Tapestry (Ode, 1971)With Tapestry, Carole King cemented her place as one of the key architects of 20th-century popular music. Here, she fully claims the spotlight, not only as a top-notch composer, but as a deeply soulful lyricist and singer. Considered her crowning achievement by critics, record sales of over 25 million confirmed that the public agreed. From "I Feel the Earth Move" to "You've Got a Friend," the track list is a veritable master class in pop standards with King, one of America's most dependable hitmakers, flexing in a new genre. With her unadorned piano wrapped in plainspoken lyrics about the pulls of kinship and self-actualization, it's no wonder the record stands the test of time as not only a bedrock in the singer-songwriter genre but also as the soundtrack of suburban feminism of the early 1970's. King's evolution as both an artist and woman are perhaps most evident in the grown-up version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" that appears on Tapestry. The first major writing credit for the then-teenaged King and lyricist husband Gerry Goffin, which hit No. 1 for The Shirelles in 1961, is transformed from a girl's yearning question into the bittersweet doubts of a woman wise enough to know that even true love doesn't always last "til the night meets the morning sun." —Jill Sternheimer (Lincoln Center)
@lolakimono~~~I treasure my Carole King Tapestry album. I still have it. This reminds me of something my old flame told me at our last class reunion. He said he could never understand what I saw in her music!
I am sure that is why we didn't stay together. LOL
Thanks for posting this lolakimono.
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