Eric Clapton Life IN 12 Bar

Aside from his tremendous powers of performance, Stevie Wonder stands as one of the greatest songwriters of the late 20th century, probing the joyous peaks and depressing valleys of love and relationships. The Motown tribute album Conception: An Interpretation of Stevie Wonder's Songs has its highs and lows as well; with Stevie himself in the producer's chair (along with new-era Motown exec Kedar Massenburg), the album certainly has a lot of promise. It boasts plenty of neo-soul balladeers – India.Arie, Mary J. Blige, Brian McKnight, Joe, Musiq – as well as mainstream stars like Eric Clapton and John Mellencamp, who took musical cues from classic Stevie Wonder LPs like Talking Book or Songs in the Key of Life.

Any discussion of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums will have to include some grunge, and this one is no different. A defining element of that decade, the genre (and the bands that rose to fame playing it) was given credit for revitalizing rock at a badly needed moment. That said, there's far more to the story. Our list of the Top 100 '90s Rock Albums, presented in chronological order, takes in the rich diversity of the period.

Dire Straits emerged during the post-punk era of the late '70s, and while their sound was minimalistic and stripped down, they owed little to punk. If anything, the band was a direct outgrowth of the roots revivalism of pub rock, but where pub rock celebrated good times, Dire Straits were melancholy. Led by guitarist/vocalist Mark Knopfler, the group built their sound upon the laid-back blues-rock of J.J. Cale, but they also had jazz and country inflections, occasionally dipping into the epic song structures of progressive rock. The band's music was offset by Knopfler's lyrics, which approximated the winding, stream-of-conscious narratives of Bob Dylan…

Mixed by Grammy Award-winning mixer/engineer Paul Hicks, overseen by Dhani Harrison and remastered and cut at Abbey Road by Alex Wharton, All Things Must Pass is George’s spiritual high, a true classic and unquestionably one of the greatest albums ever made.

The shock of the new meets old-school synths, free-form rock, gutbucket blues and harmolodic funk in sax master Kjetil Møster’s eponymous group’s incredibly various, genre-defying new studio album. Møster!’s latest edition is a Norwegian supergroup featuring Motorpsycho guitarist Hans Magnus Ryan (aka Snah), one-time Motorpsycho and Grand General drummer Kenneth Kapstad, Nikolai Huengsle (of The National Bank, Elephant 9, Big Bang and Needlepoint) on electric bass and electronics, plus legendary studio-boffin Jorgen Træen, who also acts as engineer, on modular synths and lap steel guitar. Kjetil Møster plays sax, clarinet, electronics and percussion.

Houston native Jay Hooks can stand shoulder to shoulder with the long list of Texas electric blues guitar legends he emulates. He grew up playing guitar on the Houston bar circuit throughout the late '70s and '80s, earning his stripes by playing in the shadow of local legends like Albert Collins and Billy Gibbons. Taking a nod from these sources, Hooks' was able to incorporate the highly typified electric blues/rock sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan with his affinity for more traditional blues influences. He received his first major exposure after he was asked to join Texas R&B die-hard "Miss" Lavelle White on a series of national tours.

With their fusion of blues, rock & roll, and R&B, the Fabulous Thunderbirds helped popularize roadhouse Texas blues with a mass audience in the '80s and, in the process, they helped kick-start a blues revival during the mid-'80s.