I have a lot of one-off albums in my collection that I love despite not owning anything else by the artists who recorded them. Albums such as k.d. lang’s Absolute Torch and Twang, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Afghan Whigs’ 1965, to name just a few.

In most cases, I’ve sampled other work by those artists and decided it wasn’t really my thing. But on that one album, they tapped into something special and earned a spot in my heart, and on my CD shelf, forever.

Now that I think about it, those albums are probably worth a theme week of their own. Stay tuned.

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