October 28th
album anniversaries

Side one of Any Way You Like It is given to energetic disco songs, while side two turns to ballads. At its centre is “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, Thelma Houston’s remake of a Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes song, produced by Hal Davis, which went to number one in the US.

Several producers and arrangers worked across the record for Motown’s Tamla label. Michael Lovesmith produced the title track and a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t Know Why I Love You”, while “If It’s The Last Thing I Do”, first recorded in 1972, became the second US single.

“We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions” open News of the World, the same pairing Queen had released as a single on 7 October 1977. The album was recorded at Sarm East and Wessex Sound Studios in London between July and September that year, with Mike Stone engineering.

All four members wrote for it. Brian May contributed “All Dead, All Dead” as well as the opener, John Deacon wrote “Spread Your Wings”, Roger Taylor brought “Sheer Heart Attack” and “Fight From The Inside”, and Freddie Mercury’s “Get Down, Make Love” leans toward funk. It reached number four in the UK and number three in the US.

Games Workshop supplied the cover art for Realm Of Chaos, and the title comes from Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, a gaming book the company published in 1988. The whole album is tied to the Warhammer 40,000 background, in songs such as “World Eater”, “Plague Bearer” and “Through The Eye Of Terror”.

Bolt Thrower recorded at Loco Studios in April 1989 with engineer Tim Lewis, then mixed at Slaughterhouse Studios that July with Colin Richardson. Digby Pearson co-produced with the band for Earache. Compared with their earlier work, the songs push harder on speed and blast beats, with chaotic guitar solos from Gavin Ward and Barry Thomson around Karl Willetts’s vocals.

Most titles on Actual Life 3 are named after collaborators, and two brief pieces dated “January 1st 2022” and “September 9th 2022” bookend the album. Fred again.. built many of the songs around other people’s voices, sampling Delilah Montagu, 070 Shake, Wet and the Clara Ward Singers among others.

The record completed a trilogy that began with Actual Life in 2020, and much of it was written while travelling. “Danielle (Smile On My Face)” arrived as the first single in September 2022. The album reached number four in the UK and was shortlisted for the 2023 Mercury Prize.

Old western film scores and vintage Latin American music shape El Bueno y el Malo, the first album Hermanos Gutiérrez made for Easy Eye Sound. Dan Auerbach produced it at his studio in Nashville and joins the brothers on “Tres Hermanos”.

Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez were born in Ecuador and raised in Switzerland, and they wrote all ten instrumentals together. Their two guitars carry the album from the title track through “Hermosa Drive”, released as a single earlier that October, to “Dorado Valley” at the close. “Pueblo Man” later got a live session video from the label.

Monday at 6 a.m. Eastern was an unusual slot: Tyler, the Creator released Chromakopia then rather than on the industry’s usual Friday. He had revealed the title, date and cover eleven days earlier, after teasing the opening “St. Chroma” on social media.

Tyler wrote, produced and arranged the album, working with longtime collaborator Vic Wainstein. Daniel Caesar, Doechii, GloRilla, Lil Wayne, Lola Young, Santigold and Schoolboy Q are among the guests, and “Noid” went out as the lead single a week before release. Chromakopia debuted at number one on the Billboard 200.