Records To Die For

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Records To Die For
Records to Die For 2018
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 25, 2018  |  9 comments
What's your favorite record? It's a simple enough question, but one that dedicated music consumers never tire of asking each other. And so, every year, we ask the distinguished writing staff of this magazine to choose a pair of favorites and tell us a little of what seems so compelling about them. Music in any recorded format is fair game, the only restriction being that it must still be available, if only in the deep, dark recesses of the Internet. Of course, favorites come and go in minds and hearts—speaking of dark recesses—but these are Stereophile's takes on the essential music of the moment.
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Records To Die For
Records to Die For 2019
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 17, 2019  |  35 comments
When we premiered this feature in 1991, we felt that, rather than a selection of all-time (or year's) best recorded performances or a list of audiophile reference albums, we should choose recordings that were, in then music editor Richard Lehnert's words, "both musically and sonically impeccable—in other words, the best, the tops, to die for." As RL went on, "such a list also makes for some strange procrustean bedfellows—obscure recordings that would never make the proverbial 'desert island' list snuggling up next to towering classics of the concert hall and control room."
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Records To Die For
Records to Die For 2020
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 15, 2020  |  90 comments
It's 3am. You're lying in bed. Something woke you up—you don't know what it was. You pull back the covers, get up, and tiptoe out to your listening room.

There, standing by your record rack, thumbing through your prized LPs, is a man in black (no, not Johnny Cash—a different man in black). You see a bulge in his pocket; it could be a gun. Something shiny catches your eye—there's a switchblade knife between his teeth! At his feet, leaning against your record shelf, is a cudgel. Oh, and it looks like he might have some infectious disease. You, of course, are in your PJs.

You notice, at the top of the stack of records that he holds under his arm, that one record, the one you love the most, the one you can't live without.

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Records To Die For
Records to Die For 2021
Stereophile Staff  |  Jan 12, 2021  |  25 comments
Records To Live For! In an ordinary year, the name of this annual feature, published every February since 1991, is a harmless, even amusing joke. In last year's opening essay, I evoked a heavily armed intruder perusing your record collection late at night and holding your favorite record in his hands: Would you risk your life by confronting him? That's hardly the first time that an author of the R2D4 lead essay made a joke about possibly dying.
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