Beloved and award-winning children's troubadour Raffi has captivated the young and young-at-heart alike since this very first album release in 1976. Singable Songs For the Very Young features loads of toe-tapping, sing-along favourites like "Down By the Bay," "Spider On the Floor" and "Five Little Frogs," hits guaranteed to have you and your four to 10-year-olds clapping to the upbeat rhythms. Raffi's reggae, ragtime, gospel, jazz and country inspired tunes have captured the hearts and minds of children everywhere, and this album will show you why.

Audio Mixers: Charles Yingling; Brent Maher.
Recording information: The Blue Room Studios, Nashville, TN.
Photographer: Margaret Malandruccolo.

After becoming the highest-selling artist of 2008 and 2009, Taylor Swift returns in 2010 with her third album, having written all the material without outside help. Speak Now finds her sticking close to the country-pop hybrids that made her famous, although a full orchestra is also used on several songs.

Part reggae, part ragtime, part folk and all fun, Raffi has consistently pleased his young fans since his first album release in the late '70s. With Baby Beluga, Raffi brings his audience to new levels of squealing, clapping delight pleasing the crowd with favourites like the title track, "Oats and Beans and Barley" and "To Everyone In All the World." If your youngsters love to learn, sing and have fun all at the same time, then this wonderful 1980 release is a must-own.

One of Canada's best loved voices brings her talents to the younger set with this endearing collection of songs for children. From traditional children's tunes to kid-friendly jazz and pop standards, Anne Murray puts her heart into every track on this rambunctious collection.

Personnel: Duchess Nell Catchpole (violin, viola); Christopher Allan (cello); Nick Etwell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Pete Beachill (trombone).
Audio Mixer: Ruadhri Cushnan.
Recording information: Eastcote Studios, London.
Photographer: Max Knight .
Arranger: Mumford & Sons.
English folk outfit Mumford & Sons' full-length debut owes more than a cursory nod to bands like the Waterboys, the Pogues, and the Men They Couldn't Hang. The group's heady blend of biblical imagery, pastoral introspection, and raucous, pub-soaked heartache may be earnest to a fault, but when the wildly imperfect Sigh No More is firing on all cylinders, as is the case with stand-out cuts like "The Cave," "Winter Winds," and "Little Lion Man," it's hard not to get swept up in the rapture. Like their London underground folk scene contemporaries Noah & the Whale, Johnny Flynn, and Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons' take on British folk is far from traditional. There's a deep vein of 21st century Americana that runs through the album, suggesting a healthy diet of Fleet Foxes, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, Blitzen Trapper, and Marah. That melding of styles, along with some solid knob-twiddling from Arcade Fire/Coldplay producer Markus Dravs, helps to keep the record from completely sinking into the quicksand of its myriad slow numbers -- tracks like "I Gave You All," "Thistle & Weeds," and "After the Storm" are pretty and plain enough, but they neuter a band this spirited. Sigh No More is an impressive debut, but one that impresses more for its promise of the future than it does its wildly inconsistent place in the present. ~ James Christopher Monger

Audio Mixer: Mike Piersante.
Recording information: Village Recorder, Los Angeles, CA.
Editors: Emile Kelman; Jason Wormer.
Photographer: Danny Clinch.

Bruno Mars was riding high when his first album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, was released in late 2010. He was also writing songs as part of the successful production team the Smeezingtons, and doing some hook singing (for huge hits by Travie McCoy and B.o.B.), Mars seemed to dominate the radio and charts. Indeed, the first single from the album, the lushly romantic "Just the Way You Are," was topping the singles chart. For the album, Mars worked with a large team of songwriters and producers, but still managed to come up with a record that sounds like it was written and recorded on a warm, sleepy summer Sunday afternoon. The intimate and relaxed feel can be traced to two factors; one, Mars mostly played all the instruments himself, and two, his voice is the kind of smooth instrument that slips into your ear like honey. Most of the tracks on Doo-Wops capture this laid-back groove, especially "The Lazy Song" and the reggaefied midnight love jam "Our First Time." Mars barely raises a sweat on these tracks, cruising in low gear but with a very likeable style. It's not very deep and it's not poetry, but sweetly played and sung songs like "Count on Me" or "Just the Way You Are" project a cuddly image and will melt hearts from tweens to old folks. The only glimpse of Mars as something more than an innocuous charmer is on the song that ends the album. "The Other Side" features Cee Lo Green and B.o.B. and has the most complicated melody, and the best production and singing; it sounds like the only song that Mars truly invested with some soul and grit. It was also recorded way before the rest of the album, and featured on the EP that came out earlier in 2010. It points to a direction Mars could have taken with the album but didn't. ~ Tim Sendra

Liner Note Author: P!nk.
Photographer: Andrew MacPherson.
Initially positioned as a white-girl R&B singer in the vein of TLC, P!nk quickly turned into something more distinctive, embracing rock & roll and confessionals in equal measure on her second album, 2001's M!ssundaztood. "Get the Party Started" provided her breakthrough, its hedonism balanced by its raw-nerve sequel "Don't Let Me Get Me," and from there she racked up a decade's worth of hits, bouncing between these two extremes. Released in 2010, Greatest Hits.So Far!!! rounds up the great majority of these hits, bypassing some singles -- her debut "Most Girls" and "You Make Me Sick," "God Is a DJ," "Funhouse" and, most regrettably, "Feel Good Time," her Beck/William Orbit-written entry for the Charlie's Angels II: Full Throttle soundtrack -- but hitting all the blockbusters ("There You Go," "Just Like a Pill," "Trouble," "Stupid Girls," "U + Ur Hand," "So What," "Please Don't Leave Me") while adding two new entries to her canon: the rabble-rousing "Raise Your Glass" and the profane love letter "F**kin' Perfect." Both new entries are fine, even if they border ever so slightly on the conventional, but the real story of Greatest Hits.So Far!!! is naturally the well-known hits that remain smart, addictive pop even after innumerable plays. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Recording information: Conway Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Henson Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Playback Recording Studio, Santa Barbara, CA; Roc The Mic Studios, New York, NY; Rocket Carousel Studio, Los Angeles, CA; Silent Sound Studios, Atlanta, GA; Studio At The Palms, Las Vegas, NV; The Boom Boom Room, Burbank, CA; Triangle Sound Studios, Atlanta, GA.
Photographer: Will Cotton.
Preceded by her second number one single on Billboard magazine's Hot 100, "California Gurls," Katy Perry's Teenage Dream is filled with dance-pop that made One of the Boys her breakthrough album, but this time there's a decidedly summer spin. Hitmakers like Greg Smith, Dr. Luke, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, and even Weezer's Rivers Cuomo lend a hand for what Perry predicts "will be one of those records that is everybody's favorite guilty pleasure."

My Worlds Acoustic isn't quite as stripped down as its title promises. While acoustic guitar is used on most of these versions, there's plenty of electric instrumentation as well. Regardless, Justin Bieber puts an intimate -- and often slower -- spin on several of the most popular songs from his first two releases, including the Top 20 hits "One Less Lonely Girl," "One Time," and "Baby." The very electric "Pray," meanwhile, is a decent, previously unreleased song added as an enticement. Is the disc a cash-in? Absolutely. Will it please his insatiable fans? Absolutely. ~ Andy Kellman