Andy White - Teenage (1996)

Of all the many "new Dylans" who emerged in the '80s, none was more impressive than Belfast singer-songwriter Andy White. With his scratchy voice and torrential, irreverent lyrics, he won critical praise on both sides of the Atlantic, but he didn't sell many records until his album, Teenage, yielded a hit single, "Get Back Home," in Ireland last year. That album was finally released in the U.S. in 1997, and it shows the influence of his membership in the trio ALT, with Tim Finn of Crowded House and Liam O'Maonlai of the Hothouse Flowers. His two partners (who cowrote five of the songs on Teenage) gave White an appreciation for pop harmonies and radio-friendly bounciness. This new accessibility welcomes listeners into White's wonderfully witty and evocative wordplay, where a lover's change of heart "makes me wonder what keeps the aeroplanes hanging in the sky" and where a gay cousin needs "a video of Torch Song Trilogy to tell his mother." --Geoffrey Himes