AND FOR OUR SECOND ACT ...

Lorde’s long-awaited, much-anticipated sophomore album will be released Friday. Melodrama comes four years after the Grammy-winning Pure Heroine. It’s a tough act to follow, but many other artists have avoided the sophomore slump. Jim Reyno highlights f

BOB DYLAN, THE FREEWHEELIN’ BOB DYLAN (1963)

Career-defining album for Dylan ... for the folk phase of his career, at least. Contains the scathing indictment Masters of War, one of the 1960s’ most impassioned protest songs. The oft-covered Blowin’ In The Wind is also on Freewheelin’, as well as the underrated A Hard Rain’s AGonna Fall, which features one of Dylan’s strongest vocal performances.

THE BAND, THE BAND (1969)

What swings like Rag Mama Rag, with Rick Danko sawing on that fiddle? Nothing. OK, maybe Up On Cripple Creek with Levon Helm’s funky drumming. Not just toe-tapping, the Band’s self-titled album also touches the heart with tragic tales King Harvest (Has Surely Come) and the standard The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

BLACK SABBATH, PARANOID (1970)

Essential heavy metal from Ozzy and the boys. The album gets right to it, kicking off with eight minutes of War Pigs, then right back at ya with the title track, Sabbath’s only Top 5 hit in the U.K. Paranoid the album also contains Iron Man, with that fistpumping opening hook.

PUBLIC ENEMY, IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK (1988)

Featuring some of the most creative (and sometimes deliberately annoying) uses of sampling in the hip-hop genre, Nation of Millions is robust, political, funky and fun. Includes Chuck D’s infamous media salvo Don’t Believe the Hype.

NIRVANA, NEVERMIND (1991)

The video seemingly came out of nowhere, this guy in a striped shirt with scruffy hair and scruffier voice, tearing it up in a high-school gym. But the video — and the song — Smells Like Teen Spirit became ubiquitous in the late summer of ’91. The album Nevermind provided a soundtrack for a generation, and Kurt Cobain became that generation’s reluctant spokesperson.