JON CARAMANICA

Prince has been releasing music steadily since 1978, making for one of the most daring, radical and inventive catalogs in all of pop. Here are five of his finest albums.

By the time Merle Haggard reached a certain age, it was clear that he had begun to fatigue of some choices, and songs, he made as a younger man. Chief among them was “Okie From Muskogee,” the No. 1 hit from 1969 that, through one lens, sent his career into overdrive and, through another, was more damaging.