Patti Smith had only released one vinyl single before releasing her landmark 1975 debut Horses, which is included on Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list. But the adopted New Yorker had penned poetry, plays and rock criticism, and her writerly gifts gleamed right alongside her impassioned vocal range on songs like the overhauled garage standard “Gloria” and the ska-licked “Redondo Beach”. Accompanied by guitarist Lenny Kaye and other superb players in the Patti Smith Group, she contributed a vital document to the founding myth of American punk music. Smith wouldn’t trouble the singles charts until the crossover success of her 1978 Bruce Springsteen co-write “Because the Night”, but 1976’s slow-burn ballad “Pissing in a River” and 1977’s bar-band bruiser “Ask the Angels” are not to be skipped past. And 1979’s “Dancing Barefoot” and “Frederick” show off a distinctly softer side. After meeting and marrying the MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith, she took nearly a decade off from releasing music before returning with 1988’s inspiring “People Have the Power”. She reignited her career after her husband’s death in 1994, meditating on the loss of multiple peers and loved ones on 1996’s Gone Again: observe the raga-like ruminations of “Beneath the Southern Cross”. Even as the musical landscape was continually remade around her, Smith sounded remarkably herself on 2004’s “Jubilee” and 2012’s “April Fool”, all while expanding her oeuvre with award-winning memoirs. For anyone paying attention to her lyrical acuteness over the years, the latter development should come as no surprise whatsoever.