This album's dramatic opening track, "Kansas City," finds Melissa Etheridge recalling a youthful journey to freedom fueled by "Lucky Charms and Tic Tacs and Mom's amphetamines" in her "old man's Delta 88." Such autobiographical musing deepens Etheridge's 12th disc, which also expands her sonic palette. She plays all the guitars, a first, and producers Jacquire King (Kings of Leon) and Steve Booker (Duffy) deftly curb her over-the-top tendencies. "Be Real" is spare and funky, "Enough Rain" raw and folky. The restraint serves her well. She's realized that sometimes holding a little back can make what's there hit with all the more force.

Listen to '4th Street Feeling':

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."