When you first left me, I was wanting more/But you were fucking that girl next door. With these gentle words, Lily Allen entered the breakup-song hall of fame, singing "Smile" to her ex with a breezy sha-la-la lilt that just made the song seem even nastier. The girl's got a mouth on her. She blew up in the U.K. last year and already has a sizable cult here, so the U.S. release of her debut album, Alright, Still, is belated yet welcome. In the tradition of Annie, Robyn and Stacey Q, Allen is a theoretical pop princess whose U.S. audience consists mainly of lonely-guy literary types. The twenty-one-year-old London brat writes shambling pop songs, rooted in ska and rap, with cheeky rhymes — she never sounds like she's trying too hard. In "LDN," she walks through the city checking out pimps and crack whores, because "the filth took away my license." (That means the cops.) She gushes about how bright and sunny London is, and you sure don't hear that every day — but it's just more proof that Lily Allen's an original.

“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."