There is life after—and before—the Eighties. On her 2008 debut, Ladyhawke (New Zealander Phillipa Brown) was a flaming Reagan-era synth-pop revivalist, but on Anxiety, she has cranked up her guitars and given her keyboards a jittery New Wave makeover. The result is a buzzsaw-sharp pop-rock album, full of hard-charging hooks, with one foot toe-tapping in 1978 and the other planted firmly in 2012. 

Listen to 'Anxiety':

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.