You have to admire Alicia Keys' commitment to her street-nice vision. In the year Ciara grew up, Rihanna left the islands and Jill Scott explored the joy of sex, the twenty-six-year-old's third studio album envisions a hip-hop generation ready for its own Roberta Flack. Despite substantial input from Kerry "Krucial" Brothers, the rapper boyfriend Keys says she made wait a year to get down, the prevailing mood is reflectively soulful and the prevailing tempo mid. The pair's collaborations peak with two power ballads anchored by heavy keyboard hooks: the watch-your-step "Go Ahead" and the unconditional "No One." And while proven hitmakers Linda Perry and John Mayer add little, Plantlife's relatively obscure Jack Splash chips in on the album's two liveliest, loveliest tracks: "Teenage Love Affair," in which a street-nice girl stops at "third base," and "Wreckless Love," which goes "crazy" without specifying a single body part.

“The Pretender”

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."