"Even the Vatican knows not to fuck with me," chirps Robyn on her third release of 2010. The Swedish diva's swagger is earned. This disc cherry-picks from two previous Body Talk EPs while tossing in five new tracks. It all adds up to the best dance-pop album of 2010, 15 songs that are both immaculately catchy and packed with quirks: On "Fembot," she does a hilarious sexy-robot bit, bragging about her "automatic booty applications"; later, she trades over-the-top boasts with Snoop Dogg and turns in the kind of Day-Glo dancehall track M.I.A. used to rock. Even her Eurocheese ballads are passionately weird: On "Time Machine," she folds a Back to the Future reference ("All I want is a DeLorean") into a huge, heartfelt chorus Lady Gaga would kill to have written.

Keep up with rock's hottest photos in 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.