"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.

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“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.