Pink is twenty-year-old Alecia Moore's hair dye of choice and, for that matter, her skin color. She's got a dazzling, gymnastic R&B voice, without a hint of style that's all her own. Her debut has one awesome single in "There You Go," whose wronged-woman sass is set to a stop-start groove so bling-bling it redeems a chorus that ends, "Sometimes it be's like that." Beyond that, though, every melismatic groan, every clipped harmony, every post-Timbaland beat, every synth setting (like the "No Scrubs"-style harpsichord) is copped from some R&B hit of the last eighteen months. (The fiery internal dialogue of "Split Personality" would have seemed more original before Kelis' "Caught Out There," though.) She makes a pretty good Monica, but we already have one of those.

“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.