This Toronto punk band love a good gimmick, from the 12-hour-show they played in 2008, to their 300-pound singer Pink Eyes' love of nude stage-diving. But Fucked Up's real appeal is simple: guitars, three of 'em, though it can seem like thirty. Their fourth disc is an "opera" about a factory yob in 1970s England transformed by his girlfriend's death. Pink's infamous barf-yowl vocal style renders David an opera without much libretto. Still, they still sustain eighty minutes of rousing noise-swirl powerage, like Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade re-imagined by anarchist Yetis. "Realizin' life's a waste," the hero muses, then FU's brutal grandeur turns pain into power.

Listen to "Queen of Hearts":

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“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.