This is not an age of great subtlety in dance pop, generally speaking, but just try telling that to Jessie Ware. As a featured vocalist on last year's SBTRKT album, the 26-year-old U.K. singer turned heads with her understated style. She perfects that approach on this set of elegant synth ballads, confiding hopes and heartbreaks in tones that command attention without ever chewing the scenery.

Listen to 'Devotion':

“Karma Chameleon”

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."