It's been a long stretch between Usher albums — long enough for Chris Brown to build a whole career, growing from a temporary substitute to an undeniably major pop star. He seals the deal with Exclusive, an all-grown-up album on a level with Justin Timberlake's Justified, Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad or even Bobby Brown's King of Stage. "With You" is the convincer, even if you can instantly tell that producer Stargate was just trying to roll out "Irreplaceable" one more time — Brown moans over the acoustic-guitar loop with a poignant R&B surge, sending this one out to "hearts all over the world tonight." Brown cruises through teen-romance ballads ("Take You Down") and jumping dance tracks like the T-Pain duet, "Kiss Kiss," where he reminds everybody, "I'm just a country boy from Tappahannock V-A." A true Southern gentleman, he offers to take your mama shopping in "I Wanna Be." Kanye West adds an adult pop touch to "Down" — hell, even the Will.i.am song isn't completely garbage. Brown's gotten a stronger grip on his Stevie Wonder croon, and it's hard to imagine he doesn't have an album's worth of hits here.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."