Kelis doesn't shake much milk on her first record in four years. Instead, she brings it to a slow boil. Flesh Tone is a foray into the percolating house, moody electro and hard trance grooves that pump up airplane-hangar-size Euro clubs. She's always had an impressionistic vision of R&B, but this isn't just a curveball for the hell of it; she uses escapist tracks (written with guys like David Guetta and Jean Baptiste) to realist ends, exploring her recent divorce from Nas and life as a single mom. It's the classic throb of disco liberation.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."