It's been three years since Nelly Furtado's debut — enough time for her to sell 2 million CDs, win a Grammy and have a baby. But the song remains the same: A slick multiculti hodgepodge, Folklore is a Whoa, Nelly! redux, without a single as good as "I'm Like a Bird." The twenty-four-year-old kicks things off by proclaiming, "I am not a one-trick pony," but fails to back up that claim on the eleven songs that follow. Aside from the mechanized drum loops and assorted world-beat flourishes, she mostly sounds like a funkier Michelle Branch, complete with overwrought vocals and gooey melodies on songs such as "Try." Bright spot: The lighthearted hip-hop tune "Fresh Off the Boat," where she lets loose her jazzy voice and, for a few refreshing minutes, doesn't take herself too seriously.

“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.