Kenny Chesney grew up in East Tennessee, but his real home is Margaritaville. Chesney is Jimmy Buffett's spiritual godson, specializing in easy-rolling country-pop songs about fleeing the humdrum to go boozing and boating in tropical paradises. "No more building transmissions/He's going deep-sea fishin'," crows Chesney in "Coastal." On his 12th studio album, Chesney serves up the usual carpe diem anthems (the burly "Live a Little") and holds his own with the great George Jones on the rollicking honky-tonk duet "Small Y'all." When the mood turns serious, he slips: He can't muster the gravitas to pull off the title track, a maudlin tribute to Ernest Hemingway. As long as the weather's sunny and the blender's whirring, Chesney's fine company.

See the hottest live shots of the week

“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.