"Apart from the things I touched/Nothing got broke all that much," sings Matthew Houck on "Nothing Was Stolen (Love Me Foolishly)," a harmony-laced heartbreaker on his fifth album. Houck, the Brooklyn-via-Georgia songwriter who performs as Phosphorescent, nails the ramble-tamble country-rock sound of Gram Parsons and Neil Young records, mixing rockers like the sax-fueled boogie "It's Hard to Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)" with elegantly bummed ballads like "The Mermaid Parade," a slow-mo lament about a bicoastal affair gone wrong. You might feel like you've heard some of Here's to Taking It Easy before, but Houck is skillful enough that you probably won't mind hearing it again.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.