Having wrestled with world annihilation in Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor is dealing with his scariest subject ever: marriage. His new trio is fronted by his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and married life doesn't exactly sound like bliss. In an eerily comatose voice, Maandig imagines the couple's guts getting ripped out onstage: "Opened up, proudly on display/What we tried so hard to hide away." Reznor's torture-device beats only magnify the push-pull between them. "Yes, now I need you," Maandig finally admits. Which might be sweet, if that song wasn't called "Parasite."

“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.