Brandon Boyd’s game has decayed a bit. On his band’s first album in five years, the Incubus heartthrob — who once tugged at TRL viewers’ heartstrings with the riffed-out sugar shot "Stellar" — is telling his beloved she’s "light like a feather, bright like a dying star" on "Switchblade." Just as Boyd’s lyrics have gone a little soft, so Incubus’ seventh album dilutes the hard-edged funk rock of their early-2000s peak popularity into slick, inert ripples of interchangeable power pop. Incubus retain some of their early, macabre nerdiness (the harmony-bedecked "Tomorrow’s Food" reminds us of our dirt-bound mortality), but, for all the energy, the melodies fail to ignite.

Listen to "In The Company of Wolves":

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“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.