It's time someone adapted the Now That's What I Call... compilation formula to fit dance music's pop surge. But on this remix-heavy collection, pop stars are subsumed to the machine, e.g. Sidney Samson reducing Nicki Minaj to stray syllables on his remix of David Guetta's "Turn Me On." Many hooks are annoying: Arcade Eastside speed up Tinie Tempah's "Written in the Stars" without improving it, and Eric Prydz vs. Floyd's "Proper Education" clumsily layers "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2" over shiny house beats. The best tracks here bounce (Duck Sauce's disco-loopy "Barbra Streisand," Martin Solveig's guitar-hooked "Hello"); too often, the others just bludgeon. Upshot: no bottle service.

Listen to "Turn Me On (Sidney Samson Remix)":
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“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."