Jeff Beck is surely the only guitar hero of his generation — a former Yardbird and the man who lit the fuse of 1970s fusion — who now makes records like a Chemical Brother: wildfire-instrumental affairs set in fat, dirty jungles of looped percussion and synth licks. He's damn good at it, too. Some of the vocal-sample high jinks ("Seasons," "Hot Rod Honeymoon") wear after repeated plays; this is, after all, a guy who wisely dispensed with singers after 1974. But Beck rules machine parties such as "So What" with a knockout brutality — cutting through the programming with feedback-tipped spears of lyricism and big-cat growls of distortion — while his biting, acrobatic elegance in the album's closing ballads highlights the beauty and melody inside the violence.

“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.