"I don't own the sun, I don't own the moon," cries Cold War Kids frontman Nathan Willett. It sounds like false modesty. On their third album, the Cali quartet swing for the fences — it's as if CWK, once a sharp band with retro leanings, have been gorging on Springsteen and Kings of Leon. (KOL producer Jacquire King oversees Mine Is Yours.) Willett has a wind-turbine voice, and on "Bulldozer," his bandmates whip up a mighty pomp-rock racket. But the songs are tedious and overbearing — they feel much longer than their average four-minute length. On the bombastic "Flying Upside Down," Willett sings, "Ambition, man, she looks good on you." Not so much, actually.

Listen to "Louder Than Ever":

 
The 50 Best Songs of 2010: Number 16, Cold War Kids — "Coffee Spoon"

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."