"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"

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."