Elvis Costello traffics in so many genres, it must be hard to focus on one. Here, he doesn't. Instead, busy producer T Bone Burnett brings period detail to a set of country, folk, music-hall and rock songs whose unifying conceit is America's recent fiscal sins. The rockers echo vintage Costello, down to Steve Nieve's squealing Vox organ. The subject matter calls for more musical edge than they deliver. But parlor songs like "Jimmie Standing in the Rain" evoke an era when political anger was cloaked in gentler sounds. Often, whispers speak louder than screams.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.