In his Eighties band the Dream Syndicate, singer- guitarist Steve Wynn subverted Sixties psychedelia with droning guitars and tangled skeins of lies and treachery, like a Velvet Underground score to a Fifties-noir film. Northern Aggression, made with his long-running Miracle 3, is a new peak in that hard-boiled moral aggression. In "Colored Lights," Wynn sounds like Tom Petty stuck in a desert town with only feedback and attitude to shoot his way out. And Wynn doesn't sound at all sorry in "We Don't Talk About It": "You stir up the shit/And you take away the dirt/And you're left with a whole new disease." You don't argue with the guitars, either.

Listen to "Resolution":

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“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.