Since his name-making production on the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling," French house-music titan David Guetta has become a go-to guy for pop stars looking to navigate the increasingly techno-fied Top 40. Artists from 50 Cent to Rihanna have rung his studio bell. But Guetta always seemed hungry to be more than just a name on other people’s records: In the video for his current hit "Where Them Girls At," he DJs on an L.A. rooftop, turning pedestrians into party people – it's like an E’ed-up version of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name."

If Guetta’s fifth album doesn't convince you that he's the Bono of the four-on-the-floor beat, it does show how good he is at making Eurohouse's thumping trounce and jet-engine synth whoosh feel like natural elements in the hip-hop, R&B and even rock continuum. The best tracks here work a surefire formula: Rapper lubricates the throbbing verse, R&B star pretties up the sweeping ballad-big chorus. On "Little Bad Girl," Ludacris swaggers while Taio Cruz croons about a sexy club rat. Elsewhere, Usher gets lonely over Coldplay-style guitar ("Without U"), and Nicki Minaj demolishes the club ("All the girls in the back of me/This ain’t football, why the fuck they wanna tackle me," she raps on "Where Them Girls At"). The epic momentis "Nothing Really Matters," featuring Will.i.am; it's the album’s gushiest melody, turning an ode to partying your problems away into a call to escapist togetherness. Guetta and Will.i.am jell so well because they share a vision: dancefloor cheese as the glue of humanity.

Listen to "Where Them Girls At": 

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“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.