On Blondie's self-released ninth album, the New York new wave greats fold the present into their past – from a "Tide Is High"-tinged cover of Brooklyn avant-folkies Beirut to a "Dreaming"-like basher with a melody via TV on the Radio. There's a little too much throwing stuff at a wall (the florid Spanish house track, the Serge Gainsbourg tribute) and, oddly, their bailiwick synth-rock sometimes feels theatrically heavy-handed, more Killers than Parallel Lines. Yet, if the tunes sometimes sag, Debbie Harry's voice remains sharply sculpted; on "China Shoes" she sings about her distant lover with tough, ageless longing. Because you're never too old to get left hanging on the telephone.

Listen to "What I Heard":

Related
• Blondie Releases First Album in Eight Years
• Debbie Harry on Blondie's Marc Jacobs Fashion Week Collaboration

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.