Lisa Hannigan evidently has a thing for birds. On her second solo album since leaving long-time collaborator Damien Rice, the Irish singer-songwriter nods lyrically to Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire" ("Little Bird"), trills intimacies to someone named Bird ("Nowhere to Go") and stretches the word itself into ornate, melodic flight patterns ("Passenger"). There’s kinship, to be sure: Her voice is light and agile, her phrasing like exquisite plumage, and her folksy songs move with deceptive power, sailing on guitars, strings and Irish drama. She's a main attraction now, although a pairing with Ray LaMontagne ("O Sleep") is a reminder of how sweet, and drop-dead sexy, a duet partner she can be. Fly on, sister. 

Listen to "Lille":

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“Karma Chameleon”

Boy George has said this song was about standing by what you believe in. However, at the time, he was involved in a secret affair with Culture Club drummer Jon Moss. "Now people can understand the songs better," he said. "They were written about my relationship with Jon, and they were also written about being a gay man in a homophobic world." The lines "If I listen to your lies, would you say/I'm a man without conviction/I'm a man who doesn't know how to sell a contradiction," described his life at the time, he said. "I was selling this big lie."