Even with the departure of the smoky-voiced Shara Nelson, this English dance-pop outfit still delivers brilliant body music that doesn't neglect the brain. Cool, sexy stuff, it smoothly fuses dub, club and soul, grounding its grace in sampled hip-hop beats. With four vocalists on board — Everything but the Girl's Tracey Thorn, reggaeman Horace Andy, Nigerian-born Nicolette and rapper Tricky — Protection lacks the focus of the masterful 1991 debut Blue Lines. But it lingers longer. "Karmacoma," "Sly" and the instrumental "Heat Miser" sizzle and insinuate; band members 3-D, Mushroom and Daddy G are ruminators, too, who expertly render mixed emotion — passion crossed with sadness or the tension of glamour and threat that surges through "Eurochild": "I walk in a bar, and immediately I sense danger."

“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.