On "Cracks in Mr. Perfect," the confessional opener on his fifth LP, Ne-Yo is the sort of beautiful smoothie who fucks you without a condom, then shrugs sheepishly and says, "It's our imperfections that truly make us perfect." Bullshit notwithstanding, his silky phrasing gilds an impressively broad mix: steamy R&B ("Lazy Love"), bighearted dance pop ("Let Me Love You [Until You Learn to Love Yourself]") and hip-hop soul ("Don't Make 'Em Like You," with a sick slow-mo groove and a charming Wiz Khalifa rap), even a country crossover ballad ("She Is"). Still, as peers like Frank Ocean and Miguel boldly reimagine commercial R&B, this often feels less like vision than parsing market research.

Listen to'R.E.D.' 

“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.