Is this really necessary? Reunited post-punk giants Gang of Four rerecord fourteen of the best tracks from their early albums here, and as you'd expect from their powerful recent live shows, Return the Gift sounds great — the guitars squawk viciously, the funk-fascist rhythm section skitters like an aural anxiety attack and the vocals are equal parts sneer and melody. But the same is true of the classic, just-reissued original albums (1979's Entertainment! and 1981's Solid Gold), so it's hard to see Gift as anything but an exercise in redundancy. A live album would have been a much more welcome present.

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.