Click to listen to a live version of White Lies' "Bigger Than Us"

White Lies' 2009 debut hit Number One in England, but that doesn't seem to have done much for their mood. On its second album, the group remains as bleak as a London winter, with Harry McVeigh conjuring Smiths-style melancholy in his weighty baritone. What evades White Lies is the candid charm of his Brit-gloom forebears. The sleek synth tunes are more anthemic this time out, but the lyrics are no less overwrought: "Is Love" finds a woman "scarlet as a paper cut and jeweled as the Orion" and a man "bloodshot as a baby and sulking like a valley." And when McVeigh beats you over the head with his bummed wail on "Bigger Than Us," you'll want to slip him some Wellbutrin.

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“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.