The Hold Steady's debut was one of the best indie-rock records of 2004, a left-field barnburner packed with rants about busted romance, a beloved jukebox and "war goin' down in the Middle Western states." Like its predecessor, Separation Sunday is at once surreal and gloriously sweaty, as Craig Finn rails like a man who's seen too many late nights and too much bad TV, while his band plunders a seemingly endless supply of secondhand riffs. Finn is a cracked-voiced storyteller who mixes literary gravitas and snarky yuks, wrapping a tale of drug-fueled abandon in biblical imagery on "Cattle and the Creeping Things" and referencing both Lionel Richie and Bruce Springsteen on "Charlemagne in Sweatpants." His wordy narratives get hazy at times, but Sunday succeeds as a whirlwind tour through an overstuffed brain.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.