Bonnie Raitt's albums often strain to encompass all that she is. Her eighteenth disc manages to showcase both the greasy bottleneck-blues guitarist and the pop-friendly mellow crooner, thanks to a lot of solid material sporting depth and detail. The slinky "Trinkets" looks back comically and lovingly on childhood possessions, while "God Was in the Water" captures the supernatural mystery of nature's elements. At fifty-five, Raitt still sounds sexy and undomesticated singing her keyboardist Jon Cleary's "Love on One Condition," and peaks vocally on the album's finale, "The Bed I Made," a jazzy piano torch song likely to snag the singer another Grammy. Throughout, Raitt holds her ground without digging a rut.

“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.