Cat Power is Atlanta-born singer-songwriter Chan Marshall, hagged out and mobbed up. Her 1998 breakthrough, Moon Pix, was a feast of raggedy, sorrowful folk-punk hymns like "Metal Heart," and while we await her next album of new material, due next winter, The Covers Record provides a stopgap fix of her unnerving, coldblooded voice and shaky acoustic guitar. Marshall covers her personal hit parade: Moby Grape, Lou Reed, Smog, Michael Hurley and, best of all, the Stones' "Satisfaction." The only other woman singer who's really claimed "Satisfaction" is Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi, who had to translate it into Spanish ("Satisfecha") and then become an international alleged-sex-crime fugitive to pull it off. But Marshall strips it down, ditching the chorus and wailing with terrifying power. "Baby baby baby, come back," she pleads. "Can't you see I'm on a losing streak?" She waits a week. He doesn't come back. She still can't get no satisfaction. Scary shit, and a typical Cat Power bone chiller.

“He Will Break Your Heart”

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."