Like the Kinks and the Magnetic Fields, Scottish pop perfectionists Belle and Sebastian are brilliant at pairing heart-tugging melodies with perfectly turned lyrics that favor kiss-offs over come-ons. But on the group's seventh album, a little bit of the bloom has come off the rose. The single "Funny Little Frog" — with its Muswell Hillbillies horns and lyrical nod to the early, amazing "The State I'm In" — is cuter than it is clever. And attempts to augment the band's trademark chamber pop with Shuggie Otis-style psychedelic soul (on "Song for Sunshine") and a Frampton Comes Alive guitar solo ("We Are Sleepyheads") aren't as memorable as you'd like them to be. But when the experiments work — as on "White Collar Boy," which marries a whistle-ready melody with a fat synth line, and the awesomely glam "The Blues Are Still Blue" — it's clear that band leader Stuart Murdoch still has plenty of major-league tunes left in the tank.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."