Click to listen to Jack White's 'You Know That I Know'

Using Hank Williams' lyrics notebooks to imagine songs he never finished, The Lost Notebooks turns a vaguely necrophiliac idea into a startling reincarnation. Bob Dylan's mariachi waltz, "The Love That Faded," is a sweet-croaked séance; Lucinda Williams and Jack White, in different ways, show how much room Hank's writing gives singers to emote. The ghostliest moment is Alan Jackson’s "You've Been Lonesome, Too." Stoic and emotionally devastated, Jackson reconnects Williams with the country tradition he fathered. Today's Nashville stars can still learn a lot from Hank.

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“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.