After a lifetime of making graceful music out of turmoil, British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson's taut, literary folk pop is as odd and pleasing as ever. The Old Kit Bag, his twenty-fifth album, is chimerical rock girded by Thompson's stringed arsenal — dulcimer, mandolin, harmonium. But the soul of the music is death-haunted folk, and Thompson's own resiliency: The Old Kit Bag is a travelogue of a damaged heart, breezing lightly in "I'll Tag Along," leaping up for the Celtic dance "One Door Opens," angrily questioning on "Outside of the Inside." Thompson is saved from pretentiousness by how honestly he comes by his mannered delivery, how effortfully the heaving rhythms push into each measure and how every simple revelation sounds hard-earned.

“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.