"They can take away my job but not my friends," sings Michael Franti on his new disc, which suggests a musical activist's job — especially in hard times — is about celebration as much as agitation. Coming after a hit single ("Say Hey [I Love You]") and a near-fatal ruptured appendix in 2009, Franti's most poppy album yet is full of reggae hybrids and his best stab at arena rock: "I'll Be Waiting," with a riff flipped, hip-hop-style, from U2's "Bad." Franti owes the Irishmen some pints.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."