After a decade-plus as bare-knuckle contenders for World's Most Riotous Live Band, Gogol Bordello step up their studio game with producer Rick Rubin, who knows how to give pop shape to reactor-grade energy. Everyone is on point: Accordion and fiddle rock as hard as guitars and drums; rhythms from Brazil (frontman Eugene Hütz's new home) blend with breakneck Eastern European dances and D.C.-style hardcore. Rubin pushes Hütz's poignant broken English up front: "May the sound of our contaminated beat," he sings, "sweep all the Nazi purists off their feet." Word.

“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.