Click to Listen to Cut Copy's Zonoscope

Australian synth-pop quartet Cut Copy do the Eighties eerily well. Too well, in fact. Cue up the band's third album, and you find yourself playing spot-the-influence. (That verse? So Depeche Mode. The chorus? Pure O.M.D.) Zonoscope opens with the New Order-like throb of "Need You Now," followed quickly by "Take Me Over," a spongy bite of Thompson Twins-style pop-funk. It's impressive ventriloquism, and the songs are catchy. But the lovelorn sentiments are generic, and singer Dan Whitford's baritone drone adds little to the proceedings. Relief comes when Cut Copy look back further: "Where I'm Going" adds some Spectorian grandeur to the band's drum machine clatter. Then there's "Sun God" — a 15-minute-long psych-synth opus whose delicious silliness almost wipes away the memory of the band's slavish revivalism.

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“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.