It begins in an Ancient Egypt straight out of a doofy prog-rock epic, complete with cheetahs, serpents, "Samson and his full head of hair" – Samson? In Egypt? – and "black queen Cleopatra." It ends up in a titty bar called "The Pyramid" where a stripper named, you guessed it, Cleopatra stalks the stage. In between there are groaning club beats, psychedelic guitar noodling, and lots of vague new-R&B angst. It's never boring – a feat for a song that clocks in at just under 10 minutes. And Ocean's haunted croon has a way of turning the ridiculous into the sublime. But the Odd Future singer may have read too many blogs hailing him as a genius. It's a short trip indeed from Ocean's Pyramids to Spinal Tap's Stonehenge.

Listen to Frank Ocean's "Pyramids":

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“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.