The Songs We Can't Escape

MADONNA
"Celebration"

Ah, allure: When you've got it, you've got it. Madge never completely let go of hers, and it's easier to buy La Ciccone as a randy, club-hopping minx when you know her wedding ring's buried under several layers of Thames silt. Effortlessly salacious and come-hither, "Celebration" blithely bites lyrics from Madonna's last smash hit of any note—2005's "Hung Up"—but you'll be (chair) dancing too hard to Paul Oakenfold's Eurotrash synths to care.

GUCCI MANE
"Gorgeous"

Takes some time to get accustomed to Gucci's dialect-heavy flow, but it's totally worth it for all the quotables: "My ring game scary/My pinky so frightening," "I keep on hearing voices, tellin' me to ball/So I keep on buyin' Porsches." "Gorgeous" finds him so high on his jewelry that he starts applying the titular tag to everything he encounters, from his flow to his watch to your steady sweetie, though he's just being polite—maybe.

SEAN LENNON
"Charlotte's Theme"

The bubbly, pop-scion Sean Lennon of Into the Sun—the hipster waif who floated down city streets with giant mutant goldfish in the "Home" video and was briefly a member of Cibo Matto—is long gone, it seems. Now he's on some avant-garde, classical, post-Hamlet tear that's weirdly compelling. "Charlotte's Theme" is very Peter and the Wolf, to these ears, brimming with pompous pomp and just a hint of dread.

MA$E & CAM'RON FEAT. B. ROSSI
"Get It"

The beat alternates between icy hyphy and dramatic NYC blare as this most unlikely of duos convenes to extrapolate why, exactly, "Ballin' ain't a problem." Ma$e: "If I come back, I want Diddy percent." Cam: "My goddamn chain like a ski slope, please." B. Rossi's almost dead weight in the equation, really—love the You Don't Mess with the Zohan reference, though—but we've all gotta start somewhere, right?

SATIN HOOKS
"Soda Song"

Behold: the legacies of At the Drive-In's "One-Armed Scissor" and first-wave grunge, rolled into one greasy treat. Or something.