That’s a guy named Michael Pless singing “Something’s Got to Give.” Even without hearing the song, you can surely imagine the essential elements: Plaintive acoustic strumming, an earnest vocal, and an air of polite outrage to match the stilted syntax and hoary platitudes. Welcome to "Occupy This Album," the collection of protest-minded songs released by Occupy Wall Street. Sprawling across four CDs and a slew of bonus digital tracks, this behemoth set includes 100 (why not 99?) new and previously released tracks from artists representing a range of generations, genres, backgrounds, settings, and styles. Folkies join hands with rappers; ominous post-rock marches alongside peppy radio pop. There’s spoken-word poetry, tribal percussion, earnest singer-songwriter fare. Even a bit of jazz.

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Justin Vernon included a nearly a cappella cover as a B-side to “Calgary,” gently mashing it up with Raitt’s “Nick of Time.” The choice proved provocative and divisive among fans, almost as though he had consciously picked the most unlikely source material imaginable. But his enthusiasm seemed genuine: “She’s one of our greatest ones, for sure,” he told Jimmy Fallon just before he performed “I Can’t Make You Love Me” on “Late Night.”

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Nothing much happens in the video, but its muted color palette, patient pace, and most of all that looming threat make it unusually effective. With its piercing guitar theme and the subdued production courtesy of T Bone Burnett, the song reflects that mood, even as it gives so much time over to lyric-less passages. Swift may be better casting than even Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ young-adult novel. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter is arguably the most successful musician of the moment, and her two songs — “Safe and Sound” and “Eyes Open” — will ensure that the “Hunger Games” soundtrack will sell very well.

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Which may seem surprising given the subject matter of "Agnostic Hymns": He writes about right-wing hypocrisy, corrupt financial systems, the unknowability of God, and the pain of a broken heart, but his stoner cadence adds a bit of whimsy to the proceedings. That levity has always been crucial to Snider’s appeal, but lately, it’s distinguished him from other musicians who embrace sanctimony as a means of addressing the Great Recession. Snider may be angry, but he’s also genuinely curious, perhaps even slightly bemused by the exaggerations and mutations of human greed and self-justification. “At least it helps folk music, if nothing else,” he laughs at one point during our conversation.

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Even among such great company, however, the best album of the young year is also the most modest. Lambchop’s 11th full-length, "Mr. M," won’t make headlines as the return of a grizzled vet or the arrival of a new talent. It likely won’t be a bestseller even by today’s standards, although it certainly should be. The Nashville collective are content to hang around the outskirts of any scene, yet remain consistently interesting to the point of being taken for granted even by their most ardent fans.

The band is led by Kurt Wagner, a man who wears the dapper blazer of an English professor and the farmer’s cap of a tractor parts salesman. Each of the group's 11 studio albums mines some new corner of a deceptively large sound that mixes Owen Bradley’s countrypolitan sophistication with variant strains of lush soul (Motown and Philly more than gritty Memphis, despite Wagner’s ties to that city). There are flourishes of Brill Building professionalism, Sinatra-style croonerism, and old-school soundtrack composition, and it’s all mixed together to create a sound that is subdued, low-key, laid back to a fault.

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What about those excellent albums that never quite find their audience or get the acclaim they deserve? Rather than list the top albums of 2011, below are 10 (well, 11) albums that were overlooked and undervalued by consumers as well as critics -- and we'll include a "recommended if you like" guide with each so you can quickly find a new favorite in any genre. Think of it as a list for music lovers who are sick of lists. And, to avoid any post-list-making angst, they’re in alphabetical order.

Katy B: "On a Mission" (Columbia/Rinse)

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a.) The Cure

b.) Afrika Bambaataa

c.) KISS

d.) Quincy Jones

e.) Earl Young

f.) Carole King

g.) New York Dolls

OK, it’s a trick question. None of these artists has been included into the Hall of Fame, despite their unique contributions to the form. A jazz musician with a long career, Jones produced Michael Jackson’s "Thriller," which ought to make him an obvious choice. Similarly, Young practically invented the disco drumbeat in the early 1970s, and later in that decade Afrika Bambaataa pioneered scratching and sampling to lay the groundwork for hip-hop. Before she notched hits as a solo artist, Carole King wrote or co-wrote smashes for Aretha Franklin, the Crystals, the Shirelles and many others. KISS is KISS, of course, but the New York Dolls gave punk a place to crash after it got off the bus from Detroit. The Cure are goth godfathers who might have outstayed their welcome but continue to exert considerable influence over younger musicians. (Adele even covers their ’90 hit “Lovesong” on her gazillion-selling, industry-saving "21.")

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That last tradition may not be quite as old as the others, but it is surely practiced with just as much enthusiasm and vigor. Each year the Grammy nominations, which are determined by members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, engender what often sounds like deafening protest. Some music fans think the nominees are too populist, while others think they’re not populist enough; some ponder the hair-splitting difference between record of the year and song of the year, while others — many, many others — simply ignore the classical and New Age categories. Most people, however, bemoan the exclusion of their favorite artists.

For the second year in a row, however, the Grammys have played Grinch by actually getting the major categories right. Mostly right. Well, they certainly didn’t embarrass themselves.

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There is no golden age of MTV, although a new oral history called “I Want My MTV” at least argues that there were better times to watch -- namely, during its first 10 years. But if you were to identify the true height of the network’s influence, you might well point to the early 1990s. It wasn’t just the time of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” -- it was Rock the Vote, Choose or Lose, Boxers or Briefs. Presidential candidates needed to sit down with Tabitha Soren, and through town hall meetings, a youth agenda emerged during the 1992 campaign, just as Gen X graduated into the first Bush recession.

Even then, however, MTV really wanted to sell “influencers” to advertisers. In the New York Times business section and other places they didn't think their audience looked, MTV ran a picture of an alternaguy with cool clunky shoes and the tagline: "Buy this 24-year-old and get all his friends absolutely free."

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Mangum played mostly songs from "Aeroplane," which convey a sense of world-shattering loss through the strange imagery of two-headed boys, burning pianos and fingers notched Cronenberg-style into spines. Aside from a short Minutemen cover (“Themselves,” which begins, “All those men who work the land …”), there were few overtly political statements during his set. In the video, you can hear someone yell,  “Play some Dylan!” and the crowd sang along with the line “We know who our enemies are” on “Oh Comely.” Before he left the stage, Mangum told the crowd: “You guys have done a beautiful fucking thing.”

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Throughout his quarter-century career, Henry has learned to shoulder that burden of history gracefully. Lumped in with alt-country in the 1990s, he has since been routinely compared to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and the Jayhawks, among others. Despite such praise, no one really sounds like Henry. Brandishing a dryly expressive voice and an impressionistic lyrical style, he obsesses over old blues, jazz, folk, rock 'n' roll and avant-garde composition, yet works to take those styles out of the past and set them squarely in the present. For "Reverie," which he recorded in the basement of his Los Angeles home, he restricted the musicians exclusively to acoustic instruments: guitar, stand-up bass and piano. The results sound both warmly familiar and completely new.

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