Best Sellers

1 week on chart

STYLE Slick country + hick country = slick-hick country.

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW "I miss Mayberry / Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold Cherry Coke / Where everything is black and white" ("Mayberry").

OVERALL QUALITY Squeaky clean, both morally and technically. Highlights: "You" and "Fallin' Upside Down" (as cute as their sentiments), "These Days" and "My Worst Fear" (not cute at all), and "Dry County Girl" (conservative social commentary).

CRY

3 weeks on chart

STYLE Not country-not by a long shot (hippodrome pop, maybe).

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL A sleeve photo or two, although she's wearing more clothing than she did last time.

WORLDVIEW "I'm just like everybody else / I try to love Jesus and myself" ("This Is Me").

OVERALL QUALITY Not country-not by a long shot (and the point is to love Jesus and one's neighbor).

HOME

10 weeks on chart

STYLE Unplugged country with bluegrass roots.

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW That love is a many-faceted and potentially treacherous thing: fragile yet tough, mundane yet mysterious; as worth fighting for as one's country, as worth making peace for as the dream-filled repose of one's infant son.

OVERALL QUALITY Refreshing-avoids the overproduction, prefabrication, cartoonishness, and obvious cover-song choices usually associated with bestselling country.

ELV1S: 30 #1 HITS

6 weeks on chart

STYLE The most influential, popular, and quintessentially American rockabilly, rock 'n' roll, pop, schmaltz, gospel, and Southern blue-eyed soul of the last 50 years (but no country, unless the schmaltz counts).

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW No sentiment is so common or hackneyed that a uniquely gifted and broadly sympathetic singer can't make it speak volumes.

OVERALL QUALITY Unassailable (except for the U.K.-only hit "Wooden Heart" and the fact that there's no country).

TOTALLY COUNTRY, VOL. 2

1 week on chart

STYLE Lowest-common-denominator country, a.k.a. planned-obsolescence country.

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL Tracy Byrd's "Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo" (clever, but essentially a "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" for the new millennium), Trick Pony's "Just What I Do" (philistine asininity at its most flagrant).

WORLDVIEW Cliches are the tribute that lowest-common-denominator country musicians pay to virtue.

OVERALL QUALITY Disposable