Notable CDs

The entertainment columnist Roger Friedman raised expectations for this album when he hyperventilated about it in print after being granted a pre-release listen by Clive Davis. He should’ve saved his breath. Of the 10 performances, only the Alicia Keys’ cover “No One” and the radically reimagined Sinéad O’Connor and/or The Family cover “Nothing Compares 2 U” give the originals a run for their money. And speaking of money, Franklin’s other 2014 release, the 87-track, four-disc The Queen of Soul, is available for under $30.

Solitaire

This 19-year-old Britain’s Got Talent alumna shines brightest singing Andrew Lloyd Webber (“Pie Jesus,” “All I Ask of You”), Lerner-Loewe (“I Could Have Danced All Night”), and Handel (“Lascia Ch’io Pianga”). She dims her vocal luminosity most effectively on the Randy Newman gems “Feels like Home” and “When Somebody Loved Me.” Only “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” and the gilding of dubious lilies by Richard Marx and the Carpenters call the “classical-crossover” concept into question. Classical cross-under is more like it.

Laus Deo

The quest to create new musical wineskins for the old wine of traditional hymns continues, this time via musicians from the youthful Korean-American Good Fruit Co. Watch this album’s making-of videos on YouTube and you’ll be encouraged by what Ock’s, Rhee’s, and their collaborators’ dedication to both their music and their faith says about the health of the Body of Christ. Listen to the album and you’ll have to admit that, while Ock and Rhee are clearly onto something, they still sound a little tentative.

Haven't Got the Blues (Yet)

As usual, Wainwright combines wiseacre satire with intermittent liberal social commentary for tragic relief and implies that the out-of-place smile on his face mainly serves to divert attention from the tracks of his tears. He might, in other words, joke about growing old and divorce (in “The Morgue” he dances on an ex-wife’s grave), but he does so to keep from crying—and from facing up for long to the truths that he faces up to for 3½ minutes in “God & Nature.”

Spotlight

Prince hasn’t ever actually gone away. So the “comeback” hashtag being attached to his two simultaneously released new albums, Art Official Age and Plectrumelectrum (Warner Bros.), is as misleading as the overenthusiastic praise they’ve engendered among less-discerning critics. They are not, however, bereft of entertainment value. And, coming as they do years deep into the once-randy artiste’s Jehovah’s Witness phase, they’re refreshingly free of anything requiring a parental-warning sticker.

Prince’s reasons for releasing the albums separately are clear enough: Art Official Age mines a concept of sorts and Plectrumelectrum showcases his all-female backing trio 3rdeyegirl. Still, although the subtle catchiness of each grows less subtle with each listen, patience is at a premium these days. And it’s hard to shake the suspicion that had Prince found a way to meld the more-or-less introverted funk of the former with the more-or-less extroverted rock of the latter he would’ve really achieved something special.