The Music

1 Black and Blue Backstreet Boys

8 million copies sold

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "Shining Star" ("Baby, you're as close as close can get / And baby you know I'd let / Every single part of me be yours / It doesn't matter if the phone might ring / 'Cause I won't hear a thing when I'm in your arms / 'Cause you know what to do to turn me on")

WORLDVIEW Puppy love can move mountains.

OVERALL QUALITY As music that's merely catchy, slick, and over-produced, not bad.

7 million copies sold

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW Optimistic, its every cry for help drowned out with enough frivolity (if not joy), wit (if not wisdom), and naïveté (if not innocence) to float a yellow submarine.

OVERALL QUALITY High indeed; in collecting only the most popular of the Beatles' many hits, this collection confers second-class status on the darker tendencies of their more experimental music and allows their talent and creativity to shine forth unsullied.

10 million copies sold

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW "I ... see a vision of a cross," sings Scott Stapp. "Only he holds the key ... to free me from my burden / and grant me life eternally"; elsewhere Mr. Stapp invites "a warrior" whose "yoke is easy" and whose "burden is light" to "come inside / and never go away."

OVERALL QUALITY For hummable, confessional heavy-metal, not bad.

3 million copies sold

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "Bootylicious," "Apple Pie à la Mode" (lascivious)

WORLDVIEW Confused. In "Nasty Girl" the perpetually underdressed trio removes a splinter from its sister's eye while ignoring the plank in its own ("Nasty, put some clothes on!"); elsewhere there's a Gospel medley, a recitation of 1 Corinthians 13, and a liner note from lead singer Beyoncé Knowles thanking God "for writing my songs." ("Bootylicious" too?)

OVERALL QUALITY Long on gimmicks, short on quality.

5 million copies sold

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW "Each heart is a pilgrim, / each one wants to know / the reason why the winds die / and where the stories go. / Pilgrim, in your journey / you may travel far, / for, pilgrim, it's a long way / to find out who you are" (from "Pilgrim").

OVERALL QUALITY Despite its exotic contours and soothing glow, Enya's music exists mainly to sell a pseudo-romanticism that in its dreamy vapidity has few contemporary equals.

Like its predecessors My Own Prison (1997) and Human Clay (1999), Creed's Weathered (Wind-Up) is proving quite popular. Not only has it remained atop the Billboard chart since debuting there last Thanksgiving, but it has done so despite competition from the likes of such perennial million-sellers as Britney Spears and Garth Brooks. To the extent that Weathered doesn't fix what ain't broke, its appeal makes sense. Both sound (grunge) and vision (earnest frankness) are of a piece with those of Prison's and Clay's, while such experimentation as there is, is limited to the guitars' sometimes sounding more heavily metallic than usual. As for Scott Stapp's overwrought singing, it still pays dubious homage to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Curiously, references to what sounds like a genuine Christian faith persist, even as Mr. Stapp's official position remains that Creed's music is not defined by any one religion. "Hey, God, I know I'm just a dot in this world," he sings in "Don't Stop Dancing." "Have you forgot [sic] about me?" As Mr. Stapp may or may not realize, the answers to such questions tend to be implicit in the asking.