The Music

1 American Patriot Lee Greenwood

8 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW "I'm proud to be an American / where at least I know I'm free, / and I won't forget the men who died / who gave that right to me. / And I gladly stand up next to you / and defend her still today, / 'cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. / God bless the U.S.A."

OVERALL QUALITY Pleasant but by no means definitive.

86 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW "If you really want to, you can hear me say, / 'Only if you want to will you find the way.' / If you really want to, you can seize the day. / Only if you want to can you fly away" (from "Anywhere Is").

OVERALL QUALITY Despite the exotic contours, catchy hooks, soothing glow, and overall lushness of her music, Enya the lyricist traffics mainly in foggy clichés that prove the powerlessness of positive thinking.

175 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)" (at least for those who can decode its man-on-the-make slang)

WORLDVIEW That with talent comes fame, with fame comes paranoia ("Billie Jean"), and with paranoia come nightmares ("Thriller") from which one can only be awakened by true love ("The Lady in My Life").

OVERALL QUALITY A remarkable transformation of the teeny-bopper music of Jackson's Motown youth into dance music of surprising resiliency and sophistication.

110 weeks on chart

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.

1,283 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "Money" (obscenity)

WORLDVIEW "For long you live and high you fly / And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry / And all you touch and all you see / Is all your life will ever be" ("Breathe").

OVERALL QUALITY Engineered by Alan Parsons and recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios 29 years ago, this longtime favorite of high-end stereo owners still sounds impressive coming out of the speakers; its sophomoric cynicism, however, has never sounded less profound.

The Swedish pop quartet ABBA (1972-1982) specialized in hit singles at a time when full-length albums were considered the measure of an act's artistic worth. Thus, despite 14 appearances on the U.S. Top 40, more than two dozen hits worldwide, the perennially bestselling ABBA Gold, and a vocal sound swirling with echoes of Connie Francis and Petula Clark, ABBA got, and still gets, short critical shrift. Yet, as the recent reissuing of its original eight albums demonstrates, ABBA began moving away from bubblegum as early as The Album (1977), developing by Super Trouper (1980) a maturity of tone, an inventiveness of melody, and a lavishness of production that rivaled anything being done by the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber. ABBA's crowning achievement was The Visitors (1981). In addition to wistful breakup songs (at which the group had become adept in the wake of its members' unraveling marriages), there was "Slipping Through My Fingers," a masterly and moving handling of a subject that Bob Carlisle would sentimentalize 15 years later in "Butterfly Kisses": a parent's mixed emotions at watching a daughter grow up, up, and away.