The Music

1 Drive Alan Jackson

1 week on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "Designated Drinker" (to those who don't get the irony)

WORLDVIEW "I know Jesus and I talk to God / And I remember this from when I was young / Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us / And the greatest is love."

OVERALL QUALITY The care with which Mr. Jackson writes, chooses, and performs his material is as evident as his desire to avoid challenging preconceived notions of what it means to be a contemporary country-music superstar.

6 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW As Mr. Groban is a classical and not a rock or pop singer, his worldview is inseparable from the worldviews of the composers whose work he records, hence "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (Bach), "Vincent" (Don McLean), and many shades of yearning in-between.

OVERALL QUALITY At 20 Mr. Groban sings as well as Andrea Bocelli, providing the raised-on-rap generation with an "Adam" to go with its "Eve" (Charlotte Church).

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW Like wine, music rooted in the truth gets better with age.

OVERALL QUALITY As music, these down-home performances of traditional songs function as bearers of good news; as the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film of the same name, they take on surreal and at times comical overtones; as a cottage industry they've spawned Down from the Mountain (Lost Highway Records), a companion live album featuring many of these same musicians.

13 weeks on chart

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL "My Sweet Lord," "Awaiting on You All" (overt Krishna advocacy)

WORLDVIEW "The Lord is awaiting on you all / To awaken and see / You don't need no church house ... no Temple, ... no rosary beads / Or them books ... / To know that you have fallen.... By chanting the names of the Lord ... you'll be free."

OVERALL QUALITY Spotty; catchy innocence mixed with naïve overindulgence.

OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL None.

WORLDVIEW If this music can be said to have a worldview, it would be the one shared by Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and therefore would have to do with courage, faithfulness, and laying down one's life for one's friends.

OVERALL QUALITY As far above the Star Wars music of John Williams as it is below the church music of Bach and Handel; grand enough to inspire the seeking out of Bach and Handel if not the hunting of Orcs.

If consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, the mind of Bruce Cockburn must be vast indeed. Nothing characterizes the music of his 32-year career so much as its contradictions, and nothing throws those contradictions into sharper relief than Anything Anytime Anywhere: Singles 1979-2002 (True North/Rounder), the Canadian singer-songwriter's latest compilation. Its stylistic eclecticism alone makes for jarring juxtapositions. Singles from his early and latter-day acoustic folk phases sit uneasily next to those of his New Wave and World Beat rock phases, resulting in mood shifts that feel almost as arbitrary as the decision to emphasize the "hits" of a decidedly non-pop musician. Christians in particular might wish that Mr. Cockburn's performance of "Strong Hand of Love" (from the 1994 Mark Heard tribute album of the same name) had made the cut, or that the uncharitable, profanity-spiked liberation-theology anthems "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" and "Call It Democracy" hadn't. Not only have the latter been anthologized before (1987's Waiting for a Miracle), but since Sept. 11, the anachronistic (and violent) anti-U.S. sentiments they contain seem gratuitous.