The Music

My Own Prison Creed

128 weeks on chart 4 million copies to date

BEST CUTS "Unforgiven," "In America," and the overtly Pauline title cut

WORLDVIEW Conservative and biblical, with abortion rights, affirmative action, and cultural relativism among the sacred cows slain.

WHY IT ENDURES Three years and one other Creed album later (1999's stylistically similar and nearly equally successful Human Clay), these songs remain unique in alternative-rock circles for their conviction-rooted combination of musical muscle and moral articulacy.

135 weeks on chart 12 million copies

BEST CUTS "Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)," "As Long As You Love Me," "All I Have to Give"

WORLDVIEW Liner-note hosannas to the contrary (Brian "B-Rok" Littrell quotes Philippians 4:13, and the others thank God), it's the Mutt Lange composition "If You Want It to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy)" that resonates most loudly.

WHY IT ENDURES There's a future teenage girl born every minute.

448 weeks on chart 12 million copies

BEST CUTS "Enter Sandman," "Nothing Else Matters"

WORLDVIEW Religions lie, then you die ("The God That Failed"); never underestimate, however, the importance of a strong national defense ("Don't Tread on Me").

WHY IT ENDURES Its refusal to indulge in grandstanding or slumming.

119 weeks on chart 3 million copies

BEST CUTS "Con Te Partiro," "Macchine Da Guerra"

WORLDVIEW I question, therefore I am-"Why, why, why / Do you not live tonight" ("Vivere")? "We are lost ... , / orphans of life, ... / but why" ("Macchine Da Guerra")? "Where am I and what am I doing, / how do I live" ("Miserere")?

WHY IT ENDURES Good looks, good voice, good material-in that order.

560 weeks on chart 10 million copies

BEST CUTS "Is This Love," "No Woman No Cry," "Could You Be Loved"

WORLDVIEW Although rooted in Rastafarianism, to which Marley converted (from Christianity, see "Get Up Stand Up"), the music's themes are seldom more religious than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

WHY IT ENDURES For the same reason that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness endure.

Between Jan. 1965 and Sept. 1968, Petula Clark placed 15 songs on the Billboard top 40. Six of those made the top 10, and two-"Downtown" and "My Love" (the latter a '70s youth group favorite when re-christened "God's Love")-made No. 1. The secrets of her success were a songwriter, arranger, and producer named Tony Hatch and her own bright pop voice, which she had already spent 21 years developing in Europe as a pop child prodigy before she succeeded in the States. The newly released Petula Clark Anthology: Downtown to Sunset Boulevard (Hip-O), although hamstrung by an uneven second disc of performances spanning the years 1972 to 1996, does contain all of her U.S. hits. Most of them, like the singer herself, have aged very well. In retrospect she was both the last exemplar of pre-rock (and pre-feminist) female poise and a harbinger of things to come: 1973's "Serenade of Love" is a dead ringer for the music of Abba, the Swedish quartet that would score its first hit one year later and go on to become the most popular group of the '70s.