The pleasant surprise is that, after all the personnel changes, Duran Duran still has its characteristic sound and charisma...

Formula or not, with Invincible, Jackson reclaims his pop crown and wears it well.

She may have been young and naïve at age 13 covering Patsy Cline songs, but she had much better source material than the sappy, saccharine numbers she's getting from the middle-age songwriters who scripted Twisted.

What saves what sounds from beginning to end like an extremely quick buck -- via material on a music equivalency level of farts and burps -- is Shakur's provocative presence, so urgent in both decadence ("Good Life") and desperation ("This Ain't Livin'") that he still seems here, at least in the spirit of his lyrics.

Their latest, Lions, gets back to basics without going backward; the brothers Robinson are still ripping off the classics, sure, but they've expanded the history lesson from the Small Faces and Humble Pie to sharpening the attack with Zeppelinesque tricks and modern rock energy.

Borland neither plays the kind of hip-hop-rock Bizkit fans would want, nor the Van Halen-esque guitar-rock some Bizkit-haters might have hoped for.

For the most part Bloodsport is carried by a snaking seductive beat and slow-burning, almost sinister melodies that would make Dave Gahan proud.

Like many a club anthem, Chicane's massive tracks have a formulaic feel.

There's little in the way of cohesion or artistic forethought here, and some of the tracks are just bad, though nothing is as surpassingly awful as lead single "Rollin'," its shout-outs overly reminiscent of "Bawitdaba."

Although there are no ballads as moving as "Hello," "Truly," or "Say You, Say Me," the album does offer a nice collection of pop tracks that, for the most part, don't suffer from the stiflingly bland over-production that's characterized other adult-contemporary albums of recent years.

While the album is a distinct improvement on 1999's Twentieth Century, it still fails to rise above the level of a few good songs padded by a whole lot of filler.

Hewitt's problem on BareNaked, ironically, is that she lacks "it." Whatever magnetism she carries on screen, whatever eye-candy poise she possesses; it all comes off as vanilla in her music.

A frothy soufflé of an album, heavy on the groovy dance beats and go-girl goodwill, light on profundity.

A short, razor-sharp set...

The album has no filler, no played-out skits or weak collaborations. Instead, Crown Royal exhibits the energy, grooves, and phatness of a future hip-hop classic.

A tasteful selection of pre-war era classics in a supper club jazz setting.

The duo's music remains irresolutely unlistenable.... If Insane Clown Posse's initial idea was to parody pop culture's foibles, then this is the sound of a band waving the white flag.

A sprawling set of immense diversity that's loaded to the brim with dancefloor anthems.

Rather than the classic R&B soul sound that Knight, backed by the Pips, took to the top of the charts earlier in her career, At Last references RB's new urban sounds.