She's giving us déjà vu all over and over and over again by basically sticking to the same set of sonic templates throughout the 15-track album, never making much effort to shift up the tempos, melodies, and structures.

The disc's first single, "Someone Else Not Me," makes it clear that although the band often sticks to the same songwriting formula, there are still new melodies left to explore.

A welcome antidote to the hard rock and bubble-gum pop flooding today's airwaves.

Multitracked to death, Until the End of Time lacks the intensity that made the original Makaveli's Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory so brash and exciting.

With the exception of 1999's By Your Side, which showed flashes of the band's original brilliance, in recent years the songwriting of brothers Chris and Rich Robinson has deteriorated into a muddled mess of hard rock cliches. Lions is the low point of that decline.

Neither a chip off the ol' Bizkit nor the kind of indulgent instrumental workout many ax aces opt for on their solo turns, Big Dumb Face is a work of clever humor, spirited silliness, and, in more than a few places, some pretty good songwriting.

Well, if nothing else, the search for the year's dumbest album title is over. And in some respects, the search for the year's dumbest album, too. True, Limp Bizkit's third release is filled with thrashworthy hooks, hardcore beats, and plenty of blind rage, but frontman Fred Durst is so inarticulate about exactly what is pissing him off that it's tough to take him seriously.

Renaissance is about as substantive, lyric-wise, as a Hallmark card.

Problem is, Alabama's pop panache, which made it at least a guilty pleasure for much of the '80s, seems to have been replaced by an impulse toward pure schmaltz.

A perfectly serviceable modern-rock record-

An album of bland and relatively anonymous adult pop that rarely gets racier than offering to "keep you up all night" and "make you holler."

While Run-D.M.C.'s chest-thumping reclamations of its prominence grow tiresome through the course of the disc -- they need to do more showing than telling -- the good news is that the tracks helmed by the group ("Crown Royal," "Aye Papi," "Ash," and "Simmons Incorporated") show that its own creative touch is still intact.

An unseemly, almost unnecessary foray into heavy metal and hard rock, especially in light of her success on the acoustic side.

If you look beyond the ludicrous lyrics, you almost come to respect them as pop barometers. The music draws on everything from alternative rock to funk, but the result is not a melee of sounds but rather well-crafted syntheses.

Saratoga, however, reaches a whole other level. A truly excellent show, it features a wonderful extended version of "Daughter," an absolutely kick-ass rendition of "Even Flow," and Vedder's most consistently strong singing throughout.

Overall, this is a compelling mix of underground and moderately mainstream fare, and a top-notch -- if long overdue -- American introduction to this seasoned U.K. vet.

Osmond could teach today's teen idols a thing or two about singing. His pure, clear tenor voice still shines as bright as his trademark smile. But This Is the Moment is mostly meant for adult easy listening pleasure, and it's not a stretch to say that it mostly succeeds on that level.

The main problem on At Last is that despite her best intentions, many of the tunes are so sappy that they just don't live up to the high standards a veteran singer can and should aim for.

The album is merely another entry into an increasingly anonymous realm where the formulas are starting to run as thin as the bass lines on any of the A*Teens' songs.

Divorced from the event's theatrics, this 2-CD set is immensely unsatisfying.... it's as if the life has been choreographed out of the performances.