Nick Cave has been writing songs about killing and other evil things since he first surfaced in 1980 as the Birthday Party's pale, skinny, goth-punk version of Jim Morrison. But the murder ballads that provide this set's title are different, tantalisingly deliberate. Sure, there's plenty of trademark Cave here, but Murder Ballads is a fascinating concept album that uses the narrative ballad form of the English folk tradition to tell of murder: random deaths, passion crimes, and killing sprees, all in one package. Cave clearly thrives in this genre, and he produces some of his sharpest and most facile writing to date: "Song of Joy", a genuinely scary campfire mystery of a murdered family and an unnamed killer, chillingly weaves clues into the lyrics, while "Where the Wild Roses Grow" is a narrative duet in which killer (Cave) and victim (pop star Kylie Minogue) reveal parallel tales. Cave even shows his knack for adaptation on Bob Dylan's "Death Is Not the End", recontextualising a song of heavenly comfort into a sort of zombie "We Are the World" (featuring Minogue, PJ Harvey, Shane MacGowan and others) in which "death is not the end" of pain and suffering. Above all, Murder Ballads should be heard as a work of pulp fiction-as sensationally funny as it is harrowing. The already violent traditional song "Stagger Lee" becomes gangsta folk, so ridiculously packed with obscenity and brutality it would make the Geto Boys cringe. And Cave's (unintentional?) point to would-be censors-that bad-ass songs existed long before rappers polluted the airways-should not be missed. -Roni Sarig.

Having nearly exhausted their capacity for pop-song politics on War and The Unforgettable Fire, U2 turned toward themes of personal identity and complex relationships on The Joshua Tree. Not that the group was willing to come down off the barricades entirely: "Mothers of the Disappeared" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" turned a jaundiced eye toward Central America and the United States's role there. But the predominant mood here is one of self-discovery and the hunger for something more on tracks like the pulsating "Where the Streets Have No Name" and the gospel-ish "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". The album's masterstroke, however, is "With or Without You", a nasty love song dressed up as an ode of devotion and care. It ranks with the Police's "Every Breath You Take" as the most misread smash hit of the 1980s. -Daniel Durchholz U2 have made a lot of grand music, but 1987's graceful, powerful Joshua Tree stands as their masterwork. It is by turns moving, inspiring, and exhilarating. Each member contributes his best work, and each song shines. Would that all rock records were made with the same care, the same passion and invention. The ubiquitous opening salvo of "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and the tense "With or Without You" may define this album to many, but its real strengths lie in the brilliant second half: "Red Hill Mining Town," "Trip Through Your Wires," and the surging "One Tree Hill" (the latter being one of rock's-hell, all music's-truly finest moments). [+]

For many bedroom producers, Daniel Bedingfield's debut, Gotta Get Thru This must seem like a dream come true. A songwriter, home-producer and vocalist whose laptop hit, the title track of this album, got released by Ministry of Sound to become one of 2001's biggest hits. Bedingfield's style could be described as Prince covering a Michael Jackson song whilst dabbling in UK Garage. "James Dean (I Wanna Know)" is a poppy piece of eighties soul-funk in the vein of Cameo but with a distinctive, fresh edge that sets it apart from countless other 80s' revivalists hanging around the charts. We see a softer side of Bedingfield on "If You're Not the One", a ballad which could easily be dismissed as generic album-filling slush but with a few listens the well-crafted song writing shines though and shows Michael Jackson how his Invincible album should have sounded. One tiny gripe about the album is the re-recorded version of "Gotta Get Thru This", while sounding far more polished and professional than before, it lacks the infectious raw groove of the original. Aside from that one small thing, the album is a positive look at how pop music should be made with a strong emphasis on the artist's music and ability rather than image. -David Trueman.

The melding of South African styles and Simon's trademark sensibility made for one of the most intriguing albums-not to mention commercial hits-of the 1980s. At once lively, thoughtful, gorgeous, and tough, Graceland acknowledges splits both in South Africa's social fabric and in Simon's personal life (the title track is a clear descendant of the earlier "Hearts and Bones", a song about the singer- songwriter's brief marriage to Carrie Fisher). Humour is hardly absent from the mix, though; witness the addled "I Know What I Know" and the fable-like "You Can Call Me Al". -Rickey Wright.

Menacing as they sound, the songs of mass destruction gathered on Annie Lennox's fifth solo disc don't manage to so much as nick the gorgeous instrument she's built her career on. Weaving artfully as ever around the contours of songs that suggest the worst-Lennox is world-wise and therefore maybe inevitably world-weary-she imparts gravity and grace in a voice as cloudless and surface-smooth as just-brewed mint tea; from the tentative beginnings of the mournful "Dark Road" to the gospel-bottomed gorgeousness of "Ghosts in My Machine," she's in full command of her considerable vocal powers. And it's possible she's never used them to such moving effect on a single record. Earlier Lennox or Eurythmics albums might have succumbed here and there to slight-seeming experiments in style, but Songs of Mass Destruction doesn't dilly-dally. All swerves, even playful ones (see "Love Is Blind" and "Coloured Bedspread," a synth-y song that wouldn't seem so out of place on a recent Madonna record), are on-message: "Womankind" busts wide open not only because it needs to (a voice this big can't be contained, it reminds us), but to demo empowerment, and the hopeful "Sing" signs off with a seconds-long African guest vocal. There's an upside to the destruction of cultural wellness that led Lennox to write this record, and it's artistic creation. Songs of Mass Destruction is a sterling, rock-solid, expert example. -Tammy La Gorce.

The ultimate slow-burner, Travis's second album infused its way into the psyche of post-Radiohead Britain with an endearingly humble grace. It's not quite certain how Travis went from being the happy-clappy Britpop also-rans of their debut Good Feeling to becoming the gifted pop craftsmen that moulded the gentle emotional trough of the chart-topping The Man Who, but it would seem that the tired, lonely lovelorn niche is one that suits Travis rather well. So, "Writing To Reach You", "Driftwood" and "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" are the meekest songs to ever eat daytime radio alive. Elsewhere, "As You Are" sounds like Thom Yorke swaddled in blankets, and the closing "Slide Show" punctures rock mythology with an impossibly beautiful lyric: "There is no design for life/ There's no devil's haircut in my mind/ There is not a wonderwall to climb, or step around". -Louis Pattison.

It's one thing to be celebrated, and it's quite another to become inescapably iconic. Hard-Fi stumbled into the latter with their debut Stars of CCTV, reflecting on life in satellite town UK with stark iconography, articulately pitched lyrics and accessibility sprinkled with the credibility of The Clash's rebel poise-a rare achievement, perhaps only equalled by Arctic Monkeys' and The Streets' snap-shots of teenage life. An icon is not infallible however, and it looked like Hard-Fi's commuter train to realism-central might have been derailed in the run up to this album's release. Their cocky, misguided decision to declare the death of the album cover simply by printing the words "NO COVER ART" on theirs was a bad joke at best. And while the diagnosis for the album itself may not be quite so bad-the buoyant swagger of "Suburban Knights" opens things up without breaking stride-Once Upon a Time in the West does lack the thematic weight of their debut. Musically it is more mature; there are strings everywhere, the ska influence remains but the bright-light club ambience of old is largely smoothed over. "Television" bags a chorus worthy of expectation, blokey-gospel to the extreme, but throws around so much pre-school sloganeering against culture and politics that its effect is dimmed. "We Need Love" is less preachy and works better. "Can't Get Along (Without You)" is a dumb Motown-esque love song, doesn't suit their posture at all, but is just the kind of bubblegum they might have to rely on if their socio-realism has gone flat. -James Berry.

"Acid casualty with a repossessed car," croaks Beck Hansen. "Vietnam vet playin' air guitar. " Odelay would later herald Beck as pre-Millennial jester without compare, but 1993's Mellow Gold finds Beck slumming in The City of Angels, working in a video store for four dollars an hour. Quite rightly, he's got the blues, but there's plenty more besides. Mellow Gold is a grimy Polaroid of fried white-trash invention. Reconciling the painfully fashionable grunge aesthetic with the drunken verbiage of the Beat Generation, Mellow Gold founded the slacker generation, and "Loser"-the opening track-became its unofficial anthem. A concept album of sorts, Mellow Gold narrated the backdrop of Los Angeles as seen from the bottom of the dustbin, framed with the impoverished strains of fractured, missing-stringed folk and ramshackle white-boy hip-hop. Time would prove, though, that Beck was no slacker; Mellow Gold provided the scrawled blueprint for Beck's next major label album, Odelay which would prove one of the defining albums of the 1990s. [+]

The growling, choppy guitar sample that opens the first track here, "It's My Life", is a virtual declaration of intent for the first Bon Jovi album in five years, a statement that they're updating the sound without abandoning the traditional virtues that made them one of the biggest bands on the planet. So make way for a hi-tech parade of smooth-but-gutsy rock anthems, almost any one of which will gladden the heart of every AOR radio programmer in the land. Unless the world has changed irredeemably, cuts such as the mid-paced heartbreak chugger "Say It Isn't So" are destined to become Bon Jovi standards, while an outbreak of scarf-waving and lighter-flicking is certain to accompany any live performance of the big weepy, "Thank You For Loving Me". Arguably, everything on Crush is done by the numbers, but with consummate pros like Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora at the helm, these are the kind of numbers you have to take seriously, because by the second time they kick into the chorus of any song it's damn near impossible not to sing along. -Johnny Black.

Manchester's pivotal post-punk quartet offer a 16-track opus that skips obscurities and early material in favor of their greatest singles. Highlights include "Blue Monday," "Thieves Like Us" and "The Perfect Kiss" and sparkling Stephen Hague remixes of "True Faith" and "Bizarre Love Triangle. " -Jeff Bateman.