Flavored Pop Up!

Big Mountain's pop-inflected reggae sound is so bouncy and cheerful that parts of WAKE UP might remind listeners of a Jah-flavored Beach Boys. On "Reggae Inna Summertime," Big Mount evokes images of ocean waves and sparkling sands, with "Spanglish" lyrics and dancing mallet instruments to suggest a light-hearted romantic ambience. With its gospel-flavored choruses and slippery backbeat, "Peaceful Revolution" suggests the positive spiritual imagery of Bob Marley and Arrested Development, even as songs like "Back In The Hills" depict the righteous indignation of traditional reggae with a lyrical guitar break reminiscent of vintage Santana. It is preceisely these pancultural elements that set WAKE UP apart from much of mainstream reggae and give Big Mountain a truly international appeal.

On their fourth album, Smokie attempt to broaden their country-flavored pop with a few stylistic experiments. The resulting album is successful for the most part. For instance, their European hit "It's Your Life" effectively marries the group's sweet harmonies to a reggae-styled pop melody, and further spices things up by throwing in a surprising Beatles-styled midsection. Another song with a Beatlesque feel is "Sunshine Avenue," a full-on tribute to the Fab Four's psychedelic era that mimics the group's sonic affections from that time (electronically filtered vocals, stately horns, and a rollicking pop melody) and even name-checks Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Robyn Rihanna Fenty, known professionally as Rihanna, is a Barbadian singer, actress, and fashion designer. Both her debut album, Music of the Sun (2005) and its follow-up A Girl Like Me (2006) peaked in the top ten on the US Billboard 200; the former featured the commercially successful song "Pon de Replay" while the latter produced her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single, "SOS". Rihanna has sold over 41 million albums and 150 million songs worldwide, making her one of the best-selling artists of all time. She has achieved thirteen number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the youngest and fastest solo artist to accomplish this record. Billboard named her the Digital Songs Artist of the 2000s decade and the top Hot 100 artist of the 2010s decade.

This 1976 follow-up to the successful Changing All the Time finds Smokie pursuing the same kind of country-flavored pop that made that album a hit. With Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman once again in the producer's chairs, the band produced some notable hits in Europe: "Something's Been Making Me Blue" layers Smokie's trademark harmonies atop a rousing country-rock tune driven by tasty guitar work, and "Wild Wild Angels" is a dramatic power ballad that highlights a strong lead from whiskey-throated vocalist Chris Norman…

Sophisticated Lady (1962). "Sophisticated" is the right word to describe Julie London's cool vocal approach; it can be shoved into the background, but if you listen closely there's a lot of turmoil going on under its seemingly calm surface. Similar to Chet Baker's unruffled way with a lyric, London's self-described "thimble full of a voice" ends up describing how pain hasn't quite iced over all her emotions rather than proving how unfeeling she is. Also like Baker, so many of her best recordings are steeped in the style and mood of laid-back West Coast jazz. Sophisticated Lady is one of a string of records London cut in the early '60s with less of a jazz feel than most of her sessions from the '50s, but it's still a worthy album. If it's not exactly an essential session, it is a good one, and the backing orchestra is to blame for the album's shortcomings - not the vocalist…