Touch Miss A

It should come as no surprise that the music you listen to as a teenager echoes through your neurological pathways more than any other. Teenage music just means so much - it helps you figure out who you are and who you want to become. You listen to the same things over and over while feeling serious feelings.

Time Life has put together the best-loved romantic, adult contemporary hits of the eighties. From sexy and sensual ballads to soft and sweet love songs and even some of the decade's greatest power ballads, the 'Easy '80s' collection is all about love.

A best-of with a twist, featuring one new song, the synthesizer-driven "Early in the Night," cut by Phillips in 1992. He still has his touch for numbers with haunting, eerie textures (the guitars are pretty cool, too) and compelling lyrics, and the voice is still there, too. As for the rest, in the absence of all but his second A&M album, it's a decent cross-section of his work from a half-dozen albums. The new notes by Phillips who complains that his current music isn't of interest to any record companies and Bob Garcia frame his work reasonably well, also, and the 75+ minutes of music is pretty generous.

It isn't surprising that Lucinda Williams' level of craft takes time to assemble, but the six-year wait between Sweet Old World and its 1998 follow-up, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, still raised eyebrows. The delay stemmed both from label difficulties and Williams' meticulous perfectionism, the latter reportedly over a too-produced sound and her own vocals. Listening to the record, one can understand why both might have concerned Williams. Car Wheels is far and away her most produced album to date, which is something of a mixed blessing. Its surfaces are clean and contemporary, with something in the timbres of the instruments (especially the drums) sounding extremely typical of a late-'90s major-label roots-rock album.