BEST CUTS
"Ticket to Ride," "Help!," "We Can Work It Out," "Paperback Writer," "All You Need Is Love"

WORLDVIEW
Optimistic, its every cry for help drowned out with enough frivolity (if not joy), wit (if not wisdom), and naïveté (if not innocence) to float a yellow submarine.

ROLE MODEL STATUS
The Beatles once encouraged the mistaking of drugs and sex for peace and love; now they encourage the mistaking of infinite sales for immortality.

BEST CUTS
"Down to the River to Pray" (Alison Krauss), "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (Harry McClintock), "You Are My Sunshine" (Norman Blake), "O Death" (Ralph Stanley)

WORLDVIEW
Like wine, music rooted in the truth gets better with age.

ROLE MODEL STATUS
Heard simply as music, these down-home performances of traditional material function as bearers of good news. As the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film of the same name, they sometimes function ironically, their "sincerity" mere code for hypocrisy.

BEST CUTS
"Sing, Sing, Sing" (Benny Goodman), "Cotton Tail" (Duke Ellington), "Take Five" (Dave Brubeck), "Giant Steps" (John Coltrane), "Scrapple from the Apple" (Charlie Parker)

WORLDVIEW
"Jazz," says Wynton Marsalis in the booklet, "gives us a glimpse into what America is going to be when it becomes itself. This music tells you that it will become itself."

ROLE MODEL STATUS
In uniting European and African musics, jazz musicians demonstrate the blessedness of peacemaking.

BEST CUTS
"Stuck in a Moment That You Can't Get Out Of," "Peace on Earth," "Walk On"

WORLDVIEW
Until Jesus Himself establishes peace on earth, U2 will settle for Greenpeace and Amnesty International (endorsed in the liner notes).

ROLE MODEL STATUS
As earnest and confused a quartet (three of them intermittently professed Christians) of rock 'n' roll idealists as Ireland has yet produced.

BEST CUTS
"Don't Think of Me," "Slide," "Take My Hand"

WORLDVIEW
The erroneous but appealing notion that ordinary romantic longings take on epic significance if observed closely enough.

ROLE MODEL STATUS
A classically trained singer named after the mythological queen of Carthage, Dido's reputation as a serious, talented performer has suffered only slightly from Eminem's use of her song "Thank You" as the basis for his single "Stan."