You Know We're Right

As the band uses deep rhythmic strings and a full, multivoiced chorus to create a swirling landscape of decay and delicacy, Jarvis Cocker sings, I carved your name with a heart just up above/Now swollen, distorted, unrecognizable like our love. Even in a song that's seemingly about vegetation, Pulp gets weighed down with lusty pain.

Billy Corgan whinnies his songs like a startled horse, but he can still write a seductive melody -- and Marianne Faithfull can still wring desire and disappointment from just about anything you hand her. Her voice now like burnt toast, Faithfull conveys Corgan's graceful, aching song as neither pledge nor contrition; rather, her delivery is so meditative in its singed ardor that it's hardly verbal. This is not a staring contest you can win.

42 Outkast
"The Whole World," from Big Boi and Dre Present ... Outkast
(Arista/LaFace)

When groups include new songs on their best-of compilations, it's either a psychic stab at hit prediction or, more likely, an attempt to goose sales. Regardless, "The Whole World" holds its own with the duo's smash singles, showcasing a flow only Andre and Big Boi dare attempt and a singsong hook only Outkast could make work.

43 Jaguar Wright
"The What Ifs," from Denials, Delusions and Decisions
(MCA)

Backed by the Roots, perhaps the tightest band in the biz, sista unleashes a voice that booms with authority even as it invites with its warmth. Wright ain't frontin' like all the baby-voiced, dependent-on-studio-trick female vocalists who pollute modern soul. She's tough, gritty and alluring, and here she sets the record straight with her lover, spilling her guts like a postmodern blues singer.

44 Elvis Presley Vs. JXL
"A Little Less Conversation"
(RCA)

A remix of one of Elvis Presley's few worthwhile soundtrack sides from the late-'60s, "A Little Less Conversation" bills itself as a contest between the King and Amsterdam-based DJ JXL. The latter spikes the rhythm track with the obligatory contemporary drum loop, but what's immediately evident on this modern Elvis hit is that Presley's original anticipated the energy and temper of our own times just fine on its own. Final score? Elvis: 50 million new fans; JXL: zero.

45 Christina Aguilera
"Walk Away," from Stripped
(RCA)

It's easy to find Aguilera's latest off-putting; she's been pretty shameless in peddling her posterior to help move discs. Thankfully, though, her voice isn't as threadbare as her bony bum, and here Aguilera delivers a torch song that turns out to be one of the only songs on her oversexed sophomore effort that hints at any real intimacy.

46 Louise Goffin
"Quiet Anaesthesia," from Sometimes a Circle
(Dreamworks)

Louise Goffin's Sometimes a Circle led a fulfilling life, including plenty of travel and romance, but after eleven tracks, it was time to put it to sleep. So on "Quiet Anaesthesia," Carole King's daughter sings a subtle, spooky lullaby, then guest guitarist John Parish plays the sandman, using the album's final instrumental moment to sprinkle sparkling dust. Sweet dreams.

47 Brendan Benson
"Folk Singer," from Lapalco
(Star Time)

There's so much catchy power pop out there that a lot of it ends up doubling back on itself to become nondescript and unmemorable in its monochromatic jangle. But Brendan Benson (abetted here by Jason Falkner, veteran of Jellyfish and the Grays and auteur of two brilliant albums of his own) rises above the fray, and this song marks a new peak for Detroit's (White Stripes-championed) brightest pop light.

48 Dillinger Escape Plan with Mike Patton
"Come to Daddy," from Irony Is a Dead Scene
(Epitaph)

The original version of this song, by Aphex Twin, was like a soundtrack to the waking dreams you start to have after three acid-addled, sleepless nights. The Dillinger Escape Plan's songs offer the aural equivalent of being punched in the face ninety times a minute. And guest singer Mike Patton's mania is too massive to encompass in a blurb. Put it all in a blender, hit shred and you've got a vision of hell that will make Ozzfest fans cry for their mommies.

49 Khia
"My Neck, My Back," from Thug Misses
(Dirty Down/Artemis)

My neck, my back, lick my pussy and my crack, Khia instructs dispassionately during this tune's startling chorus. Taking nothing for granted, she's extremely explicit about her sexual needs, without adding a material want list to the mix like many of her peers. "Money can't buy me good head" seems to be her mantra: You might have Gs/Fuck that; get on your knees. She doesn't need to command listeners to dance, though -- the bass-loaded beat takes care of that.

50 Phil Collins
"Can't Stop Loving You," from Testify
(Atlantic)

If it's a bridge you want, Collins builds 'em better than an engineer. The one Collins erects for this cover of Billy Nichols' song, once a minor hit for Leo Sayer -- a singer who makes the former Genesis frontman sound like Johnny Rotten -- is among his canniest sonic structures, its load-bearing multitracked harmonies and swooping drums more than strong enough to support the schmaltz tonnage. Its nagging hook isn't supposed to be subtle, but the steam-driven rhythm track, choo-chooing like the train in the lyrics, actually is.