Singer/songwriter Tanita Tikaram's debut album, Ancient Heart, stands as one of the most underappreciated albums of the 1980s, and she, along with Tracy Chapman, preceded the 1990s' onslaught of female singer/songwriters by almost a decade. Tikaram, who was only 19 when this album was released, created a melancholy and wistful work, mature beyond her years, of startling originality and honesty. While this album may be considered folkish and artsy, it never stoops to the clichés that dominated those styles of music in the later Lilith Fair years. Her near perfect signature song "Twist in My Sobriety" is a stark, sinuous, desperate torch song that managed to garner a bit of radio and video airplay in its day and sounded like nothing else then or since…

When an artist releases something as profoundly moving as Lovers Speak, critical acumen doesn't mean a damned thing. Joan Armatrading's first album proper in five years is a startling testament of artistic integrity, searing emotional honesty, and musical accessibility and sophistication that is literally unmatched by anything on the current musical scene. In fact, the only comparable album from 2003 is Annie Lennox's Bare. But where the latter is an album of confessions and exorcism, Lovers Speak is an unflinching look at the language of love from all sides. It is an investigation into the experience of love, its languishing and loss, and the redemption it is capable of rewarding to those who persevere and refine themselves through heartache and acceptance and tolerance.

At the Movies: Soundtrack Hits (2007) is a 19-track compilation of Van Morrison songs featured in a film at one time or another. Rather than play like an odds-and-ends compilation of soundtrack rarities as one might expect, Soundtrack Hits plays like a best-of collection, including many of Morrison's greatest solo hits along with a couple Them songs ("Gloria," "Baby Please Don't Go"). There are several live versions in place of the studio cuts. The live versions of "Moondance" and "Brown Eyed Girl" are previously unreleased.

With no musical background and without ever having performed in public, Zelmani rose to the top of the charts with her debut album. In spite of being known as very shy, she soon reached an audience all over Europe and Asia with her tender singer/songwriter country. Zelmani got her first guitar at the age of 14 and was taught some chords by her father. She learned to write songs, and almost ten years later, sent a few tapes to various record companies. Sony replied first and brought her together with producer and guitarist Lars Halapi, known for having worked with Ulf Lundell and Bo Kaspers Orkester.

Completists will be happy to own many of the rarities on this four-disc set, including Stevens's first demo session, an unreleased 1970 duet with Elton John, a cover of Fats Domino's "Blue Monday," and several choice live cuts from the late '70s. And it's nice to have an overview of the artist's entire career–from late '60s pop-star wannabe to '70s folk-rock superstar–in one place. But the difference between early Cat Stevens (despite composing hits for others) and post-Tea for the Tillerman Stevens is substantial. The two follow-up LPs were part of a trilogy of brilliance–both musically and lyrically–and any Stevens collection must start there. Nevertheless, surprises and some gems are to be found throughout all four discs–even his most recent recording (as Yusuf Islam) isn't bad. This box set also offers a choice opportunity to reassess a deserving career. (All royalties go to New York City relief victims and orphans and homeless families in underdeveloped countries.)

On his third album, Jackson Browne returned to the themes of his debut record (love, loss, identity, apocalypse) and, amazingly, delved even deeper into them. "For a Dancer," a meditation on death like the first album's "Song for Adam," is a more eloquent eulogy; "Farther On" extends the "moving on" point of "Looking Into You"; "Before the Deluge" is a glimpse beyond the apocalypse evoked on "My Opening Farewell" and the second album's "For Everyman." If Browne had seemed to question everything in his first records, here he even questioned himself. "For me some words come easy, but I know that they don't mean that much," he sang on the opening track, "Late for the Sky," and added in "Farther On," "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say." Yet his seeming uncertainty and self-doubt reflected the size and complexity of the problems he was addressing in these songs, and few had ever explored such territory, much less mapped it so well. "The Late Show," the album's thematic center, doubted but ultimately affirmed the nature of relationships, while by the end, "After the Deluge," if "only a few survived," the human race continued nonetheless. It was a lot to put into a pop music album, but Browne stretched the limits of what could be found in what he called "the beauty in songs," just as Bob Dylan had a decade before.