"I've got a thick tongue," sings 30-year-old Sara Bareilles on "Gonna Get Over You," a playfully sexy bit of doo-wop pop. It's the high point on the follow-up to 2007's Little Voice and its megahit, "Love Song." Bareilles veers between fellow pianists Alicia Keys and Regina Spektor, avoiding either's extremes. The result, notwithstanding the title a cappella and an awkward confessional ("Basket Case"), is generic big-box pop; throw a mandolin on the kiss-off "King of Anything" and you have Faith Hill. Which is fine. But there seems to be a more interesting artist lurking in here, somewhere.

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."