As a member of 10,000 Maniacs and a solo artist, Natalie Merchant showed that her best traits were her refined taste and fetching, earthy voice. This handsome, long-brewing two-CD/book project flaunts both, setting poems and nursery rhymes to folksy tunes with a U.N. roster of A-list players who mine Irish, Chinese, African-American, European classical and other traditions. The music is beautiful and the vibe mellow, though Merchant gets Dixieland-brassy with Wynton Marsalis and tries some I-Threes-style reggae. But it's like that My Morning Jacket song about the sexy librarian: You wish she'd let her hair down more.

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.