Barbados-born seventeen-year-old Rihanna moved to America only two years ago, but she's already scored one of the biggest hits of the summer, "Pon De Replay," a poppy piece of dancehall reggae with slapping, syncopated beats recalling big-band jazz. Produced mostly by Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers, the songwriting-production duo behind the worst boy-band hit of all time, 'NSync's "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You," the rest of Music of the Sun lacks the single's immediacy and rhythmic ingenuity. Photogenic Rihanna suggests a young Mariah Carey minus the birdcalls, and the generic vocal hiccups and frills clearly learned from American R&B often overwhelm her Caribbean charm. At fifty-two minutes, Rihanna's debut overstays its welcome, but the single justifies plenty of replays.

“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."