Three years is a long time between albums, but Bad Company's Rough Diamonds — their first LP since 1979's Desolation Angels — only makes one wish the band had stayed away even longer. Next to such mid-Seventies scorchers as "Can't Get Enough" and "Good Lovin' Gone Bad," the witless, Free-style blues-rock shuffles and bloodless boogie tunes that make up this LP are embarrassing.

There are a few uncut gems here. "Electricland" actually opens the album on a promising note, with Simon Kirke's tight drum trot pushing up against the song's dark mood and Paul Rodgers' chilling coyote howl. And "Cross Country Boy" sounds absolutely energetic, sandwiched as it is between an antique Chuck Berry stroll (bassist Boz Burrell's "Ballad of the Band") and a sluggish country-blues travelogue (guitarist Mick Ralphs' "Old Mexico").

But whereas Bad Company used to reinvest Sixties electric Anglo-blues clichés with energy and conviction, Rough Diamonds simply finds the group underlining those clichés in dull funk outings ("Untie the Knot") and lame blues ("Nuthin' on the TV"). In fact, the only cutting thing about this album is the cover's serrated edge.

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."