Anyone looking for the key to ABBA's enduring appeal should look no further than "Voulez Vous" and "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" for their answer. There was an innocence to the Swedish quartet, even when they were singing about one-night stands and the invitations to them. Gold establishes that the band, while appreciated as campy, were actually multifaceted in their ...

Manufacturer: Polydor

Manufacturer: Rhino

What once seemed Queen's greatest liabilities--a preening flamboyance and pompous, overwrought theatricality--have ironically become their most enduring charms in a grey, postmodern pop-music landscape. While it eschews the glammy, pre-punk hard rock of live faves such as "Stone Cold Crazy" and "Tie Your Mother Down" for the band's more quirky club-beat string of latter-day hits , this 51-track ...

Manufacturer: Parlophone/EMI

These days she's fodder for tabloids and late-night comics, but way back in the 1990s Mariah Carey reigned as one of the world's bestselling female performers. This two-CD Greatest Hits collection offers up chart-topping evidence why, for better or worse, Mariah's five-octave, pop/R&B styling set the diva standard. Culled from her five albums on Sony, (before signing to Virgin), and you get ...

Manufacturer: Columbia

Queen brought a whole new meaning to the phrase over the top. While rock & roll flamboyance stretched back at least as far as Little Richard, Freddie Mercury continued to camp it up, taking little seriously and smirking at the music's growing pretensions while partaking in them no small bit. Many of the band's singles hold up extremely well, such as "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Killer Queen" and "You're ...

Manufacturer: Parlophone

Manufacturer: Island

Manufacturer: Warner

This best-of is loaded with the usual smash suspects plus three new cuts--the sub-Mellancamp "Someday I'll Be Saturday Night", the Bed of Roses-style ballad single "Always", and a low-key remake of "Living On A Prayer" titled "Prayer '94". Love 'em or not, there's no denying the loyalty of the fans. --Jeff Bateman

Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)

The Electric Light Orchestra were one of the biggest and most successful bands of the late 1970s, producing a massive string of hit singles and albums that almost any other band would envy. Their works have been cited as influences by such hip acts as Grandaddy and Super Furry Animals. Their frontman and leader Jeff Lynne has been the producer of choice for people like Paul McCartney, Tom Petty ...

Manufacturer: Sony

New Age diva Enya first became widely known when her 1988 album Watermark sold 4 million copies and launched the single "Orinoco Flow". Her follow-up, Shepherd Moons, was even more successful, selling over 10 million copies despite its slightly lower grade of ethereal enchantment. In 1997 she released Paint the Sky with Stars, an assortment of her best work from these two ...

Manufacturer: Wea