Bono's arcing anguish in "Please." Taken on its own -- away from the chart numbers and the big shtick of PopMart -- "Pop" is simply an album of great pop. For some reason, for a lot of folks, that's just not enough.

Then there's the Bowie Problem. With the metal-machine-music overload of 1995's "Outside" and "Earthling"'s lip-service approach to drum-and-bass, Bowie has been making too big a deal of staying even with the pop fashion curve. The result: He ends up selling his new material short. The way Bowie lit into "Earthling" numbers like "Looking for Satellites" and "Seven Years in Tibet" on his recent, career-overview club tour proved that he's much better off when he stops worrying about eclipsing his