Living up to its title, Bare, Annie Lennox’s third solo album (and second of original material) is as raw and tender as a wound and should be listened to with care. Opening track “A Thousand Beautiful Things” could be one of the “beautiful things” Lennox refers to in the daily list she writes as she picks up “the pieces of what’s left to find.” “Pavement Cracks,” with its echoes of “Little Bird,” tries to add some sunlight to the otherwise gray skies and wet city streets of the song. In fact, many of the songs have a sad, stormy quality, and it is the power and conviction of Lennox’s voice and spirit that keeps the songs from becoming as monotonous as rain. Tears can also be found on the ballad “The Hurting Time,” while hurting is at the heart of “Twisted.” Live concert standouts such as “Honestly” and “Wonderful” now have a context when heard on the album. “The Saddest Song I’ve Got,” a bare bones ballad and tearjerker delivers on its name, and on “Bitter Pill” and “Erased,” Lennox comes across as a woman determined to put the hurt and heartache behind her and get on with her life.

Bette Midler has always had exceptional taste in cover material when it comes to contemporary songwriters. Over the years, she has performed songs by Tom Waits, Marshall Crenshaw, Patty Griffin, Ben Folds, Beth Nielsen Chapman and the late Kirsty MacColl, to name a few. Still, I’ll never forget how surprised and delighted I was when, on her Bette Of Roses CD, she covered a pair of songs by Maria McKee. McKee was, at that time, already an established solo artist after having made her debut as the lead singer of the ’80s cow-punk band Lone Justice. A belter with a flair for the dramatic, I never realized how perfectly matched McKee and Midler were until I heard the latter’s renditions of “To Deserve You” and “The Last Time.” On her new CD of original material, High Dive, McKee performs a 14-song cycle that sounds like it is custom made for Bette Midler. Not that McKee’s renditions aren’t spectacular, especially on the wind-whistling-through-your-hair number “To The Open Spaces,” the sexy ’70s soul of “Be My Joy” and “In Your Constellation,” the piano and vocal tune “No Gala,” the nearly indescribable theatrics of “From Our T.V. Teens To The Tomb,” and the diva drama of “My Friend Foe.”

When I interviewed Jewel in 2001, regarding her album This Way, I asked her about the “disco” references in a couple of the songs and whether or not she would consider letting a remixer get their hands on any of her songs. Two years later we have the musical answer in her latest album, 0304, on which the new-folk princess joins the ranks of the current generation of dance and club music divas. Beats and synthetic sounds dominate on songs with Prince-like titles such as “Run 2 U,” “2 Find U,” “Yes U Can,” as well as “Intuition” (which has been remixed for club play), and the album’s brightest track “Doin’ Fine.” Most of the songs sound like more of an experiment than a career commitment and Jewel should be commended for her willingness to try something out of her realm. However, her appearance in a new TV ad campaign for a line of women’s razors is indeed another story….

Produced by legendary gay DJ Tony Moran, Becstasy, the debut disc by new disco diva Becky Baeling, has a queer sensibility that is missing from so many of Baeling’s contemporaries. As she sings on “Supernova Light,” the album’s vivid opening track, “exploding on the outside/imploding sensuality,” Baeling shines her ray of light on the listener and the dance floor. “I Snapped” snaps up the beat and the rhythm for a stimulating dance venture. Baeling’s dance-club reinvention of the old Belinda Carlisle standard “Heaven Is A Place On Earth,” is like one of those supernovas she sang about in the opening track. “All Over Me” is a funky little track that reveals another side of the singer and the appropriately titled “Diva” is the kind of theme song people would sell their siblings and offspring to get their hands on and make their own, which Baeling does with ease. Best of all, Becky Baeling will be performing this Sunday night, July 27, at Rich’s, 1051 University Ave. in Hillcrest (see accompanying sidebar for Rich’s Pride weekend lineup.

It’s hard not to root for Macy Gray. After her sensational 1999 debut disc On How Life Is, it seemed that her effortless blend of sassy soul and fried funk would provide listeners with Gray’s gooey goodness for years. The reaction of fickle fans to The Id, Gray’s follow-up disc was unprecedented. They turned their backs on such potential party anthems as “Relating To A Psychopath,” “Sexual Revolution,” and “My Nutmeg Phantasy,” to name a few, sending Gray back to square one. The Trouble With Being Myself is an ironic title for an album with so many producers involved. Therein lies the problem with Trouble, and that is that Gray sounds more scattered than ever. Gray gets off to a trouble-free start with “When I See You,” but “It Ain’t The Money,” co-written by and featuring Beck, sounds out of place. “She Ain’t Right For You,” “Come Together,” “Jesus For A Day” and “She Don’t Write Songs For You” recapture the Macy Gray of old, and “My Fondest Childhood Memories” is the kind of tripped out track that we’ve come to expect from the dizzy diva.

Liz Phair’s self-titled disc, her first new studio album in five years is a slick commercial departure that still contains traces of what made Phair so fascinating in the first place. Sex, a mainstay of Phair’s songs, is in abundance here, from the bleepable first single “Why Can’t I” to the “young guys rock” sentiment of “Rock Me” to the “favorite underwear” reference of “Favorite,” all of which were co-penned by Lauren Christy, a British singer/songwriter whose failure as a performer is turning her into the modern rock equivalent of Diane Warren. Phair hasn’t lost her flair for the graphic as you can hear on “H.W.C.,” which stands for “hot, white come (sic),” and deserves to be covered by queer punk band Super 8 Cum Shot. Of the other Phair originals, “Good Love Never Dies,” “Take A Look,” the Who-bombast of “Love/Hate,” and absolutely heartbreaking “Little Digger,” about a child that catches his mother with another man, indicate that the whip-smart Guyville exile is still there under the fishnet stockings and heavy eye makeup.