Product Review

After the immediate success of its late-2000 Volume 5, which landed at No. 1 in Billboard, the Now That's What I Call Music! series of hit-single compilations isn't going away anytime soon. Like the previous disc, Now 6 is front-loaded with teen-pop and dance-floor faves and saves the big rock numbers (U2's Grammy winner "Beautiful Day" and Now mainstays Everclear's Jean Knight-biting "AM Radio" among them) for last. Its trademark game of catch-up for those whose receivers have been broken for the previous six months is augmented by the very current likes of Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" and Coldplay's "Yellow." As usual, hardly anyone is going to love every track here. But as an aural snapshot of what's up in the mainstream pop world for its moment, no other collection can touch it. --Rickey Wright