This is the worst album I've ever heard. Not because it's more than 137 minutes long -- it was the worst album I'd ever heard after 10 minutes. It begins with thick waves of insensate cheering (track by track, you can hear the engineer pushing the volume up at the end of every number) -- and then, out of the maelstrom, comes this pathetic, strangled, self-pitying, self-righteous, melisma-crazy bleat, the voice of a sensitive man alone in a world where, as he puts it, "I'm not as afraid of dying/As I am of getting old." It's an unsingable couplet, with that first "as" dissolving the first syllable of "afraid," but who needs rhythm when your heart's in the right place, when you're against pollution and stuff like that? How low can you go when what you really want is to be the new Richie Havens? This record proves that no one knows, but I'll bet Ben Harper wouldn't have dared do "Sexual Healing" if Marvin Gaye were still alive.

2) Daft Punk, "Discovery" (Virgin)

The masked French techno duo makes oceanic dance music -- music to dance to in your dreams. The 1997 "Homework" seemed to have no bottom to it; this has endless warmth, an openness of spirit that asks only that you melt. Try to resist: The opening "One More Time" begins with a tinny sample, as if from an old, old radio. The radio begins to play a naive melody, and soon enough you remember Kool & the Gang's "Celebration" never felt anything but good. With a bigger, deeper drum sound, the '80s are all over this record, in the thrilling "Superheroes," a pounding Pet Shop Boys march with a big, uplifting finale, the Pet Shop Boys' cover of the Village People's "Go West" without the sadness, without the trick AIDS played on the song; in the endless wildness of "Veridis Quo." This is the one. It's loud but never rushes; it reimagines George McCrae's already abstract Miami soul classic "Rock Your Baby" alongside the Italian disco group Cetu Java's gorgeous, somehow sinister "Adonde." The pace is cool, but a sense of mission is never muffled, never hedged. The theme running over the drum sound seems to double back on itself, to generate its own accompaniment, to step back and listen to itself, to approve, to rejoin the gathering of tones and declare itself: Give me a riff and I'll save the world!

3) "Duets," directed by Bruce Paltrow (United Airlines in-flight entertainment)

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Maria Bello is very good at saying, "I'd be pleased and honored to fuck your brains out"; this PG edit of the horrible Karaoke World picture dubs in a car revving its engine so you can't hear her. There is, though, a moment of instruction, when hustler Huey Lewis and recently met daughter Gwyneth Paltrow team up on Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'." Dion, speaking of Hank Williams in a Fresh Air interview last fall: "His commitment was so total. He'd bite off the end of words: 'I got it now!'" This is the opposite: the definition of plumminess, where a song exists only as a vehicle for the singer's vanity, where if the word "forever" appears it can only mean "So long, sucker." So here "forever" is not bitten off but stretched out, into "Fou-ahhh-evvvvahhhh," the singers forcing the melody to carry more than it can bear, until it can produce only lies. Time stands still: The commonplace effect becomes an absolute, raising insincerity to a transcendental value. The crowd goes as wild as a Ben Harper applause track, as it does for everything in the movie -- except for Andre Braugher's weird, heart-rending reversal of the guy in the crowd screaming for "Free Bird."

4) "Milarde" (Mediaset TV, March 18)

On the Italian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" (a milarde is a billion lire, about $500,000), a woman faced the final question: Albert King -- Writer? Formula 1 driver? TV journalist? Musician? She chewed her lips, her fingers, twisted in her seat, and an aura of the fix came off of her in waves. "Well, I know B.B. King is a musician," she said -- as if, confronted with somebody named King, one would automatically think B.B. and not, say, Martin Luther. "Ah, yes," said the host, "B.B. -- 'Blues Boy.'" One would have thought this promised an early resolution, but no. Angst, despair -- finally the woman was led away, as if to perdition. Ten minutes of commercials followed. The woman returned. Over 15 minutes, she struggled with inner demons. Writer? Musician? It could have been "Sophie's Choice" for all you could tell from her face. It was fake -- if it wasn't it was pornographic -- and then, the answer. Yes, she will plunge into the abyss: "Musician."

The result was a truly religious deliverance. The woman seemed ready to kiss the host's feet, to pledge to him her unborn children. By the logic of her performance, had she lost they would have had to put her down, like Jane Fonda at the end of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

5) Persona Grata (17, rue du Temple, Paris 4e)

Just across the Pont Neuf on the Right Bank is Conforama, a household furnishings department store. What's inside -- items guaranteed to put you to sleep on your feet -- seems to translate the name of the place: a play on confort (comfort), to an English speaker it reads Conform-o-rama. But small stores offering typical French design -- simplicity combined with uniqueness, a lack of ostentation with flair -- are all over the city, and this one stood out. Persona Grata is divided into sections, each with its own manifesto -- "Good Taste? Bad Taste?" "Design? Child's Play!" "Objects: Stories without Words" -- and a Princess toaster, all gleaming silver except for a black base and handles, paid off on the last one. Without a single anthropomorphic feature it was nonetheless a face. It grinned, saying, "Good morning. Click me." It was welcoming, but it also suggested it had a mind of its own -- that as much as it was there to serve you, it would wait for you to go to sleep, and then get up and wander all over the house, moving things.

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