On Billboard’s Hot 100: (1) "Gold Digger" - Kanye West featuring Jamie Foxx, (2) "Shake It Off" - Mariah Carey, (3) "Photograph" - Nickelback, (4) "Like You" - Bow Wow featuring Ciara, (5) "My Humps" - The Blackeyed Peas, (6) "Wake Me Up When September Ends" - Greenday, (7) "Play" - David Banner, (8) "Soul Survivor" - Young Jeezy featuring Akon, (9) "We Belong Together" - Mariah Carey and (10) "Sugar, We’re Goin Down" - Fall Out Boy.

Oprah Winfrey loves his music and now, so do we. Here’s why:

Frenetic and obtrusive do not describe the performance of trumpet player Chris Botti in his album "When I Fall In Love" released under Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

As CD title suggests, here is music rendered as simply and naturally as the feeling that accounts to half of the magic. Doing versions of romantic songs from different genres as standards (Nat King Cole’s "When I Fall In Love," Frank Sinatra’s "One For My Baby"), urban pop (Sade’s "No Ordinary Love"), samba (Sting’s "La Belle Dame Sans Regrets") and classical (Andrea Bocelli’s "Time To Say Goodbye"), he hardly deviates from the original melodic line of the vocals he shadows that demonstrates dexterity more than overt scaling (think Kenny G) if not utter lack of pomposity.

Indeed, minimalist renditions tend to expose false notes—something that Chris can never be faulted here. Instead, we hear a lot of strong sustains that dissolve impeccably into muted tones creating drama similar to good storytelling with one-liner cruxes. We actually fell asleep the first time we tried listening to the CD from start to end—a testament to the transcendent thrust of the playing.

The musicians that contributed their talent in 13 tracks from Paula Cole (best known in Manila for her pop hit "I Don’t Wanna Wait") to the London Session Orchestra are hardly heard in the album. But they are definitely felt. Like chill-out music, their works layer the whole sinuously as in silk of immaculate ambience. They also add in to the visual images the music conjures inadvertently. Chris Botti with them takes one on mind-trips of poignant memories and sensual fantasies.

Production and arrangement wise, Jeremy Lubbock, Billy Childs, Gil Goldstein and Bobby Colomby (who worked with Chris previously in the latter’s 2002 seasonal collection, "December") made sure that the star of the show is still Chris Botti. Producers have crafted an invisible chasm between the trumpet and the rest in the mix that makes overlaps indistinguishable. Like the tandem of beautiful frame and picture, one cannot do without the other. Yet hierarchy of focus and importance remains clear and paramount; compliments of Grammy-winning engineer Al Schmitt.

We love this album and it will definitely be staple to our listening experience for days and set-ups to come: At cocktails, during that long drive, inside a darkened bedroom illumined only by flickers of candle light on walls.

Other tracks in "When I Fall In Love" are "What’ll I Do," "My Romance," "Let’s Fall In Love," "Cinema Paradiso," "Someone To Watch Over Me," "How Love Should Be" and "Make Someone Happy."

Even as Eminem and other artists haul the butts of ring tone providers to court for serving their downloaded music to mobile phone subscribers worldwide, studio act Crazy Frog (aka German club meisters Bass Bumpers) revel over their creation (or is that mutation?) of "Crazy Frog Axel F." The song has become one of the biggest ring tone hits worldwide after reaching number one in the UK Singles Charts last summer and figuring in Billboard’s Top 40 a few weeks back.

The tune is inspired by Harold Faltmeyer’s "Axel F" culled from the soundtrack of the 80’s Eddie Murphy film, "Beverly Hills Cop." Wolfgang Boss, who is in tandem with Reinhard Raith to comprise Bass Bumpers, is the director of March 1 Records (a joint label with Ministry of Sound, Germany) who has previously has had massive hits with the likes of Obsession "Aventura" and Haiducii "Dragostea din tei" - both selling well in excess of 1 Million across Europe.

The album from which "Axel F Crazy Frog" was culled is released under Warner Music.

If music in this compilation that carries the namesake of the world’s most loved doll is indication, then it confirms our long-held suspicions on what Barbie does when there are no humans around: party, party, party in style! If Barbie had a job it would be as event specialist or a sassy DJ in some swanky bar.

Majority of the songs here are dance floor favorites most notably Las Kechup’s "The Ketchup Song," Christina Aguilera’s "Genie In A Bottle," " Pink’s "Get The Party Started," Spice Girl’s "Spice Up Your Love" and Sugababes "Round Round." Though at first glance, the genre seems to be the only thing common in the 15 tracks here, one later realizes that each act has raised the flag of the gender in the music world at onset or height of her (to be politically correct) careers.

Jojo, who figures in "Leave (Get Out)" the track list, is the teenage white R&B singer who had even African American girls vibing with her "Baby It’s You" debut single. Pink is the female rocker who stood loud and proud at the height of R&B a few years back. And who can forget the Spice Girls of "tell me what you want, what you, really, really, want" that had started the whole girl band craze? Subliminally, all the artists here are icons that preteens, out to find their own identities, could look up to as models that does music target market could relate to. It’s not incidental that all these artists have celebrated fashion sense, too (well, with the exception of Christina and Ashanti)—after all, the doll that inspires have at least a hundred a hundred dresses in its closet.

We laud MCA Universal for choosing songs with wholesome messages. There’s not one here that speaks of sex, not even covertly. "Genie In A Bottle" with its potentially double meaning line "you gotta rub it the right way," is balanced by the previous line "my body’s saying let’s go BUT my heart is saying ‘no!’ that implies the girl kept her pants on. Really, good girls (including ‘plastic’ ones like Barbie) just wanna have fun.