Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" was on practically every music critic's list of the top 10 CDs of 1998. It earned her two Grammy nominations this year -- but you've got to look hard to find her on music TV or radio.

Record producer and recording artist Teddy Riley has had his share of musical success. His group Blackstreet has won a Grammy, while earning some big-name fan support. And one of Blackstreet's biggest backers is none other than Janet Jackson.

To call Alanis Morissette goal-oriented is an understatement. At 24, she has recorded two major albums, laid down several hit songs and emerged from a two-year withdrawal from the public eye sans clothes.

Alanis Morissette burst onto the scene in late 1995 with the album "Jagged Little Pill" and the raucous single "You Oughta Know." But the shock of becoming rich and famous almost overnight nearly drove her out of business.

Her career has swept from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, ranging from pop charts to MTV to the silver screen. And still, Madonna continues to redefine herself. At once, she is a sultry siren, a marketing phenomenon, a movie diva, and a mother.

When Tim Smith was entering adolescence, he was like many American boys -- he wanted to be the lead singer in a rock 'n' roll band. The Baton Rouge, Louisiana native would get together with his friends and lip sync bands like Kiss, even dressing up like the motley crew, building a stage and charging neighborhood kids a buck to watch them "perform."

Six years ago, she was the woman with the guitar who just wanted "to have some fun." Three albums and some Grammy awards later, Sheryl Crow is settling into a steady rhythm.

On Swing Street, New York legendary jazz clubs like Birdland once showcased Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Some 70 years ago, the same creative cauldron cooked up the swing phenomenon, with the Benny Goodman Orchestra and Duke Ellington.

Garth Brooks claims that he'd rather "just crawl in a hole and make music" than deal with the fanfare that comes with breaking country music sales records right and left. At the same time, he says he already misses his nationwide tour, over for less than a week.

Two men who should know better stare with dazed rapture at a tiny woman with pale, pale skin, crimson lips and blazing red hair pulled back in a ponytail, curled up in a chair and sipping coffee in the lobby of an anonymous business hotel on the outskirts of Atlanta. Dressed in gray sweat pants, white T-shirt and sneakers, she seems as nameless and aloof as the tourists checking in at the front desk.

Polly Jean Harvey is a freak of nature -- a butterfly who went back to the cocoon and reemerged free of the decorative excess that previously kept her earthbound. "I'm lighter than I've ever been," Harvey sings on her new album, "Is This Desire?", and indeed, she soars.

Madonna was the top winner at Thursday night's 15th Annual MTV Video Music Awards, picking up six of the nine categories for which her work was nominated during a ceremony that was uncharacteristically staid for the historically raunchy, outspoken happening.