Human's Lib

Nothing can match the greatness of Howard Jones' haircut, which displayed a peculiar early-'80s combo of mop-top and spikes that was so simply wrong it could hardly have been mistaken for anything else. His first (and best) album doesn't have the monolithic sterility of his biggest hits ("Things Can Only Get Better" — the woah-woah-woah song — and "No One Is to Blame," which featured Phil Collins). It's also got some of Jones' catchiest numbers, including the charmingly simple "New Song" and "What s Love." It's all of an era, of course, but let it herein be noted that Jones was singing "I don't want to be hip and cool/I don't want to play by the rules" (from "New Song") well before Nirvana and Beck turned such sentiments into a "revolution." — Keven McAlester.