LET'S CURB THE COVER ALBUMS

There's nothing wrong with padding an album with a choice cover song or two.

But releasing an entire album of cover songs? That smacks of laziness, and in recent years, some big names from various genres have opted to do a little coasting.

Among the stars who have taken the all-cover disc route are Smokey Robinson, Rod Stewart, Eddie Money, Mandy Moore, Barry Manilow, Rod Stewart, Alan Jackson, Joss Stone, John Pizzarelli and Ozzy Osbourne.

Poised to join that list is former Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry, whose all-Bob Dylan cover album, Dylanesque, is due in June.

This is not to say that these type of efforts are unlistenable. It's just that after one play, there's usually no point in revisiting them because rarely do the covers top the originals -- or, in the case of standards, the most famous versions. And in many instances, the covers are near carbon-copies of the originals -- same tempo, same arrangement, etc.

Rappers often get slammed for doing their thing over segments of music (both familiar and obscure) from existing recordings.

Artists who cherry-pick songs for an all-covers album -- they're taking a quick, easy and uncreative shortcut, too.