Something To Sing About Upcoming Album Releases Prove That The Reigning Queens Of Pop Music Are Staying As Busy And Creative As Ever

If you’re talking about the female power elite in pop, you can’t get much higher than Janet Jackson, Bonnie Raitt, Madonna and Yoko Ono. Their collective influence, whether it’s Madonna’s domination of the dance charts or Ono’s guardianship of John Lennon’s legacy, is beyond measure.

And who could dispute that Janet Jackson now has more credibility than brother Michael? Or that Raitt is the reigning blueswoman of them all?

While pop music may still be a boys’ club to a profound degree, no one puts the shackles on these four female artists - all of whom have new albums that either just came out or are due out on Tuesday.

Only Ono’s record, “Rising,” consists of all-new, original material - and what a surprise it is as she unearths her punk roots, unleashes primal screams to note the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and turns son Sean loose on some serious rock ‘n’ roll guitar.

All four records have much to recommend them. One is a greatest-hits dance set with two new tracks (Jackson’s sizzling “Design of a Decade”). One is a collection of ballads with three new tracks (Madonna’s bedroom-ready “Something to Remember”). And one is a two-CD live set from recent shows in Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif. (Raitt’s epic “Road-Tested,” also the focus of a PBS special on Nov. 28).

Let’s start with Raitt’s release. Incredibly, it’s the first live record of her career. “I’ve been planning this record in my mind for so long,” Raitt said recently. “I wanted to do something for people who can’t get to the concerts.”

Raitt’s tour attendance was down this summer - probably the result of too many summer tours in a row. But with the pressure off following seven Grammy awards this decade, Raitt rocked harder than she has in years and that spirit was captured on the new CDs. They include such unexpected additions as Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “The Kokomo Medley” (with stinging blues-slide guitar) and a raving cover of “Burning Down the House,” a Talking Heads tune. “I just love that song,” said Raitt, who attended Harvard at the same time in the early ‘70s as the Heads’ Jerry Harrison, though they didn’t know each other then.

Raitt’s discs also star special guests, among them Bryan Adams on the swampy “Rock Steady” and Jackson Browne on the dignified “My Opening Farewell.” Then there’s the faster, gutsier tempos employed on many tracks, making some seem totally new. “I didn’t want to do carbon copies of the album versions,” said Raitt. “Some of these songs have really evolved - and I wanted to show that.”

The production quality is also top-notch. “I sort of took a course in live records before making mine,” said Raitt. “I listened to live records by James Taylor, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen and the Talking Heads. I wanted to see how much crowd noise people left on the records. Things like that.”

Raitt will soon take a sabbatical. She won’t perform next summer except for another likely appearance at the Newport Rhythm & Blues Festival. Otherwise, she plans to live in the countryside and take off to Europe to visit friends. In the meantime, these live discs fill the gap nicely.

Madonna also will not tour behind her new release, out Tuesday. And she too is taking off to Europe, though it’s to star in the opera “Evita.” Still, her ballad-heavy record is another marketing masterstroke. Tracks include the pensive “This Used to Be My Playground” and “I’ll Remember You,” but the three new songs likewise stand out.

The best of these is the sultry, hip-hop-infused “Forbidden Love.” Madonna adds these call-and-response lines: “In your eyes, forbidden love; in your smile, forbidden love; in your kiss, forbidden love.” And in these grooves, a hit song.

Madonna’s other new tracks are really two versions of the same tune: Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You,” which she also just did for a recent tribute disc to Gaye, “Inner City Blues.” Her first version is industrial-strength hip-hop, with clanging sounds wedded around simple but tellingly romantic lyrics: “I want you the right way/I want you/But I want you to want me.”

The other version is an orchestral treatment with the added, monogamous (by Madonna standards) lines: “To share is precious/-Don’t play with something you should cherish for life.”

Opposite in tempo - almost all high, vs. Madonna’s almost all low - is Jackson’s “Design of a Decade.” It’s a party record with dance-floor staples “Nasty,” “Rhythm Nation” and “Control,” which contains Jackson’s famed declaration of independence from her parents: “When I was 17, I did what people told me/I did what my father said and let my mother mold me … /That was a long time ago.”

Jackson’s two new tracks are also high-quality stock. “Runaway,” already a Top 10 hit, is produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and has a world music element with chimes and sitar embellishments.

The other new one, “Twenty Foreplay,” has some hotly cooed funk (“Can’t wait to groove it because you sure know how to move it”) woven around this romantic affirmation: “It’s not what you say before we start to play/It’s what you say after that makes me want to stay.”

Ono’s record is the most startling of the bunch. It’s her first album of original music since 1986’s “Starpeace.” Many people thought she had retreated from the studio to perform strictly stateswomanly functions, such as her speech at September’s opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. But Ono is back with an album that out-punks and out-screams those by women much younger than she. “I’m Dying” is an anguished tune with wailing punk guitar from Sean Lennon (part of the backup IMA Band).

Thematically, it’s based on the painful memory of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima and other bombs dropped on Tokyo, where Ono hid in a shelter when she was a child.

Those who didn’t like Ono in her screechy Plastic Ono Band days will not like the new record, because it echoes some of that (in the title track “Rising,” particularly), though it’s uncanny how such primal noisemaking now seems a better fit for the times.

Ono adds some angular funk in “New York Woman,” some deeply sexy moans in “Ask the Dragon” and some spiritual hope in “Revelations” that make this an edgy, often inspired work if you’ve cared at all for her music in the past.