Osborne’S Lyrics Shine On ‘Righteous Love’

Joan Osborne has come a long way since she sang those classic philosophical lines: “What if God was one of us… Nobody calling on the phone, ‘cept for the Pope, maybe, in Rome.”

Five years ago, Osborne’s debut album “Relish” introduced us to a frizzy-haired, rough-voiced woman with big musical debts to Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin and a knack for writing great lyrics (the aforementioned radio hit notwithstanding).

The jacket art for “Relish” was a collage of random images cut from magazines, such as a bird perching on a tomato. She was as rough around the edges as they come, and it was a big part of what made her interesting.

Her follow-up CD, “Righteous Love,” is in every sense more polished than its predecessor, and the change is unequivocally for the better. Her glaring problems with singing in tune are gone. She restrains her vocals to notes she can hit, but she still is by no means a wallflower.

The songs and production are slicker, funkier and more retro than the previous album, and the vocal arrangements are great.

Osborne draws on numerous musical influences from the ‘60s and ‘70s, particularly that era’s R&B and psychedelic rock, reaffirming my occasional pessimistic musing that no music worth emulating has been created since about 1975.

One of the greatest things about this album, though, is the one thing that hasn’t changed much: Osborne’s confident, subtly ironic, knowing lyrics. Whether writing from the perspective of a spurned lover or a giggly girl with a crush, you never lose the sense that this is a woman who has been around the block a time or two.

It’s anything but Britney Spears.

Grade: A