Relish

Joan Osborne turned a question no one dared ask on Top 40 radio — what if God rode the bus like the rest of us — into one of 1995's most unlikely hits, and buried it inside a record far grittier than that single let on.

"One Of Us" made Osborne famous, but the woman who opens the album on "St. Teresa" is a rawer figure, half-preacher and half-street singer over a swampy, distorted groove. Her cover of Dylan's "Man In The Long Black Coat" proves she can inhabit a song without shrinking it, and "Right Hand Man" struts with a blues muscle the radio hit never hinted at. What holds it together is a voice that can go from confession to leer without a seam, as comfortable with desire on "Let's Just Get Naked" as with reverence. That range is why the album outlived the novelty single that sold it.