I generally think of Rob Thomas as a decidedly middle-of-the-road artist. I don’t mean that in the MOR sense, though I suppose he is that to some degree as well, but in the sense that his music isn’t wonderful and it isn’t bad. It’s… good. And sometimes good just isn’t good enough when it comes to deciding what to listen to in a collection of hundreds of CDs.

Now I fully admit that this assessment of Thomas might be off base. Indeed, I quite like the hit songs he’s written for Matchbox 20 (‘Push,’ ‘3 a.m.’ and ‘Bent,’ among others) and you’d have to be deaf to not appreciate the smash hit ‘Smooth’ he wrote for Santana. And I really like the poppy funk (or funky pop) of ‘Lonely No More,’ the first single off his debut solo album Something to Be.

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