What's this optimistic-looking New Year's message we're being handed under the stall? Why it's The List, of course, jotted down on several yards of squeezably soft Charmin! Check out what's in — and so out — this year.

— Hank Stuever, Washington Post

RELEASES

CHINGY'S LATEST

You have to admire the confidence of an artist who would hand reviewers a Louisville Slugger of an album title like "Hate It Or Love It" — just as you have to give some respect to Chingy, a guy who has turned one huge hit — 2003's "Right Thurr" — into a career.

Now that he's back with Ludacris' imprint, Chingy sounds reinvigorated, turning in a dozen lean tracks that includes the best single — the synth-happy "Gimme Dat" — he's had since his signature smash. That's not to suggest the album doesn't give the haters something, too — its wide-open spaces tend to highlight his lyrical shortcomings. "Spend Some $" might be a message good for the economy, but it adds nothing to hip-hop.

— Dan LeRoy, Hartford (Conn.) Courant

STARS RESURRECTED

Deborah Chesher was sorting old negatives one day when a thought crossed the photographer's mind about how young and alive all of the guitar gods of her youth had been, quickly followed by the realization that many of them were now dead.

She brought that into focus in the coffee-table book "Everybody I Shot Is Dead." The 208-page volume, with black and white and color photos, celebrates the joyous, often unguarded, moments of some of rock music's biggest stars.

Also chronicled are some of the legendary excesses that led Harry Nilsson, the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson, T Rex's Marc Bolan and scores of others to early exits.

— John Rogers, Associated Press

SALES, BARGAINS