**1/2 JENNIFER PAIGE

(Edel America/Hollywood)

It's hard to believe that the teary-eyed self-involvement music of Sarah McLachlan merits imitators, but Jennifer Paige, whose dreamy "Crush" remains lodged in the Top 10 of the Billboard "Hot 100 Singles" chart, is a pretty good one because she takes from McLachlan the self-involvement but not the embellishments. The contradictions in Paige's music -- like that between the flawless polish of Andy Goldmark's arrangements and the little angsts she sings about -- feel pretty basic. Where McLachlan's lyrics imply profound but unspecific meanings and limitless but nameless yearnings, Paige goes for the simple and the immediate. In jazzy steps like "Busted," the soulful "Let It Rain," and a sultry "Just To Have You," and in countryish sighs like "Questions," she reaches across the room, not the sky. And if her slight soprano, like McLachlan's voice of dreaminess, rarely grips the music's wrist, at least when Paige has to get dreamy (as in "Crush"), she's far too factual to perfume a song to death. Which is why she can sigh a leaving-you song like "Sober," and still make you feel intoxicated.

-- Michael Freedberg