Country music takes heartsickness as its prerogative. We listeners give Nashville songsters the benefit of the doubt because that wounded twang makes being blue sound like a matter of art. Still, when Billy Ray Cyrus arrived in 1992 with "Achy Breaky Heart," we didn't quite know what to think. "Achy breaky" was a patently cringe-worthy way to describe being luckless in love. And Billy Ray himself confused things further. Here was a strapping fellow with a courageous mullet -- a man's man from Kentucky. Where were these wacky adjectives coming from?

The final story on "Achy Breaky Heart" was that we were seeing a genuine country talent with an eccentric lyrical sense. The song was a huge hit for a reason, after all: it was crafted to be so strangely addictive. But while Cyrus has kept a strong presence on the country charts -- amid a budding acting career -- we haven't gotten a rekindling of the country/pop potential that was manifested in "Heart."

Cyrus's new album may see that change. Home at Last is certainly a hearthside country record, burnished in sepia and most concerned with family, faith and freedom. Yet if we can gather anything from the stellar set of covers Cyrus mixes in with the originals, it's that he's also got one eye on pop.

"Brown Eyed Girl" is the most charming of these (the Van Morrison classic tends to win over any set). It's an obvious choice but a good one: Cyrus's vocals, as easy and scuffed as an old pair of boots, bob affably through the jangly old changes. A string-driven "Over The Rainbow" is a bit too sentimental, even for a song that demands it. But Carole King's "You've Got a Friend" also suits Billy Ray. Clean guitars and soft beats put a modern country gloss on the ditty, much as James Taylor once folkified it.

And on the originals, Cyrus often laces his warm country way with a more expansive brand of American pop, one occasionally in line with Mellencamp or Springsteen. First track "Ready, Set, Don't Go" (will somebody please help Billy Ray with his song titles?) is an anthemic rambler that's somewhere between NASCAR and Kerouac in its language ("She's at the starting line...She's waitin' on my blessings 'fore she hits that open road"). "The Buffalo" is a "Born in the U.S.A."-style, red-white-and-I'm-so-blue epic about the plight of the American worker. Fired from his job but buoyed by the love of a good woman, Cyrus's hero vows not to go "the way of the buffalo." It develops into a driving barnstormer of a song, opposite in about every way from "Achy Breaky Heart" but agreeing that country spirit and pop hooks go well together.

By Jake Blaine