Nick Lowe's 1978 solo debut album, Jesus of Cool, is one of the great lost pop records of the last 30 years. It spent most of the CD era as an out-of-print rarity, despite being briefly reissued by Demon Records in the mid-'90s. Unlike albums released by Lowe's pub rock/new wave peers (Elvis Costello, Graham Parker), Jesus of Cool isn't a neatly contrived manifesto of musical identity. Instead, it's an audacious experiment in chameleonic shapeshifting - which, like the tongue-in-cheek poses struck on the record’s sleeve cover, reflects the album's overriding theme of the disposability of music industry and culture - that moves effortlessly between mutations of rock and pop. Lowe is everything and everybody on Jesus of Cool: the riff rocker and the disco popper; the ska sympathizer and glam apologist; the big rock producer and the scrabbling indie contender. In his most meta moments, Lowe targets the shallowness of pop culture and idolatry with cynical and snarky narratives, while remaining a staunch perpetrator of pop form. As a seminal debunker and defender of pop greatness, Jesus of Cool is a record that manages to play both sides.

- Zeth Lundy, Pop Matters