Tag: "rihanna"

I’ll never forget the day Basia lied to me. Twice. I was interviewing the Polish singer (best known for her 1988 hit “Time and Tide”) shortly before the release of her 1994 album, The Sweetest Illusion, which was coming five years after her previous album, London Warsaw New York. That day, she promised me two things: First, she would never again make me wait so long for new music. Second, she’d never release a run-of-the-mill greatest hits album featuring, well, her greatest hits. She felt that at the very least, artists owed it to their fans to reprise their hits as brand-new tunes, not just repackage the same old songs.

Her next studio album, It’s That Girl Again, wouldn’t arrive until 2009, nine years after she had released Clear Horizon—The Best of Basia, one of those run-of-the-mill greatest hits albums featuring, well, her greatest hits.

The morals of this story: 1) You can’t rush inspiration. 2) The first cut isn’t only the deepest—sometimes it’s the best, too. That’s a lesson Mariah Carey may have learned last year when she scrapped plans to release Angels Advocate, a remixed version of her Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel album, after a new version of “Up Out My Face” (Memoirs‘ best song) featuring Nicki Minaj limped onto Billboard’s Hot 100 at No. 100 and refused to go any further.

But apparently, Lady Gaga, the reigning queen of remix albums and EPs, still hasn’t received the memo. When she released Born This Way back in May, she put out a special edition that included a separate disc with remixes of five of the album’s songs. (Bryan Ferry did a similar thing with last year’s Olympia.) Divine inspiration or clever marketing ploy? Perhaps a little of both, but “Born This Way”-with-a-twang never would have spent six weeks at No. 1. The “Country Road Version” makes for an interesting one-time listen, but I never need to hear it again.

Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: Director’s Cuts — From Lady Gaga to Kate Bush, the Mixed Results of Tampering with Your Own Songs’

Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Ke$ha and, of course, herself. As Rihanna sees it—or saw it in the September issue of Glamour magazine—they’re the girls who run the world of pop in 2011.

What? No Britney Spears. I’m pretty sure leaving her duet partner on the recent No. 1 remix of “S&M” off the list was an innocent oversight. But what about Christina Aguilera? That omission must have been intentional. (By the way, I’d certainly argue that Pink, who’s between albums and focused on mommyhood at the moment, and Adele, whose 21 album is outselling all of theirs combined, would qualify as much as Ke$ha.)

There was a time at the dawn of the millennium when Aguilera was the pop princess-in-waiting, second only to Britney Spears. But 2010 was truly her annus horribilis. First, there was Bionic, her fourth studio album, which failed to produce a major hit single and didn’t even go gold. Then her summer tour was cancelled. (She blamed scheduling issues, but the forecast no doubt called for limp ticket sales). And by autumn, her tepidly received film debut in Burlesque (a guilty pleasure and future camp classic if ever there was one, but mostly thanks to costar Cher), was doing nothing to restore luster to her falling star.

Her October divorce from Jordan Bratman, the father of her 3-year-old son Max, blemished her personal record, and flubbing the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XLV in February, further tarnished her professional one. By the time she was arrested for public intoxication in West Hollywood on March 1, her career seemed to be flatlining.

Get it to the OR! Stat!

Continue reading ‘Sound And Vision: How Christina Aguilera Can Ignite Her Comeback? (Psst, She Doesn’t Need Eminem!)’

Go ahead. Admit it. The first time you heard Katy Perry‘s “I Kissed a Girl” way back in 2008, you knew that by the time the novelty of a song about dabbling in lipstick lesbianism ran its course, so, too, would the career of the straight woman who was singing it.

Then something strange and unexpected happened when the clock struck Perry’s 15th minute of fame: It kept right on ticking. How did she pull it off? I have a few theories.

No. 1. She’s shallow and proud of it. Unlike Lady Gaga, Perry won’t take credit for trying to save pop music, gay people or the world. She never pretendsthat her music is anything more than feel-good pop. Who else would invite Rebecca Black, the most-hated pop star who’s not really a star (“Friday,” which peaked at No. 58 on Billboard’s Hot 100, wasn’t the big hit everyone seems to think it was) to co-star in one of her videos (“T.G.I.F. [Last Friday Night]“)? “Firework” is about as deep as Perry gets—and lest she come across as too earnest, she tempered the semi-serious message with firecracking boobs in the video.

No. 2. She’s up with regular people, because she’s one of them. Gorgeous but not intimidatingly so, sexy without selling sex, Perry also manages to be quotably catty while still being likeable. Gaga is outrageous and memorable, but she keeps her emotional distance. For all her avowed egalitarian values, there’s something distinctly remote about Gaga, on and off her records. You don’t imagine yourself hanging out with her on a day off. Britney Spears has lived in a bubble for years. Beyoncé is too fabulous. And Rihanna plays with guns.

That leaves Perry to bring a little humanity to pop divadom. She doesn’t have to be photographed taking out the trash to convince fans that she’s just like them. She could probably have any guy in Hollywood or on the charts, but instead of hooking up with a genetically blessed stud of the moment (so Taylor Swift, so Miley Cyrus), she went and married Russell Brand, a goofy comic with a sketchy past.

No. 3. She rocks the singles scene. She lacks Adele‘s vocal power, and she uses many of the same producers and co-writers that her peers have been passing around for years (for the love of God, girls, give Dr. Luke a rest!). But Perry’s singles still stand out, and they’re sturdier than they might initially sound. “Teenage Dream” and “E.T.” don’t exactly blow you away on first or even the 10th listen. They burrow into your subconscious slowly. But once there, they don’t let go. (Ironically, Perry’s crowning musical achievement, the Timbaland collaboration “If We Ever Meet Again,” which I’ve seen fill dance floors from Buenos Aires to London to Melbourne, only went to No. 37.)

When Teenage Dream was released in August of 2010, the reviews were mixed to downright hostile. But Katy Perry is not an album artist. Her music is best digested in bite-sized nuggets. By the time Teenage Dream was logging it’s third No. 1 hit single (“Firework”), it had been nominated for Album of the Year at the GRAMMY Awards, alongside critical favorites by Eminem, Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire. Strong, distinctive videos pulled off without any assistance from hordes of gyrating dancers helped too. Look for her nine nominations at the August 28 MTV Video Music Awards (more than any other artist) to further boost Teenage Dream‘s staying power.

The album has created a fifth Top 3 single and shifted more than 1.5 million copies in the US, and it’s still going as strong as, if not stronger than, the superstar albums that came after it. Rihanna has sold nearly as many copies of Loud (released in November 2010), but after three No. 1 hits, she’s struggling with the fourth and fifth singles, neither of which is likely to go Top 40. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way opened spectacularly in May, then cooled off quickly, with none of the singles repeating the success of the No. 1 title track so far. And poor Beyoncé. Her fourth solo album, 4, has yet to produce a runaway hit at all.

By the time Gaga is trying to extend the lifespan of Born This Way with an expanded limited edition release featuring five new radio-friendly tracks, Teenage Dream’s “Peacock” or “Circle the Drain” probably will be scaling the charts.

But will we still be singing along in 2015? That’s open to debate. Pop history is littered with artists who fell out of favor after two huge albums (see Debbie Gibson, Perry’s “T.G.I.F.” video mom). But even if Perry is just a pop footnote by mid-decade, she’s already surpassed everyone’s wildest teenage—or grown-up—dreams.

Though we’re at least two decades removed from MTV‘s prime, never underestimate the enduring power of music videos. They can send singles zooming up the charts (Katy Perry’s latest jumped from No. 31 to No. 4 the week after the video hit YouTube), make intolerable songs must-hear and must-see (as Ke$ha‘s “Blow” recently did) and drum up just enough controversy to make fairly mainstream acts seem edgy (take a bow, Lady Gaga). But unlike the days when Michael Jackson and MTV ruled, for the most part, they’re no longer trying to change music or do much more beyond promoting the artists whose names are attached to them.

Lady Gaga and Beyoncé still take the art of making videos seriously; Ke$ha, who owes her entire career to a carefully cultivated video image, put an MTV VMA-worthy effort into “Blow” (my pick for the best pop clip of 2011 so far); and Katy Perry shines brightest onscreen. Still, when it comes to videos, most of today’s pop stars offer little more than what’s expected of them. They show up, look fantastic and lip-sync to the best of their ability.

It’s been years since the once always-dependable Madonna has given us the wow factor. Annie Lennox and Björk are from a now-bygone era. Michael Jackson is dead. And Adele, who could have done so much with “Rolling in the Deep,” didn’t even bother to get off her ass!

Which pop stars are making the biggest impressions—for better and for worse—on MTV and on YouTube these days? I like Nicki Minaj, but she’s all styling—without the bells and whistles, she’d probably blend into the woodwork. And Jennifer Lopez has never been sexier than she is in “I’m Into You,” but the video is only about how great she looks. The song is throwaway, and the video doesn’t make it sound any better. So who are video’s latest MVPs? Here are my picks for who’s Hot and Not.

HOT!

Debbie Gibson in Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” The fifth video from Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album really pulls its weight, doing precisely what a good video should do: It sells the song. It’s a true transformer, turning “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” from a mediocre album track into a Teenage Dream highlight. Interestingly, the best moment involves neither the song nor the star. The usually dependable Perry overplays her geek alter-ego throughout, but toward the end, when ’80s teen queen Debbie Gibson shows up as her mom, the clip morphs from Glee meets Party Girl and Can’t Hardly Wait into a sort of video roast of Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. Gibson does the perfectly pressed upper-crust glamour mom/wife with confidence and humor. Hollywood! Quick! Get this woman her own sitcom!

Rihanna in “Man Down” Music videos rarely require acting chops. If you’ve got the look—and Rihanna certainly does—three-quarters of the battle is won. In “Man Down,” a controversial gothic drama about the ripple effect of sexual abuse, Rihanna creates a complete character without uttering a single word of dialogue. Watching her tragic response after she’s sexually assualted outside of a club, I find myself wishing that she were making her film debut next year in a dramatic showcase that would require more from her than Battleship, a Hollywood wannabe-blockbuster set for release next Memorial Day weekend.

Kelly Rowland in “Motivation” I’ve never listened to the first hit single from Rowland’s third album, Here I Am, without the benefit of the video visual, so I couldn’t tell you if it stands on its own. But for the first time in her solo career, Rowland does. I’d make some crack about how she’s bringing sexy back, but it’s the first time we’ve seen Rowland bring it period (ah, the wonders of a blue lighting and impossibly sculpted male dancers). After so many years of being a second banana in Destiny’s Child, living her pop life in Beyoncé’s shadow, Rowland at last is the star of her own show.

NOT

Jennifer Hudson in “No One Gonna Love You” Hudson proves that her Oscar win for Dreamgirls may have been a fluke, and her underwhelming follow-up performance in the first Sex and the City movie wasn’t. In her (flimsy) defense, the dialogue that begins her latest clip is as awkward as the song’s grammatically challenged title. But a great Academy Award-winning actress should be able to transcend a poor script. Hudson looks amazing, but her sass sounds forced, and she tries too hard to channel Beyoncé in too-the-left-to-the-left female-empowerment mode. Instead, she comes across as kind of cranky and annoyed. No wonder her man can’t get away from her fast enough! Next time Hudson should skip the pillow talk and just sing.

Britney Spears in “I Wanna Go” Where’s Britney Spears’s pop-star spark? Look closely at her in any video from her last three albums: She’s dead behind the eyes. The zombie act continues in the third clip from the Femme Fatale album. Being Britney Spears is hard work, so now she’s trying to be Ke$ha (the attitude at the press conference that kicks off the video is straight out of “Blow”) with a touch of Avril Lavigne (her purposeful strut as she stalks the streets seems to have been lifted from “What the Hell”). Instead, she comes across as a third-string pop star (Mandy Moore or Jessica Simpson back when Britney was on top). Though she gets bonus points for not falling back on the same dance routines that dominate her videography, if she wants to show us that it’s not easy being Britney (yawn, yes, there we go again), the least she could do is be Britney.

Enrique Iglesias in “Dirty Dancer” They don’t make male solo pop stars the way they did back when Michael Jackson and Prince ruled the world. Bruno Mars and Jason Derülo are nice to look at but hardly potentially iconic video stars. Then there’s Iglesias—gorgeous, talented and one of the nicest guys I’ve ever had the pleasure of sizing up face to face. But it’s time for him to do something new with his. You can take him out of any of the videos he’s made since his English-language breakthrough in 1999 with “Bailamos,” drop him into another one, and the videos all remain the same. I’m not saying those come hither looks don’t work—only the most justifiably confident pop star would dare to name a song “Tonight I’m F**kin´ You” and probably be right—but when I’m starting to tire of looking at Enrique Iglesias head shots (tilt it just so, look up slightly, smolder), we’ve got a serious problem.

Sonny and Cher. Britney and Justin. Meg and Jack White. Nothing lasts forever. Well, almost. There’s one inseparable pair that’s likely to survive until the end of time: sunny summer weather and pop music. What would these dog days be without the perfect soundtrack? Possibly, over and done with. Hello, autumn!

“California Gurls” by Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg ruled both the airwaves and the charts last Memorial Day to Labor Day, refusing to go down until the temperature did. This year’s girl of summer: Adele, thanks to her No. 1 hit “Rolling in the Deep.” But even if Adele isn’t quite your thing (nor Lady Gaga, nor Perry, who’s once again making heat waves in 2011), ’tis the season for musical memories that will last a lifetime—or at least until next year when beach weather once again rolls around.

What are the biggest summer of ’11 pop trends? Keep reading…

Sisters are doing it for themselves—again. Last year’s Top 10 list in Billboard magazine’s Songs of the Summer 1985-2010 featured only three female artists, and each one, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Hayley Williams, had a boy on the side (Snoop Dogg, Eminem and B.o.B., respectively). Though so many of pop’s leading ladies recently had been standing by their men or whatever last-minute remix cohort could get them a shot at No. 1, this season, the most successful ones are going it alone. Rihanna and Beyoncé may be struggling with their latest pair of solo efforts, but Lady Gaga already has had three Top 10 solo hits from the Born This Way album, including the summer-anthem contender “The Edge of Glory,” and Adele didn’t need any guest rappers to keep “Rolling in the Deep” at No. 1 for seven weeks (as of Billboard’s Hot 100 dated July 2).

Meanwhile, Nicki Minaj, who apparently has never met an artist with whom she wouldn’t collaborate, finally has scored a Top 10 single of her own with “Your Love.” And after enlisting Kanye West to help lift “E.T.” all the way to the top, Perry is carrying the weight of “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” hit No. 5 from the Teenage Dream album, all on her slender shoulders. Deborah Gibson, Corey Feldman, Kenny G, Hanson, Rebecca Black and two guys from Glee all pop up in the video, but the song itself is a one-woman show.

It takes two (or three or four) to make a hit go right. The women on top may be spending the summer alone (at least on record), but they are pretty much the only ones. Last year, more than half of Billboard’s top summer songs paired singers with rappers. This year, if two’s company, three and four is, too. Pitbull is getting by with a little help from three friends (Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer) on his current hit, “Give Me Everything.” The duo LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” has Lauren Bennett and GoonRock on the guest list. Jennifer Lopez had Pitbull and Katy Perry had Kanye West on their respective spring holdovers, “On the Floor” and the already mentioned “E.T.”, while the Black Eyed Peas have each other on “Just Can’t Get Enough.”

If you want to be a boy of summer, learn how to rap. Bruno Mars might get by on hit after hit by swinging sweetly (which he does once again on “Lazy Song,” his latest Top 5 single), but Chris Brown, one of contemporary R&B’s strongest male singers, spent all of his recent Top 10 comeback single, “Look at Me Now,” rapping alongside Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne. And even before he performed with Ludacris on the CMT Awards, Jason Aldean already had a hit with “Dirt Road Anthem,” on which he performed the rap himself. Now the remix featuring Ludacris doing the rap is in danger of becoming the first country-rap collaboration to top Billboard’s Hot 100. Maybe Coldplay’s “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” would have had more staying power if Chris Martin had broken into a rap. It’s not too late for the currently ubiquitous Lil Wayne to give a brother a helping hand.

Groove is in the heart (and all over the charts). So you think you can dance? Then you’re in luck. Nearly every song in the Top 20 of the Hot 100 works just as well under the strobe lights as on the radio. The aformentioned LMFAO has a huge international hit with “Party Rock Anthem,” a track whose video features shuffling, a dance that originated in, of all places, Melbourne, Australia. Meanwhile, after escorting Jennifer Lopez into the Top 10 with “On the Floor,” rapper Pitbull, still on the floor, has gone even higher with “Give Me Everything.” This time his dance partners are Afrojack, Nayer and Ne-Yo, an artist previously best known for silky soul singing, but if you can’t beat ‘em, get down with ‘em.

Teenage dreams are still coming true. Last year when “California Gurls” was topping the charts, who would have guessed that Perry still would be putting out the hits from Teenage Dream one year later? As party rock anthems go, “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” is my pick for the summer of 2011, but musical hangovers can be just as brutal as alcohol-related ones. Will we remember “Last Friday Night” in the morning? Definitely. But come autumn, “Last Friday Night” already might be a distant non-memory, Perry will be on to the sixth hit single from Teenage Dream (Peacock?), and we’ll probably all still be “Rolling in the Deep.”

When the 2011 BET Awards hit Los Angeles, it was a whirlwind weekend of parties, performances and puzzling moments.  The festivities began Thursday night with Def Jam hosting a star-studded party at LA’s Rolling Stone Lounge at Hollywood & Highland. Fans clammored outside to catch a peak of their favorite artists coming down the red carpet before entering the packed venue.  Inside, stars like Busta Rhymes, DJ Khaled and Ne-Yo partied ’til the wee hours, sipping Ciroq cocktails and enjoying the scene.

Sunday’s performances started off a little rocky to say the least. Rick Ross opened the show with a medley of his current hits, starting off with his eerily contagious “Aston Martin Music” featuring Ciara.  Problem was, Ciara was not in the building, and Ross awkwardly waited while her hook played over the speaker until his rap verse was on. Equally confusing was the fact that Drake, who was in the house, did not perform his hook either, leaving lots of dead stage time while his part played as well. He was joined by Lil Wayne and Ace Hood to perform their (kinda old) hit, “Hustle Hard”.  The hard-bodied Ace was no match for Ross, who decided his belly needed to breathe by the last song, shocking unsuspecting fans in the front row with his less than tight frame.

Chris Brown took home the first award of the night for Best Male R&B Artist, and ultimately took the title of Video Of The Year and Best Collaboration for “Look At Me Now” featuring Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Brown quickly accepted the statue, thanking fans and admitting that “public speaking isn’t my strong suit.”  Good choice, Chris.

His performance was a dance-heavy medley of hits that started off a bit confusing with Brown in an oddly-shaped, oversized suit that seemed like a prop that never served its purpose.  After a wardrobe switch, he heated up the dance floor and proved why despite his attitude, he’s still a top-notch entertainer.

Willow and Jayden Smith shared the honor of winning the Young Entertainer Award, with the siblings sharing the excitement of their first award onstage together, with proud parents Will and Jada beaming in the audience.

The best performance of the night came from Jill Scott, who looked ravishing in red during her speakeasy-themed performance of “Rolling Hills” that looked more like a perfect scene out of a Broadway play than an awards show slot.

Other standout performances came from Kelly Rowland, who gave a steamy rendition of “Motivation” sans Weezy, debuting some dance moves we forgot she had. Beyoncé performed via satellite from Glastonbury, England, belting out “Best Thing I Never Had” and “End Of Time” live from the famed festival.  Alicia Keys premiered her post-baby bod during her medley which included classic hits like “A Woman’s Worth” and “Fallin’” and featured a guest appearance by Bruno Mars.

Cee Lo Green kicked off the night’s tribute to Patti LaBelle, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, in the weirdest outfit I’ve ever seen on television. Marsha Ambrosius and Shirley Caesar also took the stage to honor the legendary singer. Snoop Dogg and Warren G also paid tribute that night, honoring their fallen friend, Nate Dogg, with a revival of “Regulate.”

Noticeably missing from the building was Rihanna, who was nominated in several categories.  In one of the night’s more confusing moments, the Viewer’s Choice Award winner was announced first as Chris Brown, then Rihanna, then Drake, who came up to accept the award, saying “This is awkward.” He proceeded to thank RiRi for the opportunity and then said, “Over your ex so your girl’s at my next show” and walked off the stage. Was that a dig at Chris? Was the whole thing a scripted set-up? Adding even more question marks to the equation was the fact had BET announced post-show that the actual winner was indeed, Chris Brown.

Overall, the show was less than stellar.  The disjointed script, weird performances, and plenty of “what just happened?” moments, made me long for some new faces on the hip hop scene.

We’ve been fans of chart-topping British songstress Adele since her debut album 19—she’s hyper talented, likeable and something about her just seems… different. We couldn’t quite figure out what sets her apart until last week, when XL Recordings founder Richard Russell pointed it out: Adele sells music based on the merits of her songs alone. “The whole message with [Adele] is that it’s just music… there are no gimmicks, no selling of sexuality.” Russell told The Guardian, adding that this tendency to over-sexualize—as opposed to focusing on the music—has led to “boring, crass and unoriginal” songs from female artists.

We’re sure Russell doesn’t mean to say that Adele isn’t sexy—anyone who’s seen her rock a microphone knows for a fact that she is. But the way she’s marketed her success on her rise to the top is almost exactly the opposite of the way other female stars conduct their business. Need proof? Look no further than your nearest magazine stand and check out the past several months of Rolling Stone. Rihanna graced the April 1 issue in shorts that, quite honestly, could have been painted on, and Katy Perry wore nothing but underwear and a come-hither stare in her most recent cover feature, “Sex, God, and Katy Perry.” (Yeah, why even make a mention of the music?) Either of these images would be right at home in Playboy, but isn’t RS a music magazine? Shouldn’t the focus of these cover stories be on these ladies’ songs and not their other, um, assets? Not to get all neo-feminist on everyone’s asses, but we doubt that the editors were asking Keith Richards to strip down for his cover shoot. (And actually, thank God for that.)

In an earlier interview with Q Magazine, Adele pondered her career and how sexifying it just wouldn’t work. “I can’t imagine having guns and whipped cream coming out of my tits,” she said. “Even if I had Rihanna’s body, I’d still be making the music I make and that don’t go together.” The girl’s got a point—revealing photos and ridiculous costume choices aside, her reign at the top of the charts goes beyond promotion and into the music. Like her image, the entire message of her runaway success 21 is contrary to most of the women who dominate Top 40 radio. “Rolling in the Deep” is a song of power and liberation, a stark contrast to RiRi glorifying bondage in “S&M” or J. Lo’s party anthem “On the Floor.” Come to think of it, there may only be one other Top 40 female who regularly keeps it PG while owning the charts, and that’s everyone’s favorite country sweetheart Taylor Swift.

Maybe it has to do with talent. After all, no offense to Rihanna and Katy Perry, but these are the facts: Adele is on a completely different plane when it comes to her writing ability and vocal range. Perhaps there’s a sliding scale of sexism in pop where talented female musicians prove their worth through music, and hot girls who can carry a tune get dressed up in barely-there outfits, hide behind a layer of vocal effects and rely on publicity stunts like making out with chicks onstage to promote their new material. You have to wonder: Is the world missing out on the next Janis Joplin or Chrissie Hynde because they don’t want to prance around in a thong and machine gun bra?

While we’re hopeful that Richard Russell is right and Adele will help alter how the industry markets female acts, change is slow in the music industry so it’s hard to be optimistic. But at the very least she’s stepping in the right direction, forcing label execs to look beyond the spandex-clad size zeroes for hit songs and to give consumers a little more credit. There’s nothing wrong with a fluffy pop song, and sure, sometimes it’s funny to watch people squirt whipped cream out of their tits. But maybe Adele will help spawn a new generation of songstresses who write less about getting sleazy and more about things that matter. Because while no one is arguing that sex sells, sometimes skill sells too.

By now you’ve read the (mostly glowing) reviews, and Born This Way is probably well on its way to becoming Album of the Year. So who needs me on the Lady Gaga bandwagon? She’s already sold millions of albums and singles without the benefit of my adoration, and her second full-length effort (launched worldwide on May 23) is destined to pad her coffers with more gold and platinum. But after single after sound-alike single from The Fame and The Fame Monster EP, I was hoping for a change of course, her very own Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, a follow-up to a mega-platinum breakthrough that defies expectations and stands on the strength of the music alone. (Remember how George Michael made only one video for that album, and he didn’t even appear in it?)

I like Gaga best at her piano with a bare minimum of camp and circumstance, and I wish she’d go there more often. There’s something about way-over-the-top freaky Gaga that leaves my eyes in perpetual rolling motion. Plus I’m generally allergic to anything that’s hyped by the majority of the universe. I won’t bother to review the new album since pretty much everyone with an opinion has offered it on Facebook, Twitter or any other social-media forum where people will read it, but I’ll say this: Since the marketing of Gaga is often more interesting than the music she releases, my expectations were low. This time, though, in a nice surprise twist, she exceeded them. Still, it’s so hard to listen without prejudice, unaffected—positively or negatively—by a publicity push that shoved Gaga in our faces 24/7 and screamed, “You must love her!” So what exactly fueled my pre-release discontent and keeps my Gaga resentment bubbling just under the surface of my grudging respect? Read on.

1. “Judas.” Here we go again! Another busy video in which Gaga bombards us with visual stimuli. (Enough with the religious iconography, girl!) This one’s an eyesore, and I’d rather go blind than ever watch it again. But the biggest problem with “Judas,” the second Born This Way single, is that it isn’t much of a song—it’s basically just a noisy rewrite of her previous hits. No wonder it spent all of one week in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100, at No. 10, after its initial characteristically over-hyped release.

2. The onslaught of Born This Way teasers. Though Gaga would surely have us believe that this is yet another of her brilliantly “original” ideas, Taylor Swift did the exact same thing in the weeks before the release of her third album, Speak Now, last October, and Katy Perry pulled a similar stunt with Teenage Dream. After the title track, Born This Way‘s three follow-up singles were released in too-quick succession to have much impact, and when you add the streaming of songs from the album on Farmville in the days leading up to May 23, it’s like an extended trailer that gives away the entire plot to the Event Movie of the Year, to which Born This Way was born to be the musical equivalent. I’m surprised she didn’t add “in 3D” to the title!

3. Her publicity blitz cut into my Justin Timberlake time on the Saturday Night Live season finale. Watching Justin Timberlake host SNL made me long for the good old days of gimmick-free pop stars who weren’t trying to save their fans from the big bad evil world. He’s talented, nice to look at and his music stands on its own. He don’t have to take his clothes off to have a good time, or to make his tunes interesting, though he’s certainly welcome to! So why should he have to share the SNL spotlight with musical guest Gaga?

4. “You and I” was not a pre-release single. If anything good came of Haley Reinhart’s run on American Idol, it’s this: She dug up a then-unreleased Gaga track called “You and I” and almost did it justice. I immediately marched over to YouTube and sought out Gaga’s live performance of the song on the Today show last year. I felt like I was watching a female Elton John in her prime. Too bad the Born This Way version is more heavily produced by Shania Twain’s ex, Robert John “Mutt” Lange.

5. As an Idol mentor, she didn’t even acknowledge the free publicity Haley gave her little-known song. Did it happen off screen? Does she not watch the show, or was she simply unimpressed by Haley (Lord knows I usually was)? That said, Gaga made an excellent mentor and gave constructive advice. James Durbin didn’t do as he was told (come on, dude, put some Elvis into it!), and look what happened to him.

6. She’s probably going to leave Adele’s 21 in the dust as the top-selling album of 2011 so far. But then again, Adele made her mark fully clothed without the benefit of flashy videos and a billion-dollar publicity campaign. She didn’t even bother to get out of her seat in the “Rolling in the Deep” clip, and the single still went to No. 1.

7. Does every Gaga video need a cast of thousands? Just once, I’d like to see her go stark and minimalist, Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”-style—no controversial imagery, no cheap group choreography, no grandiose aspirations. Yes, there’s strength in numbers, but less could be so much more.

8. “The Edge of Glory” is like a bad ’80s flashback. It would have been perfect for the Top Gun soundtrack. Images of Kelly McGillis dance in my head. Bonnie Tyler, or Stock, Aitken and Waterman-era Donna Summer, would have killed for this. I almost expect Laura Branigan to rise from the dead and start singing back-up halfway through. If only it were half as good as “Gloria” or “Self Control.”

9. She wasn’t born that way. Isn’t it ironic that the singer who sells artifice better than anyone scored one of her biggest hits—six weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100—with a song called “Born This Way”?

10. Her return is totally eclipsing Beyoncé’s. Queen B should have done what Kelly Clarkson did and sit out a few months while Gaga rules. A stronger first single would have helped, though. If the premiere of the “Run the World (Girls)” video on Idol and Beyoncé’s May 22 Billboard Music Awards performance don’t put her in charge, maybe she can still pull a Britney/Rihanna and get Gaga to add her two cents to a “Run the World” remix and watch it soar straight to No. 1.

A few weeks ago, Melbourne hosted the TV WEEK Logie Awards, which is like Australia’s Emmys, only with more reality TV, more cooking shows and music. Katy Perry and Maroon 5 represented American pop, and then there was rising UK star Jessie J, representing… well, I’m still not 100 percent sure. As she stalked the stage, decked out in glam-Goth basic black, performing her No. 1 UK hit “Price Tag,” my friend peeled his eyes away from the television, turned to me and announced, “Her look is cool and alternative, but her music is so lame and poppy. They don’t match at all!”

It’s a discordancy that’s starting to take over. Pop and rock and hip hop used to hang out on different sides of the playground, barely acknowledging each other, with the rare, revolutionary exception (think Run-D.M.C.‘s 1985 smash cover of Aerosmith‘s “Walk this Way,” featuring the vintage rock band on vocals and in the song’s video). If your music was too mainstream, strictly middle-of-the-road (a condition that afflicted neither Run-D.M.C.’s nor Aerosmith’s tunes at the time, which perhaps is why the hit sounded so effortless), there was no changing lanes. You could dress as wild as ’80s fashion would let you, but you would always be a pop star. Chart-toppers had little chance of drumming up street cred or working with artists whose tunes dangled from the cutting edge. Why do you think Duran Duran, one of the most influential bands of the Reagan era, still hasn’t been nominated for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and is only now, more than two decades past its prime, publicly earning the respect of well-respected men like David Lynch, who directed the band’s recent American Express online concert?

Suddenly its cool to be alternative and pop. We’ve got Katy Perry mingling with Snoop Dogg and Kanye West on record and with bad-boy British comic Russell Brand in holy matrimony, and Ke$ha singing some of the poppiest songs on the charts and casting James van der Beek, one of Hollywood’s most white-bread actors, in her video but tarting it up just enough to come across as one of the coolest girls in school. (Ever the trendsetter, in the ’80s, Madonna had the good sense to tousle her image by marrying bad boy Sean Penn.) Meanwhile, Rihanna—a pop princess if ever there was one—holds court with Eminem and sings about how she’s “Hard” (as Young Jeezy raps in her defense).

Lady Gaga dresses like a freak and breaks every sartorial rule while singing what is basically the rave music of every ’90s teenage dream. Her former video costar Beyoncé alternates between straight-up pop (“Halo,” “Sweet Dreams”) and darker hip hop (“Diva” and current single “Run the World [Girls]“), while A Rocket to the Moon and Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy are among those who have covered “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Try This (her 2003 flop that, in my opinion, is her best album) aside, Pink‘s ultra-commercial music has never mirrored her rock-chick attitude. Even Coldplay, one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, second perhaps only to U2, collaborated with, of all people, Kylie Minogue on the 2008 World AID’s Day charity single “Lhuna.”

As with so many recent musical trends, the current shift toward the mainstream and the cutting edge making strange bedfellows began with hip hop. If a roguish rapper like Eminem could rhyme alongside pop singers (first Dido on “Stan,” then Elton John at the 2001 GRAMMYs, and most recently, Pink and Rihanna on Recovery), couldn’t all musicians, regardless of genre, get along? Sure they can, but the commercial results have been mixed. There’ve been huge hits—the Katy Perry singles “California Gurls” and “E.T.” returned her rapper costars, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West, respectively, to No. 1 for the first time in eons—but when Alicia Keys met Jack White for “Another Way to Die,” the theme for the last James Bond flick, 2008′s Quantum of Solace, it was a one-week wonder on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 81.

Perhaps Keys’ R&B and pop fans and White’s alternative ones didn’t know what to do with the meeting of their musical minds, which was nonethess one of the best singles of 2008. Of course, there are artists who resist, too. Remember when Ryan Adams used to go off on fans who requested Bryan Adams‘ “Summer of ’69″ because he was fed up with being compared to the ’80s and ’90s pop superstar with the almost-identical name? (He once had a fan tossed out of a Nashville concert for daring to do the unthinkable!)

Kanye West vs. Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards probably was as much about the cutting edge (hip hop) vs. the mainstream (country-pop) as it was about the visual supremacy of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video. In February, I read a Billboard.com interview where empress of ’80s cool Chrissie Hynde talked about her upcoming Super Bowl weekend performance on CMT Crossroads with country diva Faith Hill, and she said she was unfamiliar with Hill’s music and admitted, “I don’t know much about country music, period.” Then there’s Kings of Leon, best known in the US for the Top 5 hit “Use Somebody”. Although the band would hardly be considered alternative in its recent hit-making incarnation, the guys  nonetheless refused to allow Glee to use “Somebody.” (I bet South Park or Dexter or Weeds would have gotten their blessing.)

But if Jay-Z can let the Glee kids turn “Empire State of Mind” into a show tune, if Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler can sit beside Jennifer Lopez at the American Idol judges table, if “F–k You” singer Cee Lo Green can go from collaborating with Danger Mouse (in Gnarls Barkley) to being one of Christina Aguilera‘s fellow judges on The Voice, then we might yet live to hear an Eminem track featuring Britney Spears.

Think of Sugarland‘s album The Incredible Machine as something akin to The Little Engine That Could.

The title of the classic children’s story seems perfectly suited to describe Sugarland’s latest full-length recording. Even though it was released last October, the album continues to gather fans, awards and national exposure for the duo of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. The two are consistently juggling sold-out arena concerts and high-profile appearances, such as the performance with Rihanna at last month’s Academy of Country Music Awards show televised from Las Vegas.

“That album was just a lot of fun to write and record and play,” said Nettles, noting the songs on it stretch the boundaries of country music by weaving pop, rock and soul throughout. “Mostly, we had a lot of fun writing this album. When the music is there, that just shows up in the recording and concerts.”

Although the GRAMMY Award-winning artists have been red-hot for years—their 2004 debut album Twice the Speed of Life went multi-platinum—there wassomething that just set them into another musical level when The Incredible Machine was released.

Bush said that in Nashville, where writers and performers are often thought of as two very distinct groups, he and Nettles have been welcomed into both camps.

“It’s been incredible to be welcomed as songwriters as well as artists,” he said. “This whole album is an example of what happens with the two of us.”

Bush is referring to the synergy he has with Nettles. On this project, they mixed and matched their musical influences—think Chrissy Hynde, Peter Gabriel, Blondie, and other ’80s icons—to develop the sound for this latest batch of songs.

The duo were so excited about the process that they produced and posted a documentary dubbed “Living Liner Notes” that shows them writing and recording.

“There’s always a mystery behind a record,” said Bush. “We had this new idea called ‘Living Liner Notes’ because we both like liner notes so much—we were those kind of kids. We wanted to share the process with the fans. So rather than just seeing a name—so and so was the engineer and so and so was the drummer, well here they are. Watch them work.”

Bush said one of his favorite clips is of the process to develop the song “Find the Beat Again.”

“We walk you through the whole thing,” he said. “Here you’re watching us write it. Then you’re watching us record it. It really shows how these songs developed.”

Fans also get a chance to see how the two mix things up.

“We tried to make our weaknesses our strengths,” said Nettles. “For example, the guitar. I love the way Kristian plays guitar when I sing. I love his choices, I love the way he fits his choices in and around my singing. We have been doing it together long enough now that there’s a really nice volley and a really nice way it dances together. I said to him ‘Why don’t you just play it? Why are we getting a guitar player?’ That’s one example of how we work together. That’s one reason each song feels so organic and fits perfectly.”

Something tells us this Machine will keep gathering steam for a long time to come.

Sugarland is on tour. For concert information, Living Liner Notes, and other news, go to their Web site.