How They Got Over: 10 Hitmakers That Survived "Flop" Albums (Can Lady Gaga Do It, Too?)

"Don't call it a comeback." -- LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out"

Alas, popular music is all about the comeback. Look at Tina Turner, Cher, The Kinks, Heart, Natalie Cole and the artists formerly known as Jefferson Airplane (then Jefferson Starship, then simply Starship), all of whom have made at least one spectacular comeback over the course of their U.S. chart careers. Of course, for every stunning comeback, there's a recording act that falls victim to the dreaded Mommie Dearest effect: One false move (or scandal, or public gaffe, or non-hit), and their careers never quite recover, as was the case with Faye Dunaway in the decades after she turned Joan Crawford from a fellow Oscar winner into a camp classic in the 1981 Razzie-anointed biopic that gives the made-up (by me) effect its name.

In 2004, the effect began to affect Janet Jackson, whose chart powers were never the same after "Nipplegate" at Super Bowl XXXVIII. Is Lady Gaga the latest pop victim of the Mommie Dearest effect for daring to release an album (2013's Artpop) that had the nerve not to cross the one-million mark in U.S. sales? I'd be surprised if Cheek to Cheek, Gaga's Tony Bennett collaboration that comes out in the U.S. on Tuesday, is her comeback or if it even outsells Britney Spears' 2013 mega-flop Britney Jean, but if doesn't, it probably wasn't intended to. Bennett has won over the kids before, but is anyone really expecting an 88-year-old icon to help Gaga sell The Great American Songbook to her under-30 "Little Monsters"? Betty White, he is not.

A day or two ago, I came across a think piece titled "Has Gaga Lost the Gays?" on Advocate.com. My first thought: Has she? I'm on the fence about that one. Yes, her last album, Artpop, under-performed on the charts, but can we blame a lack of interest among the general music-downloading public on a lack of interest among gay men?

It has been suggested (last year by Advocate.com's Neal Broverman, for one) that the era of the gay diva might be over, but the continued popularity of Beyoncé among gay men, despite everything about her image and her music being so blatantly heterosexual, would suggest otherwise. Gay audiences have always been somewhat two-sided when it comes to picking musical divas. On one side, they're suckers for the underdog, the ugly duckling who becomes a swan when she's onstage (the Judy Garlands, the Liza Minnellis, the Barbra Streisands). On the other, they're all about the beauty, the glamour, the fabulous Diana Ross-ness of it all. Beyoncé is like a modern-day Ross with stronger pipes. She's the aspirational diva. She may not stand for anything important (except how to leave a girl group in the dust and become a breakout solo superstar -- sound familiar?), but we're blinded by her sparkle. Maybe it can rub off on us.

Gaga's gay appeal, though, has never quite fallen into either diva camp. In fact, I don't think she's ever been really regarded as a conventional diva. At her peak, she always felt more like a movement (similar to the once-a-decade rise of boy bands and rock & roll in pop), and not just with gay men. Every movement has an expiration date. Gaga's stratospheric ascent was destined to plateau and then curve downward, with or without a gay following behind her.

If we blame her current career trajectory, even in part, on a lack of interest among gay men, can we say that they've abandoned her completely, or that they won't return to her "Little Monsters" fold? History has proven that no fan base is more loyal than gay men. Whoever came up with the saying "Nobody loves you when you're down and out" couldn't possibly have been considering us. Once you're a gay icon, you're pretty much set for life. If you're smart and talented, like Cyndi Lauper, whose gay iconhood actually came after her rising star began to slip, you can even transition from a Grammy winner into an Emmy and Tony winner decades later.

As for Gaga, I think it might be too early for think pieces on why she's over. From what I can tell, she simply released an album that didn't connect with the masses the way her previous work did, and now she's coasting with Bennett while plotting her next official move. (Remember, pre-Beyoncé, Miss Carter failed to set the world ablaze with 4, prompting similar "Is Beyoncé Over?" trains of thought onto which we all started jumping.) The aforementioned Starship sang it best during one of its comeback phases: "It's not over till it's over" -- especially if you wait three years between the flop and the follow-up. Here are 10 under-performing albums that predate Artpop and back up Starship.

Desperado, The Eagles (1973) Although it would eventually go mutli-platinum and spawn a rock classic in the title track (thanks, in part, to Linda Ronstadt's remake, which appeared on Don't Cry Now some five months later), the sophomore Eagles album slumped at the time of its release. It just missed the Top 40 (reaching No. 41), and its highest charting single was "Outlaw Man," which peaked at No. 59 on Billboard's Hot 100, making Desperado the only '70s Eagles album not to give the band at least one Top 10 single. (The next four would produce at least one No. 1 apiece.)

Livin' on the Faultline, The Doobie Brothers (1977) The Doobie's '70s run can be divided into two distinct parts: pre- and post- Michael McDonald. Had the band called it a decade after Faultine's commercial drop-off and 1978's Grammy-winning Minute By Minute (featuring Record and Song of the Year "What a Fool Believes" and the Top 20 title track) hadn't happened, would anyone even care about Michael McDonald and/or the '70s Doobies 2.0 today? Fun fact: Carly Simon would score a No. 6 hit the following year with "You Belong to Me," which she co-wrote with McDonald for Faultline, while "What a Fool Believes," which McDonald co-wrote with Kenny Loggins (who, interestingly enough, wanted to work with him after hearing Faultline), initially appeared on the latter's 1978 album Nightwatch.

Talking Back to the Night, Steve Winwood (1982) The Top 10 success of "While You See a Chance" from 1980's Arc of a Diver must have seemed like a one-off fluke when Winwood's follow-up album peaked at No. 28 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart and failed to produce another Top 40 single, but Winwood was destined for better and much bigger. In fact, after his comeback commenced with 1986's Grammy-winning Back in the High Life album, a remix of a Night track called "Valerie" became a Top 10 single.

Hearts and Bones, Paul Simon (1983) And then, three years later, there was Graceland, which beat Winwood's Back in the High Life for the Album of the Year Grammy and made Simon matter again.

Liberty, Duran Duran (1990) Honestly, despite the greatness that was Duran Duran in the 1980s, I was kind of surprised that the band's hit streak lasted as long as it did, which made the 1993 comeback all the more spectacular and unexpected.

Glitter/Charmbracelet, Mariah Carey (2001/2002) Count me among those who didn't see 2005's The Emancipation of Mimi and "We Belong Together" coming.

American Life, Madonna (2003) Though it topped Billboard's Top 200 album chart, it remains Madonna's second-lowest-selling studio album in the U.S. (after 2012's MDNA) and the only one in her entire discography that didn't produce at least one Top 10 single.

Try This, Pink (2003) Sandwiched between 2001's Missundaztood and 2006's aptly titled I'm Not Dead was this, Pink's best album and the only one that failed to sell one million copies in the U.S. or produce a Top 10 -- or Top 40! -- single.

Folklore, Nelly Furtado (2003) Does anyone even remember that there was an album between 2000's Whoa, Nelly! and 2006's Loose?

My December, Kelly Clarkson (2007) You know you've got a problem album when the head of your record label (Clive Davis) disowns it, but the first American Idol rebounded nicely and went on to score one No. 1 single apiece from each of her two studio follow-ups.

10 More Temporary Pop Setbacks

Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye (1978)

Playing for Keeps/Where's the Party?, Eddie Money (1980/1983)

Get Closer, Linda Ronstadt (1982)

Madness, Money & Music, Sheena Easton (1982)

Gone Troppo, George Harrison (1982)

Beauty Stab, ABC (1983)

Hysteria, Human League (1984)

In Flight, Linda Perry (1996)

Return of Saturn, No Doubt (2000)

12 Reasons Why I've Never Felt Older Than I Did Last Week

1. I finally had to break out the eye glasses yesterday in order to read the DStv channel guide on the TV screen. I hadn't used them in three months -- not since my arrival in Cape Town on November 16, 2013 -- and for four weeks, they'd been tucked away in a travel bag in the upstairs closet, from where I'd been too lazy to retrieve them. Then I got tired of squinting to barely read the fine print on the TV (and that leaves wrinkles that will only make me look more wizened than I already do), so I sucked it up, pulled out the specs and put them on. Wow. Clarity is a beautiful thing. And Cape Town is even more breathtaking when it's not being viewed through a slight blur.

2. My twentysomething friends all seem to be getting younger. My buddy Rob is visiting Cape Town from London, and when we were out on Saturday night, we met a girl who demanded to know how old we both are. I was expecting Rob to say that he'd finally turned 30 or that he was about to, but he's not even close! "Twenty-seven." Twenty-seven?! I asked what year he born in just to make sure, as if that might magically and miraculously make him a year or two older. "Nineteen eighty-six." How is that possible? Wasn't he 27 when we met forever ago? (He was 22.) Why does time seem to fly for me and my peers but crawl for everyone who's still under 30?

3. People who are complaining about how old they're getting were born in the decade when I graduated from high school. The girl who asked our age wouldn't tell us hers, but that flawless skin and Saturday night fever (you know, the contagious kind commonly found in rambunctious kids the first time they get to stay up past their bedtime) suggested that she couldn't have been a day over 30, even though she was putting a lot of her youthful energy into bemoaning her supposed vintageness. Ah, I got it! I understood exactly how people who are 10, 20 years older than me felt 15, 20 years ago when I used to do the same thing. Cher, my apologies.

4. Speaking of the decade when I graduated from high school, last night during one of my semi-regular Wikipedia sprees, I discovered that many of the musical icons whose cassettes and vinyl LPs provided the soundtrack of my teens are now pushing 60 hard. Dennis Quaid, who didn't appear on any of those records but represented my masculine ideal back then, will turn 60 on April 9, and in the next two years, Annie Lennox, Reba McEntire, Rosanne Cash and Paul Young are just a few of the singers that provided the soundtrack to my 1980s who will join the sexagenarian club. Pat Benatar and Cyndi Lauper were already inducted last year.

5. Now when I stay out until the morning after, as I did on Saturday night for the first since Tel Aviv last year, I do it not with a bunch of twentysomethings that I met on the dance floor. Instead, my after-party involved hanging out by the swimming pool of a real-estate agent (the one who rented me the apartment that will be home for the next year), who has a grown daughter (who wasn't there) and a best friend who is the editor of a South African magazine (who was there), and watching the sun rise over Cape Town. At least after having too much whiskey and tequila, I'm naturally gravitating toward a more sophisticated crowd.

6. I didn't get out of bed until the 2.30 the afternoon after. So much for that run along the pier, or pretty much anything that required more than a minimum of physical exertion.

7. For the second time in six months (again, since Tel Aviv), my lower back is killing me. In fact, extreme lower back and neck pain kept me out of the gym and off of my Cape Town running tracks for five consecutive days. I used to be able to work out normally with bruised ribs and a dislocated shoulder, now all those years of not stretching unless it was at the end of Pilates class seem to be catching up with my poor aching pack.

8. May-September/December romances are kind of appalling to me for the first time ever (though I wouldn't rule out having another one). I recently listened to a TV dad (Sonny Corinthos on General Hospital) complaining about his 19-year-old son (Morgan) dating a 40ish-year-old cougar (Ava, who also happens to be Morgan's former mother-in-law), and despite the fact that my ex-boyfriend was a mere 21 years old when we met three and a half years ago, and I consider the aphorism "Age is nothing but a number" to apply equally to the old and to the young, Sonny actually made a lot of sense.

9. I now realize that all of my life routines have an expiration date. Last week while I was trying to decide what to have for lunch, I panicked. If only there were a pill to keep us nourished, I thought. Might someone invent that in my lifetime? Otherwise, how many more meals do I have to plan before I die? As I did the math in my head, I realized that the good thing about possibly never living to see that magic food pill is that I'll probably only have to spend a few more decades having to struggle to include a little variety in my daily meals.

10. I read a story about a colonoscopy and thought, This is my near-immediate future. I also now regularly write about death for fun.

11. Now that I'm nearly half a decade removed from it, 40 really is the new 30. The other day I watched Nick Lachey talking about recently turning 40 on The Talk, and I found myself thinking, What a baby!

12. Friends and former colleagues who once seemed so young suddenly aren't. A longtime girlfriend turned 38 last week, and as we reminisced about celebrating her 24th together in New York City, it didn't feel anything like only yesterday.

Burning Questions: The Berlin Edition

What's the point of carbonated water? Yesterday when I posed this question as my Facebook status update, a few of my friends offered some interesting suggestions on how to make fizzy water (which Jane Seymour once called the key to romantic living) more palatable. (I'll have a shot of vodka to go with that!) Still, none of them explained why some people would prefer to drink straight carbonated water over good old agua sin gas. Maybe I've just never paid close enough attention when buying bottled water in other cities, but here in Berlin, the supermarket shelves seem to be as fully stocked with the bubbly stuff (mit Kohlensäure) as the still stuff (ohne Kohlensäure). Perhaps all those heavy meat dishes prepared in restaurants here leave people feeling particularly gassy and in desperate need of both relief and release.

Does my obsession with Greek and Roman sculpture make me not just a geek but a really strange and kind of pervy one, too? This was the running question-as-commentary that kept running through my head yesterday during my two hours at the Altes Museum. I was grinning with glee and feeling slightly overwhelmed as I gradually progressed through the two levels of ancient art on display, and easily could have spent a few more hours there had I not been overtaken by pangs of hunger.

The myriad representations of the unclothed ideal male form made me glad I'd spent an hour running around the Spree River in the morning. While I was staring at one of those ideal male forms, a nude and drunk Dionysus (my favorite male god, as he represents bacchanalia -- a word derived from his Roman name, Bacchus) holding on to a satyr, I slipped into a fantasy in which the god of wine and I were skipping the wine and hitting the hard stuff -- vodka and carbonated water -- in his unholy domain on Mount Olympus.

As an art purist, I'm still not sure how I feel about how some of the sculptures were cobbled together -- body from one century, head from another to suit prevailing tastes at the time. The arms of The Praying Boy (main photo), for instance, were added later, well after the completion of the rest of the statue, to reflect, one must presume, the era's prevailing prayer pose (which, to me, looks more like rejoicing than praying). It's art as pastiche, and studying the collection, I almost felt like I was walking through the sculptural equivalent of a sample-heavy hip-hop record.

Were the Greek, Roman and Etruscan masters exercising religious restraint or extreme modesty when sculpting the ideal nude male form? Maybe size didn't really matter back then, but one would expect Apollo, of all Greek divinities, to be, if nothing else, well-endowed. At least that was the myth going through my head every time I stumbled upon yet another representation of his unclothed form.

Is it me, or does the guy on the left look like Ralph Fiennes circa Schindler's List? It's actually someone named Irwin Piscator, about whom I hope to find out more today when I check out "Diversity Destroyed: Berlin 1933-1938," an exhibition that's part of a 2013 city-wide recognition of the 80th anniversary of the Nazi takeover of Germany at the German Historical Museum. (That's Marlene Dietrich underneath him.) I'm heading there as the second part of my 24-euro three-day museum pass that covers all of Museum Island -- an actual island in the middle of the Spree River -- and much more.

What is it about Icona Pop's "I Love It" that transcends language, country and cultural barriers? It's hopelessly high school, the kind of song I could imagine every girl in my graduating class singing along to every time it came on the radio had it been released circa 1984 to 1987. But unlike Madonna's and Cyndi Lauper's greatest hits from that period, I haven't grown tired of it since the first time I heard it, on a Melbourne TV commercial just a few days before its inclusion in a January episode of Girls led to its U.S. ascent.

The single just became a U.K. No. 1 hit upon its release there, several months after it peaked in the U.S. (at No. 7 on Billboard's Hot 100) and a full year after it made it big in Australia (reaching No. 3 on the ARIA singles chart), the first English-language country to fall for the charms of the Swedish duo. Yesterday I heard "I Love It" in a German commercial, which means that apart from plays on my iPod, I've heard the 14-month-old single in every country I've been in this year, except for the United Arab Emirates, which no doubt would have been blasting it, too, had it not been for Ramadan's restrictions on music and dancing.

6 Things I'd Forgotten I Love About Buenos Aires

It’s not exactly La Grande Jatte, but I love Plaza San Martin anyway.

I'll never forget about all the great friends I have in Buenos Aires, the delicious ensalada de fruta, the tree-saving bidets (How did I go so long without them?), or those ridiculously cheap Pilates classes -- which are included in the 380 pesos (or roughly US$45 at the black-market exchange rate) I just paid for a one-month membership at my old gym. But the joy of six other great things about BA had almost slipped my mind.

1. The scenic running routes There are so many of them in Palermo that the Buenos Aires barrio rivals the entire city of Melbourne as an ultimate jogger's paradise. The heat and humidity isn't so disagreeable here that one must do his or her running around town at the crack of dawn, as I was forced to do in Bangkok last year, but if you choose to sleep in, it's your loss. Buenos Aires is loveliest in the half hours just before and after sunrise, which I'd also forgotten until I woke up on Tuesday at 6am for my first BA run in more than two years. The low-rise layer of fog floating over the lake in the center of Plaza Holanda as an orange glow started to peek over the brightening black-and-blue horizon almost stopped me dead in my jogging tracks. Going around Holanda's 1.5-kilometer running path was a breeze with such a lovely view to distract me from the pain in my feet.

2. Its R-E-S-P-E-C-T for retro pop stars As far as I know, BA hasn't hosted the Queen of Soul lately -- or ever. But Liza Minelli has made it here several times, including one trip in 2007 for a Liza-inspired cabaret show, in which my first Pilates teacher moonlighted as a dancer. ("She was amazing," he said, predictably, the morning after meeting her at the after-party.) And during Tuesday's early morning run, I passed a sign announcing the BA arrival of another golden oldie: Peter Cetera is coming to town -- again! How could I have forgotten about all the random vintage music acts who used to come around here, ones you might not even expect to have much of a South American following, like Dionne Warwick, Michael Bolton, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, Boy George and the former lead singer of Chicago, who played Luna Park in 2010 and will hit Teatro Gran Rex on April 30. Hmm... I wonder if someone can convince Bobby Womack to swing by BA before his Melbourne gig on May 21, the day I fly back into Sydney.

3. The soundtrack No, not tango, which was never really my thing. If you aren't willing to shell out the pesos required to see your favorite vintage middle-of-the-roader live, there are always unexpected pleasures for free courtesy of pop radio in BA. I can still remember walking through the supermarket while singing along to random non-hits like Tracey Thorn's "It's All True" and Keane's "The Lovers Are Losing" playing on the loudspeaker, which would probably never happen anywhere else. And who needs reading material during lunch when you've got a radio playlist that includes Keane's "Is It Any Wonder?" followed by Santana featuring Michelle Branch's "The Game of Love" to keep you entertained?

4. French fries I don't know what they do to make them taste so good here, but they don't even need ketchup. In the U.S., they were always too skinny or too soggy, and in Melbourne too dry or too cold -- except at Burger Edge, where the burgers are just an excuse to get to the fries. It's that way all over BA: People rave about the prime Argentine beef, but for me, the meat has always been pretty much just a side dish (una guarnicion) to the fries, not the other way around.

5. Spanish I'm a timid perfectionist, so speaking Spanish was never really my forte. As with English, I was always a greater communicator when writing it. But one really has no choice when dealing with customer service personnel in person or on the phone. Getting my point across and understanding theirs always gave me a certain sense of accomplishment second only to completing a writing assignment (in English or in Spanish) or a particularly grueling workout. I imagine it must be something like how Ikea addicts feel after they've assembled a shiny new white shelf.

6. Siestas It's so good to pass out in bed in the middle of the afternoon and not be wracked by guilt, for according to Argentine custom, that's right where you should be. So please, close the blinds on your way out. Zzzz...

11 Best New Artist Grammy Winners Who Got What They Deserved

Although I stopped caring about the Grammys a long time ago, the one category that I continue to keep an eye on is Best New Artist, which was always my favorite back when I still gave a damn about the rest of them.

This year, the line-up is a bit on the weak side, with the exclusion of Carly Rae Jepsen leaving very little gender variety. (I'd be happy with The Lumineers or Frank Ocean, the two acts behind my two favorite singles of 2012, but fun. is probably the one to beat at tonight's ceremony.) Still, Best New Artist is traditionally the one Grammy category most likely to surprise us, whether via major blunders (Starland Vocal Band over Boston in 1977, and A Taste of Honey over The Cars, Elvis Costello and future Grammy titans Toto in 1979, to name but two of them), major upsets (Marc Cohn over Boyz II Men in 1992, on the strength of a Top 20 hit -- "Walking in Memphis" -- that I'd have trouble remembering if Cher, a 1966 Best New Artist nominee with Sonny, hadn't covered it on her 1995 album It's a Man's World), un-nominated hitmakers (including The Rolling Stones, Madonna, the Class of '87/'88 teen-pop stars New Kids on the Block, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, and most of today's biggest singles stars, including Rihanna, Katy Perry and Bruno Mars), and one act that won the award and then lost it for not singing a note on its debut album (Milli Vanilli -- who else?).

There's even room in the category for unexpected contenders better known for their work in Hollywood than as recording artists, like Bob Newhart (winner, 1961), Bette Midler (winner, 1974) and Robin Williams (nominee, 1980). And then, every so often, the Best New Artist Grammy goes right where it should. 10 such cases...

(FYI: Amy Winehouse, who won in 2008, didn't make my cut because she actually released her well-received debut album, Frank, in 2003. The current Grammy guidelines that allow acts to be nominated for the year in which they establish a public identity, regardless of when they released their debut recording, make the nomination criteria too subjective. If that's how the Academy wants to spin it, the category should be renamed Best Breakthrough Artist. But I digress...)

The Beatles, 1965

The competition Petula Clark, Astrud Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Morgana King

A no-brainer win if ever there was one, especially with the rest of the British invasion left out of the running, in favor of the Brazilian one (represented by Gilberto and Jobim, singer and composer, respectively, of 1965 Record of the Year "The Girl from Ipanema"), and Clark, a Brit who already had been scoring international hits for a decade.

Carly Simon, 1972

The competition Chase, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, Bill Withers

Another no-brainer, though probably in hindsight only. Simon, 1975 winner Marvin Hamlisch and 1981 winner Christopher Cross are the only Best New Artists who also won Oscars, a list Eurythmics member Annie Lennox would be on had her electronic-pop duo beat Culture Club (as it should have) in 1984, and one Adele will join if she wins Best Original Song at the February 24 Oscars for "Skyfall."

Natalie Cole, 1976

The competition Morris Albert, Amazing Rhythm Aces, Brecker Brothers, KC and the Sunshine Band

The beginning of a love affair with Cole that culminated in a 1992 Grammy haul that included Album of the Year for Unforgettable... with Love.

Sheena Easton, 1982

The competition Adam and the Ants, The Go-Go's, James Ingram, Luther Vandross

I recently was talking to an Australian who, when the subject turned to Best New Artist Grammy winners who never had another hit afterwards, cited Sheena Easton as a prime example. Not even close: Easton would qualify as one of the Best New Artist winners who enjoyed the most longevity as a hitmaker afterwards. Her run of Top 10 hits on Billboard's Hot 100 spanned the entire decade and included the fruits of a memorable partnership with the most inventive mainstream artist of the '80s, his purple majesty himself Prince. And let's not forget (to quote Jackson Browne), that girl could sing, almost as good as Luther Vandross, who would have gotten my vote had he not been kicking around the industry since the mid '70s, most notably as a background vocalist and the arranger of the background vocals on David Bowie's 1975 hit "Young Americans."

Cyndi Lauper, 1985 

The competition Sheila E., Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Corey Hart, The Judds

Wynonna Judd of The Judds aside, none of them still would be having hits by the '90s, but future Emmy winner Lauper is the only one anyone still really cares about in 2013.

Sade, 1986

The competition a-ha, Freddie Jackson, Katrina and the Waves, Julian Lennon

Giving Sade's staying power, it's hard to imagine now that the British group's win was controversial at the time. The reason: Whitney Houston, who also had released her debut album during the late 1984-to-late 1985 eligibility period for the '86 Grammys. However, due to Grammy rules, Houston was deemed ineligible for Best New Artist because she'd been a credited artist on a 1984 duet single with Teddy Pendergrass called "Hold Me." Apparently, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, never ones for consistency, relaxed its definition of "new artist" long enough to allow former Shalamar member Jody Watley to take the prize two years later (though Richard Marx, who'd played guitar and sung background on Houston's debut album, would be left off the short list that same year due to a contribution to the 1986 Nothing in Common soundtrack), and for Shelby Lynne to win in 2001, 10 years into her recording career.

Mariah Carey, 1991

The competition The Black Crowes, The Kentucky Headhunters, Wilson Phillips, Lisa Stansfield

The next time Carey gets into it with Nicki Minaj at the American Idol judges table, she should come back with "Yeah, but at least I didn't lose Best New Artist to Bon Iver last year!" I'm still having a hard time with that one myself.

Toni Braxton, 1994

The competition Belly, Blind Melon, Digible Planets, SWV

My favorite Best New Artist line-up since Tracy Chapman vs. Toni Childs in 1989. (I would have declared that one a draw, or, in hindsight, go with Childs, if only because her debut wasn't her only essential album, which is why I would go with Dixie Chicks over Lauryn Hill among the 1999 nominees). As much as I loved Belly's debut album, Digible Planets second album, and pretty much every SWV single, Braxton was the only nominee who went on to make enough of an impression to wind up as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. (And I loved her debut album, her second album, and pretty much every one of her three-album string of hit singles as well as the non-hits that came after them.)

Christina Aguilera, 2000

The competition Macy Gray, Kid Rock, Britney Spears, Susan Tedeschi

And thus round one of Christina vs. Britney went to the one with actual singing talent.

Alicia Keys, 2002

The competition India.Arie, Nelly Furtado, David Gray, Linkin Park

If David Gray hadn't already been releasing records for a decade, I'd be calling him that year's Best New Artist, but as he was already a vet at the time, he just happened to be my favorite artist in the category, not the one who deserved to win. Among actual new acts, the second year of the century belonged to Alicia Keys, a rare merger of talent and success, both of which remain intact a decade later.

Adele, 2009 

The competition Duffy, Jonas Brothers, Lady Antebellum, Jazmine Sullivan

Am I the only one who didn't see the massive success of her next album coming?

Cyndi Lauper's Reality Show: Better Now Than Never!

Some blame Madonna. I prefer to fault the often-questionable taste of the general music-listening public. Whatever or whomever the culprit, Cyndi Lauper (the subject of my fourth-ever blog post in 2008) deserved to be so much bigger than two platinum albums, two gold ones and eight Top 10 singles.

For a while there in the mid '80s, she seemed destined to be. She won the Best New Artist Grammy in 1985, and her debut solo album, 1983's She's So Unusual, went six-times platinum in the U.S. To put how big Lauper was circa 1984 to 1986 into modern-day perspective, she was Katy Perry to Rihanna's or Lady Gaga's Madonna, only in Lauper's case, far more talented than Perry, Rihanna, or her old rival, whose rise may have hastened Lauper's chart fall. Back then, the tops of the pops had use for only one girl who just wanted to have fun at a time.

Considering her considerable talent then, a more accurate description might be Christina Aguilera to Britney Spears's Madonna at the turn of the century. Yes, Lauper was the talented one, but her chart success was even shorter lived than Aguilera's is turning out to be. (According to HitsDailyDouble, Aguilera's fifth studio album, Lotus, which was released in the U.S. on Tuesday, is on track to sell a relatively paltry 75,000 to 80,000 copies in its first week. That's a shame because I'd rather go for a run around the park with it than Pink's latest, which sold 281,000 copies during the same first-week period.)

Ironically, although Lauper started off as something of a joke, with the wild hair, day-glo costumes and WWF affiliation (which one could file under questionable taste to explain her lack of commercial longevity), in decline, she ended up being taken quite seriously as an artist. Even after she stopped topping the charts, her albums continued to be critically acclaimed (her 2008 dance collection, Bring Ya to the Brink, rivaled Confessions on a Dance Floor, the best of Madonna, in quality, if not in terms of success), and she won a 1995 Emmy for one of her guest spots on the NBC sitcom Mad About You.

Now she's about to go (again) where it seems every music star past and present eventually does -- to reality TV. In January, the WE Network will begin airing Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual, a 12-part series that will document the now-59-year-old star's home and work life. Laugh if you will, but it's a step up from The Celebrity Apprentice, on which Lauper competed in 2010, and so much better than Dancing with the Stars.

Normally, I dismiss reality projects such as this one as last-ditch attempts by desperate has-beens to recapture a long-dimmed spotlight, or desperate attempts by current stars with a limited shelf life (see Nicki Minaj) to cash in while they can, maybe even pad their 15 minutes of fame. I never understood the fuss over the Osbournes or Jessica Simpson, and of all the aging heavy metal stars for reality TV cameras to follow, I can't understand why they'd settle on KISS's Gene Simmons.

But to each his and her own, and I'm glad to see Lauper getting her shot. Hopefully, Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual will not only recapture that long-dimmed spotlight, but it will lead to a commercial renaissance to make up for everything that questionable taste and Madonna cheated her out of all those years ago.

The Best of Cyndi Lauper

"High and Mighty" (from Bring Ya to the Brink)

"True Colors" (from True Colors)

"I Drove All Night" (from A Night to Remember)

"Unhook the Stars" (from Sisters of Avalon)

"She Bop" (from She's So Unusual)

Why Madonna Keeps Losing Me with "MDNA"

Though she'd probably never admit it, Madonna is only human. And like the rest of us mere mortals, she's failed at a few things over the years (oh, those dreadful movies!). Holding my attention, however, has rarely been one of them.

It's not that she's boring me now, but I'm having a hard time getting through MDNA again. Every time I try to listen to Madonna's just-released 12th album, my mind starts to wander and my energy level flags, which means that this probably will not end up being my workout soundtrack for the next few months. I wonder what Elton John, Madonna's public enemy No. 1, has to say about this!

No, Madonna is probably incapable of being outright dull (despite its soporific properties, I'd still rather listen to MDNA than Beyoncé's 4 or Britney Spears' Femme Fatale), but for the first time since 2003's American Life, she's unable to hold my undivided attention. Even Hard Candy, as uneven as it was, had moments of such extreme brilliance that I found myself pressing repeat over and over. I once spent an entire hour running around Santiago, Chile, with nothing but "Heartbeat" blaring in my ears!

It wasn't supposed to be this way. A few weeks ago, Billboard.com ran a track-by-track rundown of MDNA's 12 songs and five bonus tracks, with several snippets thrown in. The minute (or so)-long previews sounded so great coming out my laptop speakers that March 26 couldn't arrive quickly enough. I was even ready to cut "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and "Girl Gone Wild" some slack. Though they didn't work as singles -- first Madonna singles should not sound like filler but like future classics that we won't be able to get out of our heads for months, if not forever -- perhaps they would sound more convincing in the context of the entire album.

Newsflash! They don't. Not even "Gang Bang," which in the snippet sounded like it might be the most exciting thing Madonna has done in years, loses my interest somewhere around the 1:30 mark. It's not that the songs themselves aren't well-produced and sturdily constructed. I love the twangy guitar riffs in "Love Spent" and that fuzzed-out funky bit 20 seconds into "I Don't Give A," though a musical diatribe apparently aimed at Guy Ritchie after all this time seems uber petty. But for the most part, the songs on MDNA just sort of lie there, going nowhere special. Maybe she should have released an album of 60-second teasers!

Part of the problem is lyrical. Too often, Madonna seems to be going purposely shallow, as if she wants to sound as young as she looks. (Indeed, in the "Girl Gone Wild" video, she looks like not a day has passed since the "Erotica" video in 1993!) But her decadence dance is unconvincing, especially since it's been nearly decades since Madonna the star has come across as anything even resembling a party girl. She doesn't sound menacing or threatening saying "Drive, bitch!" on "Gang Bang." She comes across more like a grandma who's trying too hard to prove that she can still run with the young guns and stay up past midnight.

At 53, she needs to be digging deeper than "Turn Up the Radio." (That anachronism right there -- Who even listens to the radio anymore? -- further betrays her vintage status.) On Hard Candy, "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You" and "Closer" were standouts because she was really saying something. (Might I recommend an album-length collaboration with singer-songwriter Joe Henry, her brother-in-law, who co-wrote previous Madonna triumphs "Don't Tell Me," "Jump" and "Devil" as well as the MDNA closer "Falling Free"?) Yes, I can accept that even menopausal girls just wants to have fun (to steal the line of her one-time rival Cyndi Lauper, which Madonna does, too, on "Girl Gone Wild"), but let's leave singing about it to kids Katy Perry's age, shall we?

Maybe I was expecting too much from this Madonna reunion of sorts with William Orbit, who had a hand in producing a number of MDNA tracks. She delivered some of her best work (1998's Ray of Light) in collaboration with Orbit. But their time may have passed. Ray of Light now sounds like a relic of its era, and although their "Masterpiece," which first appeared in the closing credits of W.E., Madonna's second directorial effort, is a highlight on the album and one of the few tracks that I want to hear again (along with "I'm Addicted," a magnificent obsession that still lasts about one minute too long, and "I'm A Sinner," which is classic Madonna-Orbit in the musical vein of the great, durable "Beautiful Stranger"), it sounds like it belongs in the '90s.

I'm not sure what's going on between Madonna and Stuart Price, with whom she collaborated on her best album, 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor. Why does she seem to have deleted his number from her speed dial? Here's a guy who can take a repetitive loop and create high drama with it. Nothing much happened over the course of a song on Confessions, but Price's production created the illusion of building tension, like that loop was constantly changing, evolving. (It's a technique that has kept Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" in heavy rotation on my personal playlist for most of my life.)

I'm not ready to give up on MDNA just yet. Madonna music has grown on me before. Maybe one day the songs on MDNA will finally start to sink in, I'll doze off and wake up dancing.

10 Comebacks I'd Pay Money to See

Sometimes, when I'm wide awake in dreamland (to quote the title of one of Pat Benatar's '80s albums, her final one to go gold), I fantasize about a world where Benatar is a chart superstar again.

But that's one dream that won't likely be coming true. I once had a conversation with a publicist for EMI Records, an affiliate of Benatar's then-label, Chrysalis Records (a publicist who, incidentally, later married Curt Smith from Tears for Fears, speaking of comebacks that would be most welcome) right around the time that Benatar's 1993 Gravity's Rainbow album flopped. I asked if she thought Benatar would ever return to her '80s chart glory. She shook her head, sadly. Nope. It's over.

I thought to myself, "We'll show her," but we never did. Now, with Chrissie Hynde, Stevie Nicks and Benatar out of regular circulation, it's been decades since female rockers regularly ruled the charts. Pink called herself a "rock star" on "So What," and the other day I heard Sheryl Crow calling herself one on The Marriage Ref, but then, Shaun Cassidy once had a Top 3 hit with an Eric Carmen song called "That's Rock 'n' Roll," which was as rock 'n' roll as "Hey Deanie," another late-'70s hit sung by Cassidy and written by Carmen. Pink and Crow are pop singers who accessorize with rock & roll swagger. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

But as usual, I digress. Here are nine other comebacks I'd like to find under the Christmas tree this year, or next.

Cyndi Lauper Back when it was all about Madonna vs. Cyndi Lauper in 1984, who would have guessed that the less-talented singer would be the one still charting high this century? If Lauper's 2008 album, Bring Ya to the Brink, one of the best of the '00s, couldn't resurrect her chart career, I'm afraid that ship that sailed circa 1989 isn't returning to port.

Ciara She never had the greatest voice, and she always had a bit of an image problem (as in, not really having one), but over the course of four albums, Ciara has released some of the most consistently solid R&B of the last decade. Alas, with rap and Eurodance-inflected R&B currently hogging the crossover field, it's been way downhill saleswise for Ciara since Goodies, her 2004 triple-platinum debut. "Work," her brilliant 2009 collaboration with Missy Elliott (4:13 was one of the best musical moments of that year -- thank you, Danja), couldn't even touch Billboard's Hot 100. Hopefully, she can get back to where she started without having to slum with David Guetta.

George Michael His recent brush with pneumonia -- and death -- made me realize how much we need to value our musical treasures. Michael has released far too little music in the last two decades, and he had to cancel his recent tour featuring symphonic versions of his previous work (how Sting of him) due to his illness. I say he scrap it for good, offer full refunds and get back into the recording studio as soon as his health allows. As sublime as I'm sure it would be to hear Michael performing his past work with new orchestral arrangements, now that he has so much real-life fodder to draw from creatively, why revisit past glories when he can be recording new ones and (hopefully) topping the charts all over again?

Christina Aguilera She's had a glimpse of what it's like to be back on top as a featured artist on Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger," so it only seems fitting that Aguilera get there on her own now. And let's face it: on the charts, Katy Perry vs. Lady Gaga vs. Rihanna will never be half as exciting as Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera was at the turn of the century.

Soundgarden I'm hoping that my favorite grunge act's upcoming reunion album will be one of the few that succeeds commercially, and that just as grunge led to a revival of old-time rock & roll on the charts in the early '90s, it will do so once again in 2012. After an extremely lackluster post-Audioslave solo run, Chris Cornell, owner of one of the best voices in hard rock, deserves it.

Duffy Was the sophomore jinx that befell 2010's Endlessly the beginning of the end for my favorite Welsh performer since Catherine Zeta-Jones? May she return from her current hiatus inspired, rejuvenated and ready to create music as magical and undeniable as Rockferry once again.

Donna Summer If they're never going to induct her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, can we at least get one surprise late-career hit a la Cher's "Believe" for the woman who helped make Madonna and Lady Gaga possible?

Dionne Warwick A legend as classy and classic as Warwick deserves to be best remembered by the 20-to-40 crowd for something other than Psychic Friends Network and Celebrity Apprentice. Maybe Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach could write her an entire album similar in musical spirit to their 1998 collaboration Painted from Memory, leading to a late-in-life revival Tony Bennett-style.

Amy Winehouse If only she were alive to enjoy it. 

And five I just want to come back!

1. Fiona Apple

2. David Bowie

3. Shania Twain

4. Everything But the Girl

5. Shara Nelson

Legends in My Living Room: Great Music Acts Who Deserve(d) to be Superstars

The subject was not roses but great first impressions, including the one Matthew Sweet made with "Dinosaur Act," Track 1 on Altered Beast, his brilliant but critically and commercially overlooked 1993 album. That post got me thinking about roses that never fully bloomed (I guess the subject is roses, after all) and stars that should have been supernovas.

I'll never understand why Ke$ha is famous and Luciana isn't. Why Mariah Carey and sometimes Janet Jackson ruled the '90s, while the likes of PJ Harvey and Bjork, critically acclaimed as they were, spent most of the decade on the fringes of commercial success. (Interestingly, both Harvey and Bjork have worked with Thom Yorke, whose band Radiohead scaled platinum peaks despite being musically "difficult.") Why Madonna's golden (and platinum) years continue while those of Cyndi Lauper, a far superior singer, couldn't outlast the '80s.

Well, I'm here to give some unheralded greats their due. It's not much, but it's the best I can do. If I ruled the world, they'd provide the soundtrack in my kingdom.

Joe Henry He's handsome, he's talented, and he's Madonna's brother-in-law, for God's sake. (Her 2000 hit "Don't Tell Me" began its life as a Henry demo called "Stop," which he recorded for his 2001 album, Scar.) So why is Joe Henry still a virtual unknown? Why whenever I want to sing his praises must I always sing them alone. It's been decades since the pop charts have been kind to solo male artists whose music isn't filed under pop, R&B or hip hop or who aren't members of a band or former members of a supergroup. (Food for thought: Would Chris Martin have become a star without Coldplay?) You'd think that once in a while the masses would make an exception. Sadly, for Henry (and Sweet), they don't.

Toni Childs She was nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy in 1989 (and lost to Tracy Chapman), then, unless you were paying close attention, she fell off the face of the earth. She actually just went deeper underground, releasing three more albums after her flawless debut, 1988's Union, and enjoyed some success in Australia and New Zealand, but in the U.S., each one sold less than the one before it. It seems that at any one time, there's only room on the pop charts for one or two visionary female singer-songwriters offering tunes where the subject is more than roses and love. In the early '70s, they were Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell. By the late '80s and early '90s, Sinead O'Connor and Tracy Chapman were crowding the spotlight. The mid to late '90s, the Lilith Fair years, expanded the space to include Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, Fiona Apple, Jewel and, for two hits and one Grammy cycle, Paula Cole. Who will save our souls now?

Alyson Williams History repeats itself over and over and over when it comes to great soul singers who never get their deserved recognition. I could devote a month of posts to them. (As it stands, I rant and rave on their behalf about once a year.) Today I'm mourning Alyson Williams' lack of crossover success, despite scoring five Top 10 R&B hits in the late '80s and early '90s. At least in the UK, where, as a general rule, they know a great song when they hear one, pop fans had the good taste to send "Sleep Talk" to No. 3 in 1989.

Leona Naess You'd think that being Diana Ross's former stepdaughter might have worked in her favor. (Her dad was the late Norwegian mountaineer and businessman Arne Naess Jr., who was married to Ross in the late '80s and literally fell off a cliff to his death in 2004.) Or maybe being the girl that Ryan Adams reportedly dumped in 2003 might have given her some audience sympathy. (Listen to her self-titled third album from 2003 for all the beautifully messy details of that particular romantic entanglement.) But over the course of four excellent albums, Naess floundered commercially while Sheryl Crow, the closest thing to her musical kindred spirit in the mainstream, continued to soar.

Robyn Okay, so she did enjoy some well-deserved U.S. success as a white R&B/teenpop diva in the late '90s, but although accomplishing the rare artistic feat of getting better which each album (and over the course of more than a decade to boot), today she remains mostly a cult classic, a star among music lovers who know that Lady Gaga might be the biggest thing in electropop, but Robyn is the best.

And 8 more that the U.S. mainstream missed out on:

The Cardigans post-"Lovefool" (essential albums: Gran Turismo, Long Gone Before Daylight, Super Extra Gravity)
Ex-Bauhaus members Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash (essential albums: Murphy's Deep and Ash's Coming Down)
Tracey Thorn post Everything but the Girl's "Missing" (essential albums: EBTG's Walking Wounded and Thorn's Out of the Woods)
Shara Nelson (essential album: What Silence Knows)
Roisin Murphy, solo and with Moloko (essential single: "Overpowered")
Belly (essential album: Star)
Billie Ray Martin, solo and with Electribe 101 and the Opiates (essential albums: Electribe 101's Electribal Memories and Martin's 18 Carat Garbage)