Enough Covers Albums! -- and 9 Other Things I'm So Over Right Now

They've been done, folks. To death. Yesterday my brother emailed me to say that he was looking forward to reading my thoughts on Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga's new collaborative effort, Cheek to Cheek. That was almost enough encouragement to get me to check out an album I'd been planning on ignoring, but I just don't think I can go there yet again.

I've had it with the Great American Songbook. When Linda Ronstadt first tackled it back in 1983 with What's New, kicking off a trilogy of standards albums and one of the dominant pop trends of the last 30 years, it was a welcome platinum-bound novelty. No rock superstar had ever shared top billing with as high-brow an act as The Nelson Riddle Orchestra. Ronstadt infused new life into musty old standards that many of us had never heard, making them sound like toddlers bursting with energy.

A billion trips to that playground later, those songs that we've now spent so many years learning and singing could use a long nap. And frankly, like other people's children, some of them aren't as wonderful as the people who keep reviving them seem to think they are. "Lush Life" and "Nature Boy" (both of which are featured on Cheek to Cheek, of course) may deserve their iconic status, but is a trifle like "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (also on Cheek to Cheek) a classic because it's such a stellar song or because we've heard it so many times that it's permanently stuck in our heads?

The track list of Nostalgia, Annie Lennox's second album of covers, which is due October 21, displays better taste, if not a considerably more adventurous spirit, which is odd, considering that Lennox and Gaga both so boldly embraced gender- and sexuality-bending iconoclasm in their respective heydays. But despite the presence of "Strange Fruit" (already definitively covered by Sting in the 1980s) and "Summertime" (which Fantasia Barrino probably should have had the final word on after she performed it twice during American Idol's third season), this was a much better idea 19 and a half years ago when Lennox released Medusa, her first album of covers.


Other-people's-songs fatigue hadn't yet kicked in, and although "No More I Love You's" aside, there were few surprises in Medusa's song selection, Lennox, for the most part, improved on her source material. I recently heard The Clash's "Train in Vain," and it actually sounded kind of odd to me because I missed the religious fervor that Medusa brought to it, the gospel according to Annie Lennox. (You've got to hand it to her for having the balls to take The Clash to church!) Sweet dreams were made of this -- her glissando vocal approach to Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" -- and I once spent an entire Sunday afternoon crying over her take on Paul Simon's "Something So Right."

I haven't listened to anything on Nostalgia yet, so I can't comment on the quality of its contents, but if I wanted more nostalgia from Lennox, whose previous two solo releases -- a hits compilation and a Christmas collection -- were brimming with musical memories, I could have put on "Something So Right" and remembered how it made me feel that afternoon in May of 1995 and what was going on in my life at the time. (I'd recently broken up with my second boyfriend, and he'd just left my apartment after dropping off my 26th-birthday present, a Donny Hathaway CD.) Or I can listen to any of her solo albums, or the work she did with Dave Stewart as one-half of Eurythmics. I've been waiting five years for new non-seasonal solo music from Lennox -- technically, seven and a half, if you consider that her last two new non-Christmas songs, 2009's "Shining Light" and "Pattern of My Life," were old songs, Ash and Keane covers, respectively -- the least she could have done is given us something, well, new.

I'm sure Lennox will sound great singing "God Bless the Child," but if Cape Town, the city Lennox and I both call home at the moment, has been so inspiring for me, why hasn't it done the same for her musically?

1. Bitch slapping It was entertaining back in the '80s when Alexis and Krystle used to do it on Dynasty -- especially to each other -- because it was a rare treat. Now, frankly, I'd rather watch the ladies who punch use words to cut each other down, or failing to come up with suitably bitchy ones on the spot, bean each other with wine glasses. (Thank you, Real Housewives of New York's Ramona Singer, for having the guts to change it up a little.)

Days of Our Lives, I'm mostly talking to you! A few months ago, when Abigail Deveraux smacked her cousin Nick Fallon for daring to verbally sully her honor, he taunted her some more, suggesting that it must have been the first time she'd ever hit anyone. Actually, it was the second time: Abigail, the former recipient of a bitch slap, courtesy of Carrie Brady for trying to steal Carrie's husband, and the sassy little thing who once choked Chloe Lane in the middle of the town square, had previously smacked her boyfriend Cameron for some minor verbal offense that I can no longer remember.

Almost as if she's been wanting to prove the now-deceased Nick Fallon wrong, in the last several months, Abigail has bitch slapped no less than four major characters: EJ DiMera, Eve Donovan, Sami Brady and Chad DiMera. Perhaps her palm action would have carried a little more weight if everyone watching didn't know full well that each recipient of her hand probably could have wiped the Horton Town Square with Abigail's blonde hair with one palm tied behind their back. Memo to Abigail: Next time you want to prove how tough you are, try words, but preferably not ones as hokey as...

2. "Lets make a clean break" Do people say this in real life? Everyone says it on TV, but I've never actually heard an actual person say it. Or maybe it's just that everybody I know is fully aware of the unfortunate fact that break-ups are always messy, no matter how final and supposedly "clean" you make the break.

3. "Let's make a fresh start" On the flip side of the break-up cliche is the getting-back-together one. Sadly, an elephant never forgets, and neither do people, as anyone who has ever had an ancient crime thrown in their face after committing a new one already knows.

4. "I just want you to be happy." Or put less passive-aggressively, I don't approve of what you're doing, but hey, it's your life. Oh, how generous. It's even less believable when exes say it to each other. Nobody actually wants an ex to be happy right after the break-up. Suffering shows you really cared.

5. Smoking in public, inside and out I'm tired of not being able to enjoy a meal al fresco on a beautiful day without having to beg at least one fellow patron not to position his or her cigarette so that the smoke doesn't blow directly into my face. If you're going to slowly kill yourself by sucking on those things, at least have the courtesy to do it in the privacy of your own stinky home.

6. Loud music in restaurants and gyms Do you go out to eat to enjoy good food and excellent conversation, or to listen to a blaring soundtrack that prevents you from being able to actually hear the latter? There's a difference between creating ambiance and making noise, a line that's crossed well before you get to 5 on the volume meter. As for when I'm working out, I don't need the roar of the gym's dreadful mix tapes drowning out the music on my iPod that actually motivates me to keep going.

7. The impossible to decipher CAPTCHA I see the point: Websites need to be able to differentiate between humans and computers, but if the average human can't read the CAPTCHA text, well, then what's the point?

8. Automated answering systems Of course, companies have no problem using computers to do what it would be far more expedient to have humans do, like answering the phone. Even after you've spent minutes following the prompts, typing in your account number and waiting to speak to a human being, the human being still almost always asks you to repeat your account number. So I repeat: Well, then what's the point?

9. Auto correct It occurs to me that I spend so much time correcting auto correct (In what world does H-E... automatically lead to "Heuristic"?), that I'd be better off just typing out every word myself. You know, sort of like what I'm doing right now.

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)

Let's Talk About (Casual) Sex!: Hooking Up in the Grindr Age and a One Night Stand Mini Mix Tape

Before we get to the musical portion of today's program, a preview of my latest HuffPost Gay Voices blog post, which is all about casual sex in the Grindr age...

"How do you numb your skin after the warmest touch? How do you slow your blood after the body rush?" -- Jann Arden, "Insensitive"

I used to want to be that G.U.Y. -- not the one Lady Gaga is singing about in her latest single, but the one Jann Arden was pleading with in her mid-'90s hit. I've given up trying to emulate him, but I still encounter him regularly, in bars, in clubs, in restaurants, on Grindr -- especially on Grindr, the number-one agent for the one-off sexual experience between gay men, which turned 5 on March 25. Sometimes when I scroll down the meet-market app and see all those attractive faces and headless torsos looking for "NSA" (that is, "no strings attached") and "fun" (that Grindr-age euphemism for sex), I get a little green. How much easier life would be if that were all I wanted! (Click here to read entry on my HuffPost Gay Voices blog...)

5 Odes to Casual Sex

"Johnny One Time" Brenda Lee

"I Don't Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" Dead Or Alive

"Fast Love" George Michael

"Get Mine, Get Yours" Christina Aguilera

"I Don't Believe in Love" Dido

Can Lady Gaga Go from "G.U.Y." (Girl Under You) to Woman Back on Top?

"You can't hit a home run every time," an editor told me one Friday morning after slamming an article I had just turned in. Though he later recanted his negative review of my piece (he'd been in a rotten mood when he first read it, and a second pass got him to reconsider it "fantastic"), he stood by the comment in general.

Fifteen years later, so do I. I've now been at this long enough to understand and accept the reality of creativity: Not every editor or reader is going to connect with every article or blog post or book that I write. My work won't always garner 1.2K "likes" and counting on Facebook (as my fourth HuffPost essay just did) or, "likes" or not, fill me up with a personal sense of accomplishment. We play to win, but sometimes we strike out. It's the nature of any game.

That goes for pop superstars, too. Lately, the one people seem to be deeming a loser most is Lady Gaga, thanks (or no thanks) to ARTPOP, her underperforming third studio album. Thus far, it has produced only one Top 10 single, "Applause," which, though arguably the best thing Gaga has ever done (and it didn't need a shrill high-concept video to prop it up), only managed a No. 4 peak on Billboard's Hot 100. After nearly five months in circulation, ARTPOP has yet to go platinum, prompting People magazine music critic Chuck Arnold to wonder "What's Going Wrong with the Pop Star?" in a March 20 editorial.

What a difference a couple of years, a virtual eternity in pop, has made. When Gaga's "Born This Way Ball" tour hit Bangkok amid controversy in 2012 while I was living there, her arrival was front-page news. For weeks, it seemed she was the only thing everyone could talk about. Now I wonder if they even play "Applause" at DJ Station. Can her latest album's third single, "G.U.Y." (the follow-up to the Gaga-R. Kelly duet "Do What You Want," which peaked at a lowly No. 13), reverse ARTPOP's fortunes when the video premieres today (March 22) on Dateline NBC? In other words, can this album, this career, be saved? Does this career even need to be?

Some might blame Gaga's recent slump on the circle of pop life, which has rendered her overshadowed by younger envelope-pushing stars like Miley Cyrus the way she once overshadowed Madonna. Compared to Miley's twerking and tongue lashings, her riding a wrecking ball nude and coming onto Madonna during an MTV Unplugged performance, Gaga's meat dress now seems kind of quaint.

Or was ARTPOP just not good enough? As someone who has always found Gaga talented but her albums only intermittently entertaining, I'm not so sure about that one. As with her previous two studio albums, ARTPOP is no front-to-back musical masterpiece, but it has just as many standout moments: I expect "Applause" to hold up as well as "Poker Face" in a few years, and tracks like "G.U.Y." and "Sexxx Dreams" -- a British-accented, '80s-inflected porn anthem that stripteases between the edge of glory and flesh for fantasy -- will probably live on in medium rotation on my iPod beside Born This Way's "Government Hooker" and "Heavy Metal Lover."

I don't think Gaga's sales decline has as much to do with Miley and a dip in musical quality as it does with the natural course of artist development, which is increasingly compromised by impatient label executives and sagging overall industry sales. We live in desperate times when artists are no longer allowed to gradually evolve into million-sellers or ride out a commercial storm or two. Every album is expected to be a blockbuster, and every pop star is only as valuable as his or her current album's sales.

In contrast, Hollywood's heaviest hitters, the Tom Cruises, the Sandra Bullocks, the Will Smiths, are allowed to have a flop movie or a string of failures without being cast aside completely. A commercial rebound is always considered to be a distinct possibility. Nobody is calling Will Smith over in the United States after his last film, 2013's After Earth, only grossed $60.5 million during its entire North American run. (The bulk of its cumulative intake, $244 million, came from overseas markets.) In fact, he still landed the coveted spot at the recent Academy Awards as the Best Picture Oscar presenter.

Can Gaga rise again? Can ARTPOP? If "G.U.Y." doesn't do the trick -- and considering how infrequently, third and fourth singles change an album's course for the better, I predict that it won't -- there's always her next studio album. The sophomore jinx is a dreaded beast in the world of pop (see Duffy, whose career might never recover from 2010's Endlessly), but it can be overcome (see Nelly Furtado, whose third album, 2006's Loose, brought her back from the brink of commercial disaster that her 2003 second album, Folklore, pushed her to). The more success you have under the belt, the more likely you are to survive a flop if you dare to deliver the next time out.

Consider Beyoncé's current self-titled album, as People's Arnold did. Two years ago, after 2011's 4 merely went platinum and failed to produce any Top 10 pop singles, many were writing off Beyoncé the same way they're writing off Gaga now. But divas from Tina Turner to the ladies of Heart to Madonna to Kylie Minogue to Mariah Carey to Jennifer Lopez to Cher (over and over and over) have weathered career ebbs to emerge more commercially viable than ever, just as Pink did after 2003's brilliant Try This, her own third album, failed to find as significant an audience as its two predecessors.

Fleetwood Mac followed up 1977's Rumours, one of the biggest-selling albums of all-time, with Tusk, a 1979 double album that produced half as many Top 10 hits (two) and only reached No. 4 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart. Between 1977's Saturday Night Fever, another monster of '70s pop, and 1979's Spirits Having Flown, which hit No. 1 and produced three Hot 100 chart-toppers, Bee Gees stumbled pretty badly with 1978's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a flop film with an only modestly successful soundtrack (No. 5, merely platinum and no hit singles).

Ten years later, U2 would follow its own massive career-defining The Joshua Tree with Rattle and Hum, a forgettable fire among U2 albums that now seems like a place holder between Joshua and Achtung Baby. And then there's Britney Spears, whose current album, Britney Jean, is her first official flop. Her two-year engagement at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas might seem like the equivalent of her being shuffled off to the dreaded has-been list, but her sell-out shows make an eventual rebound seem almost like a foregone conclusion. So it's probably too soon to award Gaga a permanent residency on that ignominious list.

If anything, ARTPOP's lack of spectacular chart success means that a year or two from now when Gaga releases her fourth studio album, it won't be quite as eagerly anticipated as albums No. 2 and No. 3 were, and that could very well be a good thing. Nobody was anticipating Beyoncé, which meant Beyoncé was able to release it on iTunes at the stroke of midnight last December 13 when nobody was looking. And look at her now.

Gaga could use the underexposure, whose flipside may, in fact, have helped temporarily do her in. Who knows? Her next multiplatinum phase, if it arrives, might even surprise us all in more ways than one: Maybe, for once and finally, it will just be about the music.

Play Them Again, Sam!: 10 Songs I Can Never Listen to Just Once

Some great songs are like potato chips. Betcha can't eat just one of Lay's savory snack staple, and once is never enough when the iPod shuffle lands on certain favorite tunes. Standout musical moments, though, don't necessarily make you want to hit repeat. Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" are two of rock & roll's most iconic numbers, but after eight and nearly six minutes, respectively, does anybody really want to hear either one more time?

The key to ensuring that a great song demands repeat listening is not only making it catchy and high quality but keeping it short and sweet enough that it always sounds like it's ending way too soon.

"Nathan Jones" The Supremes If I had to live out my days with only one song by The Supremes on my iPod, it would be a 1971 Top 20 hit (and Top 5 UK hit) that came two years after Diana Ross left.

"More Than a Feeling" Boston The unprolific band's 1976 debut single contains what might be the best fade-out outro of the '70s, if not in the history of rock & roll. The song within the song may very well be the song itself.

"The Cutter" Echo and the Bunnymen Thirty-one years and a million listens later, I still have no idea what it's about, but every time Echo's first and biggest Top 10 UK hit (No. 8) gets to 3:34, and Ian McCulloch sounds like he's blowing up up and away on the other side of a wind tunnel, I know I'll soon be listening to it all over again.

"Dead" Pixies Two minutes and twenty-one seconds of infectious cacophony from 1989's Doolittle, Pixies crowning artistic and commercial achievement and one of the best albums of the decade, if not in the history of rock & roll.

"Angel" Belly I once spent an hour dancing around my apartment to this song after coming home from a club in New York City, and I still wasn't ready for the night, or the song, to end.

"Uh Oh" Jonny Polonsky I first listened to Polonsky's 1996 debut album, Hi My Name Is Jonny, because he reminded me of an ex-boyfriend. I kept listening to it because of the 10th and final track.

"Islands in the Sun" Weezer The perfect song to listen to on repeat while running along the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, or in Cape Town.

"Better Version of Me" (the unreleased versions) Fiona Apple So worthy of a second spin that the bootleg version of Apple's 2005 Extraordinary Machine contained two versions of it.

"I Love It" Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX More than a year after I heard it for the first time on an episode of Girls, the Swedish duo's international smash still sounds so fresh, like it was just released yesterday.

"Applause" Lady Gaga So good (still) that it almost makes me sad that for the moment, Gaga's moment has apparently passed.

Miley on Madonna, Rihanna on Shakira: My Problem with Pop's Straight-Guy Lesbian Fantasies

Frankly, I'm over it. And considering that I'm a red-blooded gay male, who can blame me? Unless they're bitch-slapping each other on General Hospital or Days of Our Lives, watching two women put their hands all over each other will never ever be my cup of fruit juice.

"I Kissed a Girl" was one thing. As much as I despised Katy Perry's 2008 No. 1 debut, I could appreciate it as a fluffy celebration of sapphic sexuality that wasn't ultimately about a boy. In fact, say what you will about Katy Perry's music and her onstage persona, but I've got to give her this much: She might be the girliest of major female pop stars, but she's never seemed to exist solely to turn on the males of the species.

Shock antics have never been her style either. Even when she was selling sex, as she did most unabashedly in her 2010 "California Gurls" video, it came across as being as tongue-in-cheek as her candy-colored wigs and misspelling of "girls." She was simultaneously paying homage to outsized female sexuality and sending it up, like a pre-Girls West Coast Lena Dunham.

That's what separates her from so many of her female pop peers. For someone like Miley Cyrus, the music and the message (in a nutshell, hands in the air like we don't care) have become incidental to the midriff. Her songs are now merely background noise for her exhibitionism.

With her recent MTV Unplugged, Miley had the perfect opportunity to reinvent herself once more by refocusing solely on her artistry, but she can't seem to get over her own crotch. I had to watch her and Madonna duetting on a mash-up of Madonna's 2000 hit "Don't Tell "Me" and Cyrus's 2013 smash "We Can't Stop" through my fingers because I couldn't bear to watch the spectacle full-on. (Click here to see it for yourself.)

Vocally, the two pop stars were pretty spot-on, but it was a visual nightmare, starting with Miley's clashing cross-pollination of three distinct Madonna style phases: late '80s bleach-blonde baby-chick Madonna (circa True Blue), early '90s body-baring sex-obsessed Madonna (circa Erotica), and turn-of-the-century cowgirl Madonna (circa Music). Um, who's that girl?

Madonna was half a decade older than Miley is now when she became a star in the mid-'80s, so that might explain why she always had a firmer grip on who she was and who she wasn't. While Madonna was going through her "I don't give a fuck" phase circa 1992 (the year Miley was born!), posing provocatively with women like Naomi Campbell and Isabella Rossellini in her Sex book, her photographic dalliances seemed authentic. She's never been a great actress, but she sold us on her lesbian tendencies.

No matter how much Miley gyrates up against a slightly embarrassed-looking Madonna (who appeared far more at ease making out with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards than she did struggling to create a sexual spark with a girl 34 years her junior who has only been old enough to legally drink since November), it's always obvious where her sexual interests lie. She's all about boys, and everything she does she does to get a rise out of them.

Ditto Shakira and Rihanna in their new duet, "I Forgot to Remember," three and a half minutes of color by numbers dance-pop that seems to exist solely to give Shakira and Rihanna an excuse to writhe around together on a bed, scantily clad, in a pose eerily reminiscent of the one she and Beyoncé struck in the clip for their 2007 duet "Beautiful Liar". "Who needs men when we've got each other?" the song-and-video combo seems to be screaming, while obsessively courting the opposite sex.

Presumably, the goal here is to be provocative and rebellious while promoting girl-on-girl power, but the effect, is actually the opposite. Straight girls have been switching it up for so long now, that bicuriosity has become almost cliche. There's no longer anything provocative or rebellious about one straight girl cuddling up to another, which would be bad news indeed for Katy Perry if she were just coming out today.

As it is, she might owe her entire career to perfect timing. Had she released a debut single called "I Kissed a Girl" in 2014, it probably wouldn't have gone anywhere. Nobody would have cared. Pretend bisexuality is no longer a revolutionary statement if you're a woman in pop, Lady Gaga has seen to that.

Now if Justin Timberlake were to kiss a boy and like it in his next single, well, that would be a revolution. Dream on, though. Macklemore may be down with gay marriage in "Same Love," but don't expect to see him and Ryan Lewis bumping and grinding into each other in a video anytime soon. What's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. In fact, it could very well be career suicide.

It's a double standard that, for once, works in favor of the ladies. Lesbian antics won't make or break anyone's career anymore, but they're still good for more publicity, more YouTube hits, more downloads on iTunes. It's lesbianism as a familiar business model. By making it a marketing gimmick, women in pop buy into the creaky traditions that have dictated the interests of ambitious female performers for decades, using sex to sell and playing to straight-male fantasies. It's blackface without the demeaning properties, appropriating from one group for the entertainment pleasure of the opposite one.

Miley and Madonna and Shakira and Rihanna may be touching themselves and each other, but they're still catering to the same old same old: straight horny men.

13 Great Things About Music in 2013

1. "212" by Azealia Banks featuring Lazy Jay in The Heat and The Bling Ring I love me some Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy (together and separately), but Azealia Banks' brief soundtrack cameo (via her 2011 debut single, which hit No. 12 in the UK) was what I liked most about the Oscar winner and the Oscar nominee's 2013 hit screen collaboration. It was my favorite marriage of music and movies since 2012's This Is 40 (which also featured McCarthy) gave us Fiona Apple's "Dull Tool."

2. "Applause" by Lady Gaga There's nothing like a healthy dose of self-awareness to drive a good electro beat home. I prefer Gaga in ironic self-deprecating mode than when she's trying to make grand statements ("Born This Way"? Blah) or shock us into watching and listening. "Applause" was a bigger hit than you might think (peaking at No. 4 and spending months hovering in the Top 10), but considering the inferior female-driven pop that cruised right past it to the top (Katy Perry's "Roar," Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball"), it wasn't nearly big enough.

3. "The Way" by Ariana Grande featuring Mac Miller As 2013 pop's new teen queens go, Grande's wasn't as fresh and inventive as Lorde ("The Way" sounds like the kind of debut single Mariah Carey might have made had she debuted circa 2000 instead of 10 years earlier), but while I never need to hear "Royals" again (it sounds cool, but how am I supposed feel it when she sounds so detached singing it?), I love the way "The Way" still makes me feel like hearing it over and over. Play it again, iPod!

4. Music from the second season of Girls Of all the great songs that season two of Girls introduced me to in 2013, including but not limited to Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX's "I Love It" and Tame Impala's glam-rocking "Elephant" (from the current Best Alternative Music Album Grammy nominee Lonerism, which would have made my 2012 best-of list had I known about it back then), Icona Pop's worldwide monster hit was the one that the rest of the world couldn't deny either.

5. Texas The Conversation It came out on May 20 (13 days after my birthday, which would have made it the best birthday present since Keane's Strangeland was released on the big day last year), but somehow I managed not to know about it until nearly four months later, on September 15 (my brother Alexi's birthday), when I consulted Wikipedia to see what my favorite Glaswegian band was up to. I spent most of 2013 slacking off when it came to keeping up with new releases, and it had been so long since Texas had offered one (2005's Red Book), I'd sort of given up hope.

Sometimes, though, good things do come to (and from) those who wait. The long hiatus meant that The Conversation didn't quite pick up where Red Book left off but rather blended elements from every phase of Texas's musical history, from the rootsy Americana-style rock & soul of early Texas (particularly Rick's Road) to the Motown-inflected blue-eyed soul of the band's commercial peak (White on Blonde and The Hush) to the glossy pop of its later efforts and frontwoman Sharleen Spiteri's two solo albums (2008's Melody and 2010's The Movie Songbook), while standing on its own as a singular statement in the group's body of work.

I've always found it interesting that Texas insists that it's named after the 1984 Wim Wenders-directed film, Paris, Texas, and not the Lone Star State, as if distancing itself from the U.S., yet Texas's music has always been so unabashedly American-influenced: There's no question what (or rather, where) inspired "Detroit City," the second Conversation single, which rocks like Vegas's The Killers covering Jersey's Springsteen, quotes Detroit's (and Motown's) own Martha and the Vandellas, and shares its title with a country classic co-written by Tampa, Florida's Mel Tillis and made into a 1963 crossover hit by Ohio's Bobby Bare. The album's other two singles, "Dry Your Eyes" and the title track, were probably too elegant, understated and American-sounding to reverse Texas's diminishing commercial returns in the UK and become hits with pop fans who are now too busy getting their kicks from former The X Factor contestants (like One Direction -- ugh!) to enjoy an adult Conversation. Their loss.

6. Britney flops! I so didn't see this coming: Britney Jean sold a relatively paltry 107,000 copies its first week out, which was only good enough for a No. 4 debut on Billboard's Top 200 album chart. Ouch! Now she knows how Christina Aguilera feels! But for both, there's life after multi-platinum pop stardom on other people's songs: Britney Jean scored with will.i.am on "Scream & Shout" this year, as did Aguilera as a guest on Pitbull's "Feel This Moment" and A Great Big World's "Say Something," currently cresting in the Top 5. Aguilera deserves more (like her very own hit), but if Britney is going to keep insisting on not giving us Blackout 2, she deserves exactly what she's finally getting.

7. "Flourescent" by Pet Shop Boys The best song on PSB's excellent Electric and one that was inspired by former teen queens like Britney herself ("You've been living in a looking glass scene/Since you were seventeen"). The Australian-expat DJ who shocked me by playing it one Saturday night at Bar Saint Jean in Berlin (the same place where I'd discovered Solange Knowles's "Losing You" weeks earlier) clearly agreed.

8. Vincent Powell's performance of Lenny Williams' "Cause I Love You" during the Top 40 Las Vegas semifinals on American Idol Nicky Minaj hated him because he was too "old-fashioned," but what the hell does she know?

9. Kree Harrison's performance of Faith Hill's "Stronger" during the Top 20 Vegas semifinals on American Idol I loved Candice Glover, but her much-celebrated take on The Cure's "Lovesong," though well sung, was shapeless and dull. Kree's gentle, effortless reading of Faith Hill's "Stronger" was stronger -- than Glover's "Lovesong" and Hill's own 2002 version.

10. Bob Marley & The Wailers Rastaman Vibration The album actually came out in 1976, but I didn't discover it until 2013. Marley's only Top 10 U.S. studio album (it hit No. 8), it also includes his lone charter on Billboard's Hot 100, "Roots Rock Reggae," which hit No. 51. Oddly enough, though Sinead O'Connor covered "War" on her 2005 reggae tribute album Throw Down Your Arms, none of the songs on Rastaman Vibration are among the "hits" for which Marley is best known. In other words, you won't be hearing any of them at your next frat party, and they're so much better because of that.

11. Radio Capital TV The soundtrack to my month in Rome, which introduced me to the aforementioned masterpiece, via the video for Marley's "Positive Vibration."

12. Those Polish kids singing along to Rihanna at Glam Club in Warsaw Music, like love, is a universal language, and when I heard the twentysomething crowd at the other Glam (not the one in Buenos Aires!) nailing the lyrics while watching Rihanna perform "Stay" live in concert on Polish TV in July, I got it: a sad song for a sad people. Bonus points to Glam for being the place where I heard Lykke Li's 2011 European hit (curiously, everywhere except in Denmark, the UK and her native Sweden) "I Follow Rivers." May she and Norway's Mr Little Jeans become the next big Scandinavian things in 2014.

13. At last: Linda Ronstadt gets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! Too bad it had to happen in the same year that she announced her Parkinson's diagnosis, which might give the impression that she garnered some sympathy votes. But considering that Daryl Hall and John Oates are getting in, too, maybe the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is finally thinking outside of the classic-rock box. Better luck next year, Chic!

Why I'm Just Not Feeling "Beyoncé" (Or Its Namesake These Days)

Thank God for skittish executives at major records labels. That must be the Lord's prayer that's going through Beyoncé Knowles's mind right about now.

If the scuttlebutt is true, and Beyoncé's label, Sony BMG, passed on promoting her eponymous fifth studio album because they deemed it too noncommercial, it might be the best career move music execs ever made on behalf of a multiplatinum superstar. Making Beyoncé a surprise iTunes-only release at midnight on December 13 (with a more conventional physical release to follow seven days later) may have seemed like a risky move at 11:59 pm, but by the end of the 14th, it had served the larger purpose of killing the "Is Beyoncé Over?" stories and sentiment that have intermittently dogged the singer ever since 4 under-performed in 2011 and failed to produce a smash single. At least for the next week or so, while the shock and excitement is still as fresh and new as critics are calling the opus in near-unanimously rapturous reviews.

In just one day of release, Beyoncé's Beyoncé sold 430,000 copies in the U.S., nearly four times as many as Britney Spears' Britney Jean did in its first week, and with zero percent of the promotion. In a sense, though, the lack of promotion was all the promotion it needed. Had Beyoncé spent months building up anticipation while a single or two flopped on Billboard’s Hot 100, Beyoncé might be selling more on par with recent efforts by the likes of Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, whose latest releases sold 286,000 and 258,000 in week one, respectively.

But what about the music? Is it any good?

Beyoncé releasing a terrible album is probably as likely as her giving birth to a child who doesn't benefit from her genetic blessings. (The first beneficiary, Blue Ivy, who turns 2 in January, cameos on the closing track, a ballad called "Blue.") And it helps when you not only have the best producers that money can buy (Don’t let her co-songwriting and co-producing credits fool you: Beyoncé is only as good as her collaborators, and predictably, it took a village of them to create Beyoncé), but when you can snag two of the top ones in the business (Pharrell Williams and Timbaland) not only for the same album (as Madonna did with 2008’s Hard Candy) but for the same track ("Blow," an electro-jazz workout that sounds too Prince-inspired to be anything close to a revolution -- pun intended).

From a musical standpoint, how could she fail? Beyoncé's voice is as sturdy as the production, but technical proficiency has never been what moved me most with music. As I listened to the tracks on Beyoncé for the first few times (and they certainly would qualify more as "tracks" than "songs"), I admired her commitment to the art of pop, but neither she nor her songcraft made me feel anything substantial, not deep deep inside. Even on the most engaging tracks (the mid-album stretch, from "Yoncé"/"Partition" to "Rocket"), I had trouble connecting with Beyoncé (and Beyoncé) emotionally. As was the case with 2011's 4, the tasteful constructions failed to pull me in and burrow themselves in my consciousness.

I think the disconnect has a lot to do with the perfect image/life that the media have cultivated for Beyoncé over the course of the last 15 years. If the lyrics on her latest album are to be believed, her sex life is just as enviable. Listening to her go on and on about it is like watching a beauty queen stare at herself in the mirror, which is basically what she's doing on the pretentiously astericked "***Flawless." You can admire her just as much as she admires herself, but it's hard to put yourself in her high heels.

"Flawless"


When Mary J. Blige sings (and would she ever sing, “Bow down, bitches” on a song that’s supposed to be a pro-feminist anthem?), I bond with her because I know she's lived the joy and pain that she sings about, with an emphasis on the latter. I'm not saying that you have to experience excruciating emotional agony in order to be a great singer/artist (though a little hurt doesn't hurt), but it helps when you reveal something beyond the celebrity glossy.

Through no fault of her own, considering that she's super-private and doesn’t dwell on personal details in interviews, Beyoncé's seemingly perfect life has been shoved down our throats to the point that it's hard to separate it from her music. To my knowledge, she's never offered any evidence that she has a particularly complex inner life. She's only human (of course, she's experienced real-life pain: a miscarriage, the break-up of her parents' marriage), but one might not guess that by looking at her, or listening to her.

Beyoncé's down-home soulfulness has always sounded a bit manufactured to me, designed with as much attention to detail as one of her costumes (right down to those references to herself as "Mrs. Carter," which flagrantly contradicts her pseudo proto-feminism, speaking of designer things), which pits her in stark contrast to someone like her Twitter foe Keyshia Cole. Her songs, like the woman who sings them, are all surface, polished to a remarkable sheen. She's always sung in generalities, with an emphasis on romantic clichés, and when she gets specific on Beyoncé, she's in the throes of afterglow (presumably with her husband "Jay-Z," aka Mr. Carter) in the kitchen (in "Drunk in Love") or getting it on in the back seat of a chauffeured car (in "Partition"). How relatable.

I wouldn’t necessarily have to connect with her if she at least offered the sort of undeniable hooks that powered her greatest solo hits ("Single Ladies," "Naughty Girl," "Check on It") but have been missing from most of her songs since 2008's I Am... Sasha Fierce. Tellingly, two of the more memorable tracks on Beyoncé, "Yoncé"/"Partition" and "***Flawless," sound like Beyoncé’s now-de-rigueur-for-pop-divas approximation or Rihanna. They’re frivolous trifles (despite the presence of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the latter), but they’re the closest Beyoncé gets to a singalong.

Despite the Beyoncé vs. Rihanna speculation that's followed them both since Beyoncé's then-future husband Jay-Z (and collaborator on her first solo hit, "Crazy in Love") helped boost Rihanna into the pop stratosphere with an appearance on "Umbrella," I think a better point of comparison would be her hubby's BFF Justin Timberlake, who is among the cadre of songwriters and producers credited on Beyoncé. He is the closest thing in pop to a male Beyoncé (former vocal group member gone solo, cinematic aspirations, famous spouse), but he’s never been sold to us in the same way. Perhaps his failed relationships have helped his artistic case. Since unshackling himself from, first, Britney Spears, then ‘N Sync, he’s come across as being merely mortal, a lot more than a cute face and tight abs.

A large part of that might come down to the difference between being male and female in the music business. Men in pop are not expected to sell sexy the way women in pop are, and when they are, they use women to do it (see Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" video, or Justin's clip for "Tunnel Vision"). Therefore, they can get by on other merits. Female pop stars are all about sex appeal; talent is more optional. Would Beyoncé have dared to release an un-promoted album with a solid-black cover if she didn't have 17 videos to remind us what she looks like?

But it's hard to sell sex appeal and artistry at once, unless you give the sex a somewhat ironic slant (see Lady Gaga, whose sales are slipping just as she's coming across as being almost normal). The most highly regarded female musicians -- the Aretha Franklins, the Joni Mitchells, the Kate Bushes, the Annie Lennoxes -- were never considered first and foremost great beauties. When Kate Bush accentuated her sexuality, she did so with a wink, tongue firmly digging into cheek. Meanwhile, Annie Lennox once performed at the Grammys in full Elvis Presley drag!

Madonna eventually figured this out. She only began to be truly taken seriously as an artist when she toned down her Sex-uality and Erotica-isms and went down a darker, deeper electro path with 1998's Ray of Light, years before pop went electronica (and vice versa). In music, like in movies, at some point you have to get a little dirty if you want to earn artistic credibility, as the likes of Halle Berry, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and even Diana Ross well know. If only Marilyn Monroe had had their blueprint to follow in the '50s, she probably wouldn't have died without a single Oscar nomination.

There's a reason why Beyoncé never really made it as a movie star. I recently re-watched Dreamgirls, and there's a scene where Jamie Foxx's Svengali-like music mogul dresses down Beyoncé's Diana Ross-like Deena Jones (you’re forgiven if you’d forgotten that she was even in the movie, seeing that Oscar winner and American Idol also-ran Jennifer Hudson owned it), basically calling her boring and vanilla, and it dawned on me that he easily could have been dissing Beyoncé.

I’m not saying she’s boring or vanilla, but I've never really seen any spark behind those big, beautiful brown eyes. Unlike her former fellow Destiny’s Child Kelly Rowland, she lacks a certain realness, perhaps because like Deena, she’s never come across as an underdog. Kelly could have been Effie in the Destiny’s Child story, but she never really went all the way there. She always seemed to be thinking, I’m beautiful, too, dammit! Look at me! When she finally tried to pull off the mask on "Dirty Laundry" and reveal the pain of singing in Beyoncé's shadow, it sounded desperate: too much, too late.

But at least she was willing to let down her guard and get messy. Maybe someday Beyoncé will go there, too, scrub off the make-up and give us a glimpse behind the glitter and mascara. Telling us that women have it hard (a recurring theme with her since her days with Destiny’s Child) is not digging deep. Nor is reminding us that she's sexy and she knows it. Beyoncé might be singing over cooler production (though anyone who has listened to recent albums by Drake and Frank Ocean, both of whom duet with Beyoncé on Beyoncé, knows it's not as daring or groundbreaking as critics are calling it), but she's still playing it safe, wading in the shallow water.

In lieu of depth, I'd settle for an unforgettable groove and an undeniable hook. Beyoncé could use more of both.

Burning Questions: The 2014 Grammy Nominations Edition

Is Sara Bareilles a belated winner in the war of the pop divas with one-word song titles? "Brave," released at roughly the same time as Katy Perry's "Roar" and Lady Gaga's "Applause" and quickly eclipsed by both, hasn't climbed higher than No. 26 on Billboard's Hot 100, while "Roar" soared to the top, and "Applause" clapped its way to No. 4. But here's the 11th-hour twist: With a surprise Album of the Year nod for The Blessed Unrest and a Best Pop Solo Performance nomination for "Brave," Bareilles should easily score a front-row seat at the January 26 Grammy ceremony. Six years after her breakthrough (and biggest) hit, though, I still want her to sing me a "Love Song."

Does this mean Lady Gaga is kind of over? Once a Grammy darling, Gaga, who earned Album of the Year nominations for her 2008 debut album (The Fame), her 2009 EP (The Fame Monster) and her proper 2011 sophomore effort (Born This Way), didn't score a single nod for "Applause," which is a shame since it was easily one of the best pop singles of 2013.

Was "Roar" really such a triumph of the artistry of singing and songwriting? A Record of the Year nomination wouldn't have been so surprising, considering what a huge 2013-defining hit Katy Perry scored with the first single from Prism, but on what planet was it one of the five best pop solo performances of 2013? Of course, now that pop is so narrowly defined (see the relegation of Rihanna's Unapologetic to Best Contemporary Urban Album) and dominated by collaborations, there's very little competition. Don't get me wrong, I like "Roar," but it's fun fluff. As pop poetry goes, it hardly holds up to fellow Song of the Year nominee "Same Love," the pro-gay anthem by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Mary Lambert.

When did the definition of soul become so convoluted? What is the difference between "Urban Contemporary" and "R&B," and why do Tamar Braxton, Fantasia and Rihanna belong to one (Urban Contemporary) and Faith Evans and Alicia Keys to another (R&B)? Further muddying things, Fantasia is also nominated for Best Traditional R&B Album for "Get It Right," a track on her Best Urban Contemporary Album contender Side Effects of You. So which is she? Meanwhile, Braxton pulled a reverse: a Best R&B Performance nod for "Love and War," the title track from her Best Urban Contemporary Album nominee. Can we just call it all "Soul" and call it a day? 

Can I pretend that Ariel Rechtshaid's Producer of the Year, Non-Classical nomination is belated recognition for his creative contributions to two of the best overlooked singles of 2012: "Losing You" by Solange Knowles and "Push and Shove" by No Doubt? Too bad he doesn't stand a chance against Pharrell Williams, 2013's MVP (most valuable producer) and the voice behind Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" (from future Album of the Year Random Access Memories) and the voice behind Robin Thicke's on "Blurred Lines."

Where is Lorde's Best New Artist nomination? You would think that scoring Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance nods for her No. 1 smash "Royals" as well as a Best Pop Vocal Album citation for Pure Heroine would have qualified her as shoo-in. At least New Zealand's first U.S. pop star since Neil Finn of Crowded House won't have to worry about that dreaded Best New Artist Grammy curse. (Uh oh, look out, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis!)

When did "rock" music become dominated by senior citizens? We expect Best Traditional Pop Album (featuring nominees Tony Bennett, Gloria Estefan and Dionne Warwick) to skew a bit on the older side, but anyone who still thinks rock & roll is a young man's game might want to consider the Best Rock Album nominees. This year the category is dominated by acts that are 60 and older: Black Sabbath (13), David Bowie (The Next Day), Led Zeppelin (Celebration Day) and Neil Young with Crazy Horse (Psychedelic Pill). Elsewhere, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards also scored "Rock" nods. Does this mean I'll be getting a second wind in about 40 years?

No Miley Cyrus? Yes, there is a Grammy God!