Dance Pop

Nobody expects film director Peter Jackson to mount a stage production of Lord of the Rings any time soon. Pop stars, however, are obligated to repeatedly re-create - in real time - music they spent months tweaking to perfection in the studio. Take Annie's full-length debut, Anniemal, a sugary album of bouncy, if thoughtful, dance-pop that has made the 26-year-old Norwegian singer a cult sensation. Its elaborate, multilayered Eurodisco productions seem hardly suited for live performance.

If popular culture, like life, is about managing expectations, then Britney Spears must be a genius. After all, Blackout, Spears' fifth album - and her first since she became a shaven-headed, unbuckled-baby-driving girl gone wild, fueling the 24-hour celebrity cycle - comes out on Tuesday, and you've got to admit: You're pretty sure it's going to suck. How could it not? Bad Britney is as reliable and predictable an Extra and TMZ.com headline as Good Justin, the virtuous, post-teen pop star who was her Mickey Mouse Club mate - and her ex-boyfriend.

American dance-pop singers have discovered one of the fastest ways to a record deal is to relocate to Germany, where producers are hungry for distinctive vocals to go along with high-tech instrumental tracks aimed at a thriving club scene. One of the most prominent examples is the American-fronted male-female r&b duo La Bouche, whose energetic German-produced single, "Sweet Dreams," and album of the same title, are currently zooming up the pop charts in the United States after topping the charts in seven European countries.

Clicking a rhythm on clave, Gloria Estefan started out last night's show at the Spectrum backed by a flamenco acoustic guitar and singing in Spanish. What a tease. After only a verse of the beautiful, slowed-down "Oye Mi Canto" from her latest success, Cuts Both Ways (Epic), the singer and her eight-piece band, Miami Sound Machine, launched into the much glossier and more commercial "Conga. " But Estefan had already gotten across the image she wanted: Here was a real Latina heroine to rise to the top of the American pop charts.

Some people in this squeaky clean state capital (and home to the sprawling University of South Carolina) still talk with peculiar pride about the part their ancestors played in fomenting the Civil War. They also suggest a "two- class society" still exists 'round these parts. In the local paper, there is a story of a Columbia prep school that has just lost federal tax-exempt status because the academy still doesn't have a single black student enrolled. (What year is this, 1814?)

Robyn is the kind of pop singer whose talents are so obvious to her devotees that her failure to command a huge following in America - as yet, anyway - can be a cause for moral outrage. There are grave injustices in the world, and one of them, it seems, is that the 31-year-old Swedish singer born Robyn Carlsson (who plays the Electric Factory Thursday night) is not as popular as, say, Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, both of whom she is so obviously better than. The high dudgeon inspired by this pop-cultural inequity was summed up nicely in a headline from Entertainment Weekly last month that read: "Robyn Is Totally Amazing: So Why Isn't She a Superstar?"

Ah, the long and winding road Michael Jackson traveled from Thriller to Bad to Dangerous. Once it looked like a series of songs and corresponding stances, each optimized to capture a cultural moment, each exposing another hidden corner of the Freakazoid in Chief's sideshow-stunted imagination. But these days Jackson's "evolution," which includes his new marca registrada, Invincible, can be appreciated as something else: a methodical retreat from humanness, one frightened star's deliberate attempt to distance himself from everything associated with planet Earth.

FOR AN ARTIST like Michael Jackson, death represents the ultimate career move. Granted, that's harsh to say. But it's also true. As happened with prior pop legends like Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, the sad passing of the man finally allows us to put aside all the notions of "freakiness" that took our eyes off the prize for at least the last decade of his life. We'll finally be able to forgive and eventually forget the sagas of Michael's alleged moral transgressions, his reputation for insane indulgence and plastic surgery, his peculiar child/man/motherly identity crises.

Like a wayward soul who has just seen the light, George Michael spends the bulk of his new album, Listen Without Prejudice, trying to atone for Faith, the 1988 record that sold eight million copies and launched his lucrative solo career. "The road that I have walked upon / Well it filled my pockets and emptied out my soul," he says in the reprise of "Waiting for That Day," one too- long indulgence on an album of many. It's not that the insight is unique - anyone who's watched Michael wield a guitar on the Faith video knows that he tends toward the vapid.

"I've seen the future and it will be," Prince sings on "The Future," his theatrical voice reinforcing the synthesized up-tempo step he all but owns. "I've seen the future and it works. " If music lovers are lucky, that future won't contain the predictable beats that weigh down Prince's otherwise brilliant Batman, the soundtrack that reaches stores today - three days before the much-anticipated movie opens in more than 2,000 theaters nationwide. It is one of two albums of theme music from the film: The other, which features Danny Elfman's instrumental score, will be released Aug. 8, also on Warner Bros.

Seven hours of slick radio dance pop is a lot to handle. Yet that's what a capacity crowd - mostly female 'tweens and teens - faced happily when it filled Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday for Q102's Jingle Ball 2011 with Kelly Clarkson, LMFAO, Big Time Rush, David Guetta, Avril Lavigne, Demi Lovato, All Time Low, Joe Jonas, Flo Rida, Cobra Starship, Patrick Stump, Gym Class Heroes, Karim, and JoJo. It's impossible to love every note of anything lasting 420 minutes. Yet, it was surprising how much of this live band-heavy show was winning, and was devoid (to this reviewer's ears)

Robyn is the kind of pop singer whose talents are so obvious to her devotees that her failure to command a huge following in America - as yet, anyway - can be a cause for moral outrage. There are grave injustices in the world, and one of them, it seems, is that the 31-year-old Swedish singer born Robyn Carlsson (who plays the Electric Factory Thursday night) is not as popular as, say, Katy Perry or Lady Gaga, both of whom she is so obviously better than. The high dudgeon inspired by this pop-cultural inequity was summed up nicely in a headline from Entertainment Weekly last month that read: "Robyn Is Totally Amazing: So Why Isn't She a Superstar?"

Shakira is the lycanthropic predator on the prowl who issues a warning to all who might resist her. "Nocturnal creatures are not so prudent," she sings, while writhing around in a cage in a flesh-colored bodysuit, on "She Wolf," the title track of her new album, which comes out Tuesday. "The moon's my teacher, and I'm her student. " Rihanna is the avenging angel who's sending out a message - nine months after being viciously beaten by boyfriend Chris Brown - that she has no intention of being anybody's victim.

FOR AN ARTIST like Michael Jackson, death represents the ultimate career move. Granted, that's harsh to say. But it's also true. As happened with prior pop legends like Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, the sad passing of the man finally allows us to put aside all the notions of "freakiness" that took our eyes off the prize for at least the last decade of his life. We'll finally be able to forgive and eventually forget the sagas of Michael's alleged moral transgressions, his reputation for insane indulgence and plastic surgery, his peculiar child/man/motherly identity crises.

If popular culture, like life, is about managing expectations, then Britney Spears must be a genius. After all, Blackout, Spears' fifth album - and her first since she became a shaven-headed, unbuckled-baby-driving girl gone wild, fueling the 24-hour celebrity cycle - comes out on Tuesday, and you've got to admit: You're pretty sure it's going to suck. How could it not? Bad Britney is as reliable and predictable an Extra and TMZ.com headline as Good Justin, the virtuous, post-teen pop star who was her Mickey Mouse Club mate - and her ex-boyfriend.

Nobody expects film director Peter Jackson to mount a stage production of Lord of the Rings any time soon. Pop stars, however, are obligated to repeatedly re-create - in real time - music they spent months tweaking to perfection in the studio. Take Annie's full-length debut, Anniemal, a sugary album of bouncy, if thoughtful, dance-pop that has made the 26-year-old Norwegian singer a cult sensation. Its elaborate, multilayered Eurodisco productions seem hardly suited for live performance.

Ah, the long and winding road Michael Jackson traveled from Thriller to Bad to Dangerous. Once it looked like a series of songs and corresponding stances, each optimized to capture a cultural moment, each exposing another hidden corner of the Freakazoid in Chief's sideshow-stunted imagination. But these days Jackson's "evolution," which includes his new marca registrada, Invincible, can be appreciated as something else: a methodical retreat from humanness, one frightened star's deliberate attempt to distance himself from everything associated with planet Earth.

American dance-pop singers have discovered one of the fastest ways to a record deal is to relocate to Germany, where producers are hungry for distinctive vocals to go along with high-tech instrumental tracks aimed at a thriving club scene. One of the most prominent examples is the American-fronted male-female r&b duo La Bouche, whose energetic German-produced single, "Sweet Dreams," and album of the same title, are currently zooming up the pop charts in the United States after topping the charts in seven European countries.

There's an elaborate trailer now playing movie theaters that announces the return of Michael Jackson, whose two-CD HIStory - Past, Present and Future - Book I hits stores Tuesday. The $4 million production speaks volumes about this master of public relations and the media onslaught he's engineered: Our benevolent, if recently beleaguered, King of Pop is shown in full military garb, striding amid hundreds of Eastern Bloc-ish soldiers past delirious fans to an enormous metal likeness of himself.

Like a wayward soul who has just seen the light, George Michael spends the bulk of his new album, Listen Without Prejudice, trying to atone for Faith, the 1988 record that sold eight million copies and launched his lucrative solo career. "The road that I have walked upon / Well it filled my pockets and emptied out my soul," he says in the reprise of "Waiting for That Day," one too- long indulgence on an album of many. It's not that the insight is unique - anyone who's watched Michael wield a guitar on the Faith video knows that he tends toward the vapid.