When Bad Spelling/Grammar Happens to Good Singles

Could it possibly get any worse than this?

What if will.i.am and Justin Bieber's "#thatPOWER" and Mariah Carey's "#Beautiful" kick off a new bad habit in pop: hashtag hits? Isn't it bad enough that they're already continuing another one: The hashtag hits are the latest in pop's long tradition of bastardizing English with its song titles.

As usual the end results are mixed, with only Carey's single coming close to warranting its hashtag hype. The shameless bit of built-in marketing doesn't ruin the fact that it's Carey's best single in five years (since 2008, when she barely dented Billboard's Hot 100 with "I'll Be Lovin' U Long Time"). Here are some other cases where poor orthography didn't spoil the song. (Interesting orthographical pop fact: Though few might question the grammar in the title of Tina Turner's 1984 career-redefining hit, which is now so entrenched in our vernacular, if an English teacher were to pose the question in real life, it would be "What does love have to do with it?")

"Ain't That a Shame" Fats Domino/Pat Boone/Cheap Trick Have you ever heard the one about Pat Boone and how he tried to alter the title of Fats Domino's 1955 release (which ultimately reached No. 10 on the Hot 100) to "Isn't That a Shame" because he didn't want bad grammar to alienate his squeaky clean (read: white) pop constituency, which sent it to No. 1 anyway? In the end, he left well enough alone -- sometimes "isn't" just doesn't have the same ring as a well-placed "ain't" -- paving the way for the continued pop-staple status of latter. And that ain't no shame.

"Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)" Sheena Easton Would she have had an easier time tracking down her elusive lover if she had used a telephone instead?

"Kool Thing" Sonic Youth For some reason that completely escapes me now, a friend and I recently devoted several minutes of conversation time to naming our favorite Sonic Youth song. Yes, how '90s of us. I almost went with Sonic Youth's 1990 first major label single as the best of Sonic Youth, but then I remembered "Bull in the Heather."

"Hungah" Karyn White The 1994 single that ended White's short run as a crossover pop star holds up better than I thought it would at the time.

"Grapevyne" Brownstone I wonder what the late Marvin Gaye would have done if he had heard it through the grapevyne instead.

"Da Funk" Daft Punk Considering that the French duo's 1996 breakthrough single was an instrumental, it easily could have been called "The Funk" without missing a red-hot beat. At least they didn't call it "Da Phunk." No good ever comes of "Phunk" for "funk," as The Black Eyed Peas have proven over (with 2003's Elephunk) and over (with "Don't Phunk with My Heart" two years later).

"Giv Me Luv" Alcatraz It's gotta be "luv" for "love" (as Robin S. had sung three years earlier, on her 1993 single "Luv 4 Luv"), so come here, and giv it to me.

"Sexx Laws" Beck I don't know how to explain it, but Beck's 1999 single probably wouldn't have sounded the same with just one "x."

"Dirrty" Christina Aguilera featuring Redman A much better use of an extra "r" than Nelly's "Hot in Herre," but unfortunately, pop fans thought differently. While Nelly's dreadful 2002 anthem topped Billboard's Hot 100, Aguilera's valiant effort topped out at No. 48. At least the UK, once again exhibiting superior taste in pop, sent it to No. 1.(Fun fact: With her next single, Aguilera took her own "Beautiful" into the Top 3, which I suspect is right where Carey's is headed.)

"U + Ur Hand" Pink When my iPod shuffle landed on Pink's 2006 Top 10 hit yesterday morning, I found myself wondering wondering why "Ur" for "Your" never caught on quite like "U" for "You." (Fun fact No. 1: Did you know that the official styling of Alecia Moore's stage name is P!nk, another twist in proper orthography. Fun fact No. 2: A pink-coiffed Gwen Stefani once told me that she worried about the long-term prospects for a singer named after her then-hair color, meaning P!nk, who was on her first album at the time. Look who's the one still regularly cranking out No. 1 hits more than a decade later!)

"I Would Die 4 U"/"Take Me With U"/"anotherloverholeinyohead"/"U Got the Look"/"I Wish U Heaven"/"Gett Off" Prince and "Nothing Compares 2 U" Sinead O'Connor (written by Prince) The King of Misspelled Pop certainly had a way with words -- and symbols -- until I started losing interest some time around Diamonds and Pearls. Few pop stars could temporarily change their moniker to an unpronounceable symbol and return to normalcy (I've always loved that "Prince" isn't a delusion of grandeur -- or royalty -- but his actual birth name) with his reputation more or less intact. Let's hope he's not eyeing this hashtag trend and getting any bad ideas.

"Anotherloverholeinyohead"

10 Random Thoughts I Had While Listening to the Top 30 on This Week's Billboard Hot 100

No. 6: "Come and Get It" Selena Gomez As big a star as she is (with or without Justin Bieber as her arm candy), I'm surprised that it's taken Gomez this long to finally score herself a Top 10 hit. I've heard far worse (like her 2011 single "Love You Like a Love Song," which spent forever on the Hot 100 without ever rising above No. 22), but I wish it didn't sound so much like a cold leftover from the recording sessions for Rihanna's first album.

No. 11: "Heart Attack" Demi Lovato I still secretly wish Lovato's second No. 10 hit (and third Top 10 overall) were a cover of Olivia Newton-John's 1982 No. 3 single of the same name.

No. 12: "The Way" Ariana Grande featuring Mac Miller The pure-pop sound is pure 2000 (and Miller's sweater in the video so The Cosby Show, circa 1984), and there's no evidence here that Grande, a Broadway and Nickelodeon star making her Hot 100 debut, is a better or worse singer than the Top 20's other two kiddie actresses-turned-pop stars, but it's the only one of their current singles that I actually wanted to hear twice. That said, I'll also say this: The callow, regressive pop sound of the genre's new princesses (Gomez, Lovato and now Grande) has me praying for the swift return of some of the old ones. Come back, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, all is forgiven!

No. 15 "Get Lucky" Daft Punk featuring Pharell Williams Not only does disco not suck, but it never really went out of style. Daft Punk's first U.S. hit single may be a highlight in the Top 30, but I miss the French duo's Gallic electronic edge, which, to be fair, never got them higher than No. 66 on the Hot 100 (with "One More Time" in 2000).

No. 16 "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light 'Em Up)" Fall Out Boy I was never a Fall Out Boy fan when they were huge in the mid aughts (the band's song titles were always more interesting than the actual songs, which hasn't changed), and I'd forgotten all about the guys before they recently resurfaced following a five-year hiatus. As comebacks go, this one is fairly whatever, but I'm glad the single's a hit if for no other reason than that Pete Wentz can now glare at his ex Ashlee Simpson (where has she been?) and say, "Take that!"

No. 20: "#thatPOWER" will.i.am featuring Justin Bieber Here he goes again. More state-of-the-art overproduction and the biggest collaborators that money and superstardom can buy in search of an actual song. I respect will.i.am's skill as a producer, but must everything about him be so damn pretentious, from the ridiculous spelling of his name to the hashtag in front of the title of his latest single to the complicated styling of the title itself? Is he trying to hide the fact that behind the beats, there's actually #zer0SUBSTANCE?

No. 23: "Highway Don't Care" Tim McGraw With Taylor Swift The man who inspired the title of her 2006 debut single brings out the best in Swift. Infinitely more listenable than "22," two notches down.

No. 24: "#Beautiful" Mariah Carey Ugh, another hashtag. I know they're very 2013, but shameless marketing ploys should have no place in the title of a single that probably would have hit No. 1 anyway. Still, I adore this track's modern Motown vibe, and it's, well, beautiful (sans hashtag) to see Carey back in the upper echelons of the Hot 100 where she belongs. But a part of me wonders why it had to be a trip for two. It's a bit -- well, maybe a lot -- ageist of me, but there's something off about seeing a 44-year-old mother of twins parading about in next to nothing next to a 27-year-old guy with a flat-ironed coif when she's got a 32-year-old husband at home.

No. 26: "Next to Me" Emeli Sandé About a year after my friend Trudi sent me the video of this, the third single by UK sensation Sandé, it's finally a hit in the U.S. Though it's always nice to welcome genuine talent into the Top 30, with Sandé, I appreciate her talent more than I actually enjoy her songs. In that sense, she's the British Alicia Keys.

No. 30 "Here's to Never Growing Up" Avril Lavigne I know Lavigne fancies herself a true artist (because she writes her own material, and compared to pop's princesses, she's kind of rock & roll), but at 28, she really needs to start changing her tune. To be forever young at heart is an understandable ambition, but "Complicated" was 11 years ago, and she's pushing 30 now. Is she still spelling "Sk8er Boi" with a numeral and an "i"? Guess what? Time to grow up -- at least in song. Leave the sentiments of being 22 to someone who actually is, like Taylor Swift.

Gays Against Gay Marriage: Why They've Got It All Wrong

At some point, possibly within the next lifetime, if not in mine, people will probably look back at the gay-marriage debate and ask, " What were they thinking?" That gays were once legally barred from calling their civil unions "marriage" will seem as unfathomable as the idea of women not being able to vote or a world without Facebook.

In the meantime, the debate continues, with some unexpected players popping up on both sides. President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama have been openly endorsing it at least since last year's National Democratic Convention. And notice how many straight rappers now publicly support gay marriage, from Jay-Z to Eminem to 50 Cent to Snoop Dogg to T.I. to Macklemore, who along with his DJ/producer partner Ryan Lewis, recorded "Same Love," a No. 1 Australian hit, in favor of it.

As the United States inches closer to nationwide enlightenment and legalization of gay marriage -- on May 14, Minnesota became the 12th state to go there (13th, if you count Washington D.C.) -- some dissenters refuse to let their increasingly outdated opposition go. Shockingly, a significant number of them are the very people who would benefit from it, though those gay detractors beg to differ. I saw several attempting to explain themselves once on an episode of Rick Lake's talk show, and some prominent ones I've never heard of shared their points of view in the 2010 book Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage.

I know the title was supposed to be ironic. They don't actually think they are "against" equality, but really, by associating themselves with a movement that's long been a platform for homophobia and intolerance, they are. That's the point of this post/rant.

The first time I ever heard the anti-gay marriage argument coming from a gay person, it went a little something like this: In making gay marriage the gay cause, it sends the message that marriage should be the end game for any self-respecting gay person, creating a new generation of gay youth who grow up obsessing over it, thinking it's the only way to true human bliss. Opposing it is for their (gay youth's) own greater good. While the idea of hundreds, thousands (millions?) of gay bridezillas-in-training gives me a headache, it's a pretty weak reason to deny gay people access to the same deluded upbringing as straight people.

I, for one, don't want what I can and cannot do to be dictated by the psychological effect it may or may not have on young people I don't even know. By that same argument, should women's rights groups start lobbying against straight marriage because too many young girls grow up dreaming about their perfect fairytale wedding? I no more get that mindset than I do the institution of marriage in general, but it's not for me to get.

Someone I know once made the argument that gay people can enjoy more or less all the rights and benefits of married people -- all that's missing is the word "marriage." That's it exactly. If "civil unions" offer the same rights and benefits as "marriage," then why not just call them "marriages." Suggesting that they shouldn't be -- whether for reasons that revolve around tradition, history or religion -- is tantamount to suggesting that gay relationships are somehow less valid than straight ones. It's the principle that counts, and principles count.

It's like the episode of Frasier in which Frasier and Niles kept trying to upgrade their membership in an exclusive club. Every time they advanced one level, they'd hear about a higher one and desperately want in. Although at some point, the benefits between levels became fairly commensurate, only they were offered in different sections, Frasier and Niles wanted to go higher. Weren't they just as good as the people beyond the wall? They deemed the other side higher because they were restricted from it, and ultimately ended up in an alley next to a garbage bin.

I'm not saying that the state of holy matrimony is a bunch of trash (though, in general, I don't think that much more highly of it), but that's how gay people feel about the "marriage" that is still denied to them in 38 states and in countries around the world. It might be little more than a title at this point, but denying them that title suggests that they aren't worthy of it, and like Frasier and Niles, they are left stranded -- segregated -- on the other side. Why aren't all of these anti-gay marriage gay lobbyists carping about the damage that's doing to the collective psyche of young gay people? It's basically telling them that their relationships are inferior to straight people's, not worthy of equal recognition in the eyes of the law.

Where have I heard something similar before? In the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown Vs. Board of Education in which the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, tried to make the argument that it was okay to segregate black students from white students in learning facilities that were separate but equal. That "separate but equal" spin didn't fly with black people then -- nor with the Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently inequal" -- and it shouldn't fly with any gay person with any intellectual capacity.

I've also heard the argument that the nature and dynamics of straight relationships and gay relationships are different (duh!), and the straight institution of marriage simply doesn't fit into gay culture. Now let's consider this for a second. For decades, gay people have been saying to homophobic straight people, "What happens in our bedroom is none of your business!" So is what happens in those bedrooms, in those relationships, the concern of gay-marriage opponents, whether straight or gay? If you don't want your relationship to be defined by "straight" ideals, don't let it. But stay out of mine. In the end, it feels like politicking for the sake of politicking, with no discernible goal beyond distancing gay romance from straight romance, which feels like stepping backward instead of forward.

More and more people around the world are realizing that regardless of where you stand on marriage or on gay people, there just isn't any rational reason to continue denying gay people the same institution of marriage, along with the same title, that straight people enjoy. As Eminem once wisely said, "I think everyone should have the chance to be equally miserable, if they want."

Well, perhaps not completely miserable, for there are great benefits to marriage, which is the only reason why some straight people choose to enter into it. I might actually be able to get behind a general anti-marriage movement on the grounds that "marriage" discriminates against single people, who aren't afforded the same financial and immigration breaks as married people. It's an outdated institution whose symbolic significance has been cheapened by the sheer number of people who casually enter and exit it. But it feels unfair and wrong to single out gay marriage as the greater of two evils.

Those who are content with their "civil unions" and/or have no interest in walking down the aisle are free not to. I, for one, have no interest in ever being a groom, but that doesn't mean I won't dance at my best friend's wedding and maybe even catch the bouquet. If gay people are going to demand the right to privacy when it comes to what goes on in their bedrooms, they need to extend the same courtesy to what goes on in other people's relationships and how people choose to legally define them. In this case, hypocrisy and bigotry may be separate vices, but their end results are equally intolerable.

Thoughts on Horror Fiction: Can Words Scare the Crap Out of Me?

I've got to hand it to Stephen King. I've never read one of his books, and bits and pieces of Carrie, The Shining and Dolores Claiborne and all of Stand By Me and Misery aside, I've skipped the film and TV adaptations of his work, possibly because being scared has never been my idea of a blast, even when it's someone else whose life and limbs are in danger.

Although I've had such minimal exposure to the best of King, I now have a newfound appreciation for what he does best. It started with an offhand comment by my friend Marcus, who, at my request, had just read the synopsis for my book. He enjoyed it (much to my relief), which, he pointed out, was not necessarily a given beforehand because he tends to like to read, in his words, "physics and horror" only.

My first thought was that there can't possibly be anything scarier than reading a book about physics. Even more so than chemistry, my second-worst subject in school, physics always went straight over my head. I couldn't imagine reading a book about it for fun, much less understanding it, but I'm glad that Marcus does. The knowledge gleaned from his leisure scientific reading -- like, I imagine, all that arcane stuff about the properties of AC adapters that stopped me from having to buy a new one for my laptop yesterday -- occasionally comes in handy in my everyday life.

But horror? The horror! I knew that scary books existed, but I'd never before really stopped to think about it as a literary genre, particularly from a writer's point of view. What a frightening undertaking that must be! I've spent the last year trying to master the art of writing narrative non-fiction, foreign territory for a journalist trained in news and feature writing. That was difficult enough, but I can't even begin to imagine how tough it must be to scare the shit out of someone with only words at your disposal. What would Wes Craven do?!

I recall a scene from The Golden Girls in which Rose was trying to frighten the girls in her Sunshine Cadet troop by telling them a spooky story during a camp out. The girls were thoroughly unterrified. It was possibly because the camp out was actually a camp in, taking place in the middle of the Golden Girls living room, but I always thought it had more to do with this: In order to be scared by something in a story, you had to see it -- or not see it, since onscreen, what's implied is often far scarier than what actually happens -- to be afraid of it.

I've always considered horror to be primarily a visual medium, one that's never really appealed to me in movie form -- and with the exception of Curve's "Horror Head," Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash" and David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), but not Michael Jackson's "Thriller," a song whose appeal I never really understood, not in music form either.

It's not because I'm a film snob or anything (though I admit that I am). It might not be my thing, but I have complete respect for the horror genre. Still, I can live without ever having to spend another 90 minutes to two hours watching a screen through my fingers, terrified of sudden slashing movements and things that go bump in the still of the night.

I'm such a wimp when it comes to fright flicks. I once had to call my friend Dave and tell him to come over while I was in the middle of watching Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which isn't even a horror movie, because I was certain things wouldn't end well for Diane Keaton. I couldn't bear to see what Richard Gere or Tom Berenger or some other scary monster (and super creep) might do to her while I was sitting alone in my New York City apartment on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I was a grown man in my 30s at the time, so imagine how traumatic it must have been for me to be 7 years old and watching The Omen for the first time in 1976 on HBO. To this day, it still qualifies as the scariest thing I've ever seen onscreen.

It might be the reason why the only true horror movie I can recall ever going to see in the theater was A Nightmare on Elm Street (directed by the aforementioned Wes Craven), which I went to see eight years later with a group of work friends from the Publix Supermarket at Mill Creek Mall in Kissimmee, Florida. Mostly I went for the honor of sitting in the dark next to a colleague I had a crush on named Barbara. She's the only reason why I got to see Johnny Depp in his first screen role.

But now that I think about it, would The Omen (and the less horrorfying Damien: Omen II two years later) have had the effect it had on me if I'd skipped the movie and just read the book, which was written after The Omen was filmed but before its June 1976 release? Sure the Biblical Book of Revelation was always good for jolt when I was forced to read any of it in church as a kid, but its words would have been far less scary had I not bought them at the time as the future of the world. I'm not sure that The Omen would have given me terrifying nightmares well into my teens had I just read about Damien's antics instead of seeing them played out in full color onscreen.

I'll probably never know. I have no intention of ever reading the book, or any other book that's intended to frighten me into a state of extreme entertainment. If you're looking for me, I'll be over here where it's safe, re-reading The Great Gatsby before diving into the new Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

Why "Nashville" and "Smash" Have Me Wondering About My Psychic Powers

Two recent episodes of two of the major-network TV shows that I watch religiously (the just-renewed Nashville and the just-canceled Smash) got me thinking: Either television has become way too predictable in its old age, or in mine, I spend so much time watching it (usually on my laptop) that it no longer has the capacity to catch me off guard.

(Regarding Smash's cancellation and Nashville's renewal, both of which were announced on May 10, is there only room in prime-time for one musical featuring original songs and dueling divas, one sugar and spice, dark-haired, and in love with a recovering something, the other troubled and bitchy, blonde, and constantly at odds with an overbearing mother? Make that two. It just dawned on me that I almost could be writing about Rachel and Quinn on Glee, too, if the high school musical had fewer covers, and we included Rachel portrayer Lea Michele's real-life relationship with rehabbing Cory Monteith.)

I generally know what's coming up on my beloved daytime soap operas because I never let a weekend go by without scouring the various soap websites in search of spoilers for the coming week's episodes. With prime-time TV, however, I'm generally spoiler free. When the "unexpected" happens, I should be just as surprised as the characters. Unfortunately for the part of me who likes to be shocked by an unforeseen turn of fictional events, they've been rare lately, with two recent sequences in particular making me wonder if my psychic/predictive properties are really all in my head.

One of them involved two hot guys on a couch on the May 1 episode of Nashville. For me, it wasn't wishful thinking, bad acting or amateurish writing that screamed where the scene was headed. Well, maybe it was a little of the former, but both Sam Palladio (as Gunnar) and Chris Carmack (as Will) played the beats expertly, and the writing on Nashville is as high caliber as its original music. Speaking from personal experience, I can say the build up to the attempted kiss, in both the acting and the writing, perfectly captured the awkwardness of the pre-plunge sofa moment, even when the two couch potatoes/players involved are out and proud. That it felt so familiar may have been part of the reason why I was so certain what would happen next. (If you haven't seen it, or want to see it again, click here.)

But I went into the scene with my suspicions already in place because of what had begun to transpire in the previous episode. From the moment Gunnar and Will took that joyride across the railroad tracks, rocking the dynamic of their bromance, I knew it wasn't going to end well. It's not that I would immediately expect a reckless driver/daredevil to be a closet case. It's just that it became clear that Will wasn't what he seemed to be. The last time that happened with a TV Will (young Mr. Horton, on Days of Our Lives), he lost his girl and eventually ended up with a guy. There was no place for Gunnar and Will's increasingly intimate friendship to go but under the bus.

Which, for all we know, may have been what did in Kyle at the end of the April 27 episode of Smash -- a bus. That episode, incidentally, was the first of the entire series, which will air for the final time on May 26, to feature an original song I actually wanted to hear twice: "Don't Let Me Know," performed by Katharine McPhee and Jeremy Jordan.

More likely, it was a car that sped into Kyle since anyone who's ridden a New York City bus knows they rarely move fast enough to do that kind of damage. From the minute poor Kyle started singing Jeff Buckley's "The Last Goodbye," I knew the song would be his. Even if the camera hadn't kept panning to his feet signaling something momentous to come, I would have made the death connection because Andy Mientus's first big Smash number happened to be a song by a singer-songwriter who died tragically and too young.

It's too bad Mientus had to go just as his character was being given a personality beyond being Jimmy's keeper. In the previous episode, he'd suddenly morphed from saint into sinner, and in his post-mortem episode, he ironically got more screen time than he had during his entire time on the show, doling out words of wisdom like the stereotypical wise gay BFF. Who knew he and Julia (Debra Messing) had become such close confidantes off-screen?

The writers didn't have to go out of their way to make Kyle sympathetic again after the brief character assassination that found him cheating with Tom. I, for one, still liked him, and found him to be a far more engaging character than the insufferable Jimmy, which is no offense to Jeremy Jordan, who is a fine actor and singer, though not wholly convincing as a tortured straight twentysomething male.

Unfortunately, to make us -- and every character on the show -- feel sorry for Jimmy and crowd into his corner, they had to give him something truly worth pounding his fists over while railing at the unjustness of it all. Exit Kyle.

I prefer the way Nashville handled the fallout from its own gayish plot twist to the Saint Kyle flashbacks on Smash. I like that Gunnar, though clearly spooked by Will's amorous advances, hasn't been a homophobic asshole about it. Though some of his actions lately have put the ass in front of hole, he's generally a pretty decent guy. As for Will, his morning-after behavior -- a mix of shame and denial -- felt completely real. He did exactly what I probably would have done if I had found myself walking in his cowboy boots. (When in doubt or just plain ol' embarrassed, blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-a-alcohol!)

Now here's a bit of definite wishful thinking: I'd love for Nashville to pursue a Gunnar/Scarlett/Will triangle, with Gunnar, not Scarlett, as the grand prize. I'd buy Will as bisexual, and Gunnar and Scarlett could certainly use more interesting relationship drama than the his career vs. her career stuff that broke up her and Avery. What if Gunnar's response was so ambiguous, never quite crossing over into full-on jerk mode, partly because he's a decent guy and partly because he's not so sure how he feels about Will?

It would be daring, it would be sexy, and it would convince me that I do indeed have the power to predict the future on TV.

I Hate When People Say That!: 25 Things I Hope I Never Hear Again

Either I'm becoming a grumpy old man, or I'm regressing to peevish, petulant boyhood, but people really need to start watching what they say around me. In true sourpuss spirit, I've decided to make my latest list a list of what not to say or ask the next time you see me. (Don't stop me if you think you've heard some of these before. If it's not worth saying once, it's worth saying not to say it twice.)

1. "Where do you see yourself in 5/10/15/20 years?" As David Chappelle might say, "Who am I, Negrodamus?"

2. "African-American" Wrong on so many levels! It suggests that all black people are American, that African = black, and that "black" is somehow a dirty word. My mother was born in Antigua (when it was a British commonwealth), and my dad was born on the French side of Saint Martin, and I was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands. What does that make them -- and me? That's right, we're all black.

3. "He/She/It/They was/is/were amazing!" If everything is amazing, then is anything truly amazing?

4. "Have a safe flight." As if frequent and infrequent fliers have any control over what happens up in the air. "I hope you have a nice flight" would be preferable -- and it doesn't imply the possibility of a fiery crash landing, which nobody needs to be thinking about right before take off.

5. "It is what it is." So banal, so obvious, it immediately trivializes whatever you were discussing. It's a wonder that anyone ever thought to say it, or that everyone thought to repeat it as if it were the most brilliant closing statement one could possibly make.

6. "So what do you do all day?" As if spending at least a third of every weekday doing a job you hate is the only way to live.

7. "I could care less." Not because it's kind of a rude thing to say but because I couldn't care less.

8. "Don't take it personal." "Personal" is an adjective; "personally" is an adverb. I don't take it personally when people get it wrong (and way too many people do), but they really ought to make it their personal mission to say it right.

Wrong!

Wrong!

Right!

Right!

9. "Feel better"/"Get well soon." If I had any control over it, do you really think I'd be lying in this godforsaken sick bed.

10. "I'm not on Facebook." It's not so much that they aren't on Facebook as it is the way some people say it, as if Facebook is Satan and not giving into its temptation immediately elevates you to the status of super, superior human.

11. "So when am I going to see you? If you have to ask, one or both of you doesn't really want to. People with a burning desire to see each other just make it happen.

12. "Let's do something soon." Even more annoyingly non-committal than No. 11 and as thinly veiled a near-kiss off as "Take care" and "Keep in touch."

13. "Diez centavos?" Damn Buenos Aires and it's continuing shortage of moneda -- though it has resulted in a few discounts of up to 2 pesos! If cashiers are going to have to grovel for change, why not just make all prices even peso amounts?

14. "Hablas muy bien el español." It's not that it's not a nice thing to say, or that I ever really get tired of hearing/reading it, but people like that nice cashier at my local panaderia (Why are they -- and my Pilates teachers -- always nicer to me than anyone else providing a service in Buenos Aires?) say it at my own risk. It's pretty much guarantees that I'm going to screw up my next sentence.

15. "[Anything] to the [anything]" -- as in "Hell to the no." What does that even mean?

16. "Black don't crack." Why does this sound kind of dirty to me?

17. "Is it true what they say about black men?" The bane of my social existence for the last nearly seven years living abroad. If I answered yes, how cocky would that sound -- pun intended?

18. "Top or bottom?" ("Activo o pasivo?")/ "What are you looking for?" ("Que buscas?") Same shit, different country. I'd say it's time for those horny guys on Grindr and Manhunt to come up with some new material. An unimaginative fling-turned-friend once defended the former as vital information because if you aren't going to do that in bed then what are you going to do, which would explain why he wasn't very good there.

19. "Fun" for sex. Speaking of online malapropisms... Sex is fun, but come on, we're all adults here. Do we really need a euphemism for sex?

20. "That's so American." As if the United States is the only country where the citizenry is given to cultural vices.

21. "Where (are) you at?" As grammatical fuck-ups go, I'm not particularly bothered when people end sentences with prepositions unless it's "at" the end. And don't even thinking about dropping those helping verbs! They're there to help us not sound like illiterate caveman.

22. "This album is about where I'm at now." For any music journalist in danger of overdosing on trite creative commentary, it's a true occupational hazard -- and quite possibly the most it's-so-obvious-why-even-bother-saying-it thing that someone can say this side of No. 5. At least its "at" is where it should be.

23. "[Insert name of dearly departed celebrity here] lost his/her battle with cancer." Another occupational hazard -- in the Obituary section. A friend/colleague/breast cancer survivor once enlightened me on how incredibly insensitive this is. Anyone who bravely battles a disease as insidious as cancer, whether alive or not on the other side, is no loser.

24. "Supper" and "cocktails" A completely irrational pet peeve, yes, but both words have always made me cringe. I'd much rather have "dinner" and "drinks," thank you.

25. "I love Taylor Swift." Atzin, whose taste in music I've long respected above most others, scared the hell out of me on Thursday night when he became my first friend ever to declare anything more than indifference to Swift. I might never be the same again. Several weeks ago, I heard "22," her latest single, playing on the TV while I wasn't looking. It was the first time I'd ever heard the song, and until I looked up and could see what I'd been listening and cringing to, I could have sworn it was a Saturday Night Live parody of bad confessional singing.

Is Your Boyfriend the Biggest Loser Behind Your Back?

"Tengo novia pero vos me gustas mas."

If I wasn't sure that my mystery texter wasn't talking to me earlier during breakfast when a one-word message arrived from the same number declaring, simply, "Linda," now I was. Unless I've been cross dressing in my sleep, taking the feminine-specific adjective for "pretty," and possibly flirting with random people who have girlfriends, this was clearly a case of mistaken identity.

Or was it? I met my ex-boyfriend two and a half years ago on a wild Thursday night in Melbourne when he was out with his girlfriend at the time. Was I turning boys again -- if it was indeed a guy? And more importantly, did the girlfriend know?

The person refused to reveal who was texting, only that it was "alguien a quien le gustas." If nothing else, I was talking to someone with a lot of confidence, which might have been sexy if it weren't for the fact that he (or she) was being so duplicitous with his (or her) girlfriend.

As I started dreaming up storylines for the love triangle -- Was I supposed to be a good friend of the girlfriend? Had I already crossed the line? Had I previously been completely oblivious to the fact that this person was into me? Was I getting between a lesbian couple? -- I wondered if I should play the role that had been assigned to me, or if I should reveal my true identity. I opted for the latter approach.

"Querrias enviarme a mi eses mensajes? Soy Jeremy, un chico!"

That's when more true colors started to come out. The mystery texter called me a "puta" (in this context, more or less the Spanish equivalent of "faggot"), as if the fact that he (It had to be a he, right?) had sent me an amorous SMS automatically made me one, and chided me for having the nerve to like boys and "tomar la leche." In his warped world view, on the list of abhorrent human behavior, being gay (which, apparently to him, also meant that you must drink semen like it's water) trumped hitting on other women behind your girlfriend's back.

I decided to let him have the final word. His scale of morality was obviously tilted to the wrong side, and his girlfriend was about to be the biggest loser. It wasn't any of my business, but I still felt so badly for her. It wasn't so much that her boyfriend was primed to cheat (guys do that all the time) but that he liked the other woman more -- and he was homophobic, his most offensive crime.

On the bright side, she wasn't the biggest loser at all. He was.

The Truth About Money (Yet More Words of Wisdom from Luke Spencer)

"Money can't buy it," Annie Lennox once sang (on the best track on Diva, her 1992 debut solo album). To be fair, according to Annie, neither can sex, drugs or you. (Keep reading after the video.)

In 1964, 28 years earlier, The Beatles had taken the limited purchasing power of funds a bit further: "Money can't buy me love," the Fab Four insisted on their fourth No. 1 hit in the U.S and according to Rolling Stone magazine at one point, the 289th greatest song of all time.

"For the love of money," The O'Jays insisted on another Top 10 single nine years later, people will do just about anything despicable. "Don't let money change you," the trio warned -- no, pleaded -- in conclusion.

Show me the money? On second thought... For something so highly desirable, money has such a rotten reputation. Money talks, but too bad it can't defend itself. "Money can't buy happiness." "Money is the root of all evil." "The love of money is the root of all evil." So go the old cliches and Biblical aphorisms (the latter one, from 1 Timothy 6:10). For something that so many people spend their lives striving to accumulate, money sure gets the raw deal. It's a good thing it doesn't grow on trees.

If nothing else, money has inspired a lot of excellent music over the years, from different songs named "Money" by The Babys, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson and countless other acts who've borrowed the title (and probably the actual stuff as well), to Psychedelic Furs' "All That Money Wants," one of my all-time favorite money songs.

Money may not always make the world go 'round, but let's not underestimate the value of cash (liquid and otherwise). Leave it to General Hospital's Luke Spencer, possibly the wisest flawed character ever to walk the streets of a fictional soap town and definitely the only one who has saved the world, to size up money and put it firmly in its place, which he did nicely and eloquently on the May 8 episode.

"It's been my experience that money may not eliminate misery, but it certainly makes it easier to bear."

Having never had an unlimited abundance of money but being all too familiar with misery, I can't speak from personal experience, but I'd bet what money I do have that old Luke Spencer is right.

Jeanne Cooper, 1928-2013: The Dimming of Another Bright Light from My Youth

In one of the current storylines on The Young and the Restless, Katherine Chancellor -- the daytime soap's matriarch and second-longest-running character (after Jill Foster Abbott Fenmore), played by Jeanne Cooper, its longest-running star -- was given a clean bill of health after undergoing surgery to remove a benign brain tumor.

Sadly, real life wouldn't mirror reel art. On May 8, Cooper passed away at age 84 in a Los Angeles-area hospital. She had recently been admitted twice, with her son, actor Corbin Bernsen, providing her fans with regular updates on her health through Twitter. Though anyone who was paying attention knew that it was coming -- "She's in the final stages," Bernsen acknowledged in a May 3 tweet -- there's no way you can ever really prepare for the loss of a national treasure.

She's the second one we've had to say goodbye to in less than two weeks, the second childhood icon that I always closely associated with my mother. The first was George Jones, who passed away on April 26 (on her birthday last Thursday, mom told me that she had been planning on going to Jones's Atlanta concert on April 25, until it was cancelled due to his illness), now Cooper.

One of my earliest memories after my family moved from the Virgin Islands to Florida in 1973 was spending a half hour every weekday afternoon watching the dramatic antics of the Fosters, the Brookses and, of course, Mrs. Chancellor, as I always called her, on The Young and the Restless. (The show wasn't expanded to its current hour-long format until 1980, seven years after Cooper joined, eight months into the show's run.)

I'm not sure what it was that drew me to Mrs. Chancellor. She was hard and steely, hardly your typical grandma, but there was a warmth lurking underneath the severe exterior, which I think must have emanated from the actress herself. Until a couple of years ago when another actress with the same first name, different spelling (Genie Francis) brought me back into the Y&R viewing fold, I'd only watched sporadically since the early '80s. Still, I was well aware of Katherine's many storyline arcs (her alcoholism, her feud with Jill, her breast cancer, her strokes, her alter-ego Marge, her long-lost son, Cooper's real-life face lift worked into the show) and Cooper's contributions to the soap genre, which among actresses, are perhaps second only to All My Children's Susan Lucci's.

She was my very first diva and the subject of my first blog post in 2008, after she won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Daytime Drama Series. "I bet you thought I had died," she joked at the beginning of her speech, and I laughed right along with her, thinking she might outlive us all. On the verge of turning 80, she looked even better than she had in the '70s.

Cooper had recently published her autobiography, Not Young, Still Restless, and watching her and listening to her as she worked the publicity circuit, still sharp and as endearingly blunt and fiesty as her alter-ego, I was certain she had at least a second volume left in her. Sadly, that one will remain unwritten.

Jeanne Cooper's final Y&R scene (which aired last week) before her death.

What the New York Times Totally Flubbed in Its Review of Prospect Park's "All My Children" and "One Life to Live"

When Chelsea Handler takes her digs at daytime soap operas on her late-night E! talk show, I chuckle politely and call it satire. Although it's not the most original comic concept (and out of context, pretty much any TV show can be made to look like a complete joke), ha ha ha anyway.

But when a publication like the New York Times, one with the reputation of being "the paper of record," jumps on that bandwagon and starts taking predictable swings at such an easy target, offering no fresh insight or depth of analysis, it's just lazy criticism. So let me set the paper of record straight regarding Neil Genzlinger's review of Prospect Park's online versions of All My Children and One Life to Live that ran on May 4. (The revived daytime soaps premiered on April 29.) It was full of the kind of specious reasoning and uninformed points of view that gives reviews and the people who write them bad names.

A few of its most egregious declarations:

"At least, that's how it looked to this potential viewer, one of the vast millions who never watched the original shows because they had jobs." (People who watched AMC and OLTL on ABC didn't have jobs? How condescending, to them and to working girls past and present, like Carol Burnett, Aretha Franklin, Julia Roberts, Chandra Wilson, Sherri Shepherd and Elizabeth Taylor, all self-proclaimed soap fans, as well as to the frequently and gainfully employed Oscar nominee James Franco, who personally requested a role on General Hospital.)

"Unless you're into camp, why put in the time it would take to decipher these shows when there are much, much better ones beckoning?" (The soaps-are-campy argument is a creaky one, and you could easily sub the word "camp" for "country" and make the same argument against Nashville, or "hospital drama" when similarly slamming Grey's Anatomy, or "historical period pieces" to dismiss Downton Abbey and The Borgias. Doesn't loving any show and sticking with it require an affinity for its premise or some specific quality it possesses?)

"The acting ranges from mediocre to outright bad, especially on All My Chidlren. Any scene involving a couple over the age of 50 has the treacly gloss of a Viagra commercial. Any young characters are played by actors far too old for the roles." (Oh sure, Daytime Emmy winner Debbi Morgan, who has been acting in prime time and in film since the '70s, is "mediocre to outright bad," and those twenty-to-thirtysomething Glee kids sure do look like actual high schoolers.)

I support the right of informed TV critics who watch without prejudice to carp about anything on the air. It's a matter of taste, and the daytime soap is pretty much an acquired one. Many of us who obsess over them learned to love them as tykes, watching them at our mother's (or grandmother's) feet. Without my long history of daytime-soap viewing, I'm not sure I would care about them today. But I don't think that's groundbreaking news. I'm certain many longtime viewers feel the same way.

I'm accustomed to being ridiculed for my unhip taste in television, so I can handle Genzlinger's condescending attitude toward my stories and by association, their viewers. But to spend the bulk of his review criticizing the shows for being too insider seems unfair and not a little disingenuous. Revenge has been on the air for only two seasons, and anyone tuning in for the first time with last Sunday's episode would be utterly confused. Why does everyone have an ex to grind with someone, and what the hell is "the Falcon"? Is arcane content, as Genzlinger suggests, really more acceptable when it requires only a few seasons worth of catching up (on DVD) as opposed to a few decades (on YouTube or any of those soap sites dedicated to such things)?

I've been watching Revenge religiously from the beginning, and I'm still a little confused, so newbies must be positively perplexed. That's how it goes with serialized storytelling. If you want to know what's going on, either you do your homework before joining in, or you just watch patiently and attentively and try to catch up.

It would have made absolutely no sense for Prospect Park to have pretended that the characters on AMC and OLTL had no back story -- including the"older gentleman" on AMC and "the woman he's apparently known for a long time," the iconic Adam Chandler (played by multiple-Daytime Emmy winner David Canary) and the nearly equally legendary Brooke English (portrayed by fellow Emmy honoree Julia Barr) to those who have been paying attention for the 30-plus years they've been around. Should the show have pretended they were just born yesterday? Or should they have explained the nature of their relationship and their long, twisted history in the opening scene?

Serialized dramas are always beginning in the middle of the action and then back tracking to explain things. Such was the case with Lost, and Desperate Housewives after it skipped ahead five years. Revenge did it in its first season, too, by beginning with a murder and then going back in time to retell the incidents of the previous summer.

It's been nearly two years since the final ABC episode of AMC aired, and the show lost most of its cast, so it would have been tricky to replay the final finale moments from five years earlier (on AMC's time scale) and what happened immediately afterwards. It would not have been such a bad approach (after all, GH has done a pretty decent job with its recent Dante/Lulu flashbacks featuring the new actress playing Lulu), but I suspect that suspense is part of the plan. The show wants to make sure you're dying to know what the hell happened after what happened five years ago (J.R., or whoever, pulling the trigger at Adam and Brooke's party), even if it means banging you over the head with references to it.

I can't say much about AMC overall as I am outside of the U.S. (and therefore can't access the shows on Hulu and can only download from Argentina's iTunes store) and was only able to watch the first new episode on YouTube, but OLTL pretty much explained everything within the first week. A new viewer who was paying attention and wasn't just out to write a negative review certainly would have understood why everyone hated the character Genzlinger referred to as "some surly guy with a scar on his cheek" (Todd Manning, also legendary) by the end of the first week's four new episodes. The Friday re-cap show, which I suspect eventually will be jettisoned, filled in more blanks.

Perhaps Prospect Park undermined itself by spinning the online versions more as reboots than as continuations, the latter of which is pretty much what they are. Most of the new actors are playing aged characters from the ABC versions, so I don't understand why the New York Times reviewer -- who admittedly doesn't know much about daytime soaps and must hate the genre to deem the campy, self-conscious acting and convoluted storylines of a prime-time serial like Revenge "much, much better" -- seems to think they should be starting from the beginning, lest new viewers be confused. What is this, the Bible?

Also, it's easier to create the illusion of higher quality when you have the big budget to do so. How would most of the acting on Revenge hold up if it were transferred to the far cheaper sets of OLTL's Llanview? I think a large part of why the storylines in prime time -- which are often no less ridiculous than those in daytime -- seem more plausible and the bad acting doesn't appear to be quite as dreadful is that prime time's glossier trappings can distract us from holes in story. This is as much an issue for any of the remaining four daytime soaps on network TV as it is for the new AMC and OLTL.

As for the Times' evaluation of soap viewership, it's so 1999 to suggest that at any time this century the audience has been locked in to having to watch them during the daytime hours in which they air. That argument may have been true in the pre-TiVo age, but it's completely irrelevant today.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not taking issue with the Times review because I think the shows are perfect. I don't. The pacing is off on OLTL, and I worry that the scenes we're getting are more episodic vignettes than the seeds of engrossing long-term umbrella story. I also agree that the Victor Lord Jr.-is-alive reveal fell a little flat, but remember Victoria Grayson's resurrection from the dead on Revenge? That wasn't treated with much less of a shrug. One of the defining characteristics of daytime drama is that for all of the overacting the stars are accused of doing, often the characters respond to the outlandish out-of-the-real-world hands they're dealt (returns from the dead, frequent life-in-jeopardy moments, the supernatural) with much less OMFG! shock than the average person would in real life. We'd be in therapy for decades. A week later, our soap superhumans are back to life as usual.

I would defend anyone's right to criticize daytime soaps. I don't think supporting the genre means we all have to sing the praises of the shows all the time. But as a veteran magazine editor, I'm appalled that the Times would run a review of the online versions of AMC and OLTL written by a writer who obviously knows nothing about daytime drama, can't identify Adam Chandler and Todd Manning by name, and has never even bothered to watch any of either show's previous episodes. (If the goal of the Times was to offer an unbiased critique of soaps by a newcomer to the genre, the task should have been assigned to an unbiased writer who didn't already consider the shows beneath him.) It's a lot like letting a jazz music critic who's never heard a David Bowie song and secretly considers rock & roll to be crass review Bowie's current album.

No decent editor with any respect for rock & roll (and Bowie) would ever do that. By now, hasn't daytime drama, a genre that's been around in some form for more than eight decades, earned the same level of respect? I wouldn't be surprised if Chelsea Handler, bless her critical heart, never misses an episode of the shows she loves to hate on. Criticism is always smarter -- and funnier -- when it's informed.

One Thing You Should Never Do in the Middle of Sex

Yesterday I received a tear-stained message from Tobias, an acquaintance in Melbourne whom I'd never pegged as someone with a flair for melodrama. He'd barely batted a brown eye that one time I insulted his intelligence by telling him he had none, then turned on my heel and flounced off. My drunken outburst, though (and yes, I'm going to blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol), was nothing compared to what had recently gone down on the other side of the world.

"just called my ex and he picked up while he was having sex so im abit pisssseedddddddd"

That'll teach him to be careful whom he drunk dials.

When I tried to conjure a visual of a hot Australian guy in the throes of passion pausing to answer the phone, it was superimposed with a flashback to what was possibly the most disturbing scene in the entire six-year run of Sex and the City. (Yes, even more so than anything involving Carrie and the Russian!) In it, my girl Miranda called her own ex Skippy, who was in the middle of doing it with the girl to whom he'd just introduced Miranda after they bumped into each other on the street.

A brief conversation followed, after which Skippy promptly dumped his bedmate while still inside of her. On the scale of shitty human behavior during sex, this might trump what Adam did to Natalia on the penultimate Season 2 episode of Girls. I'm not sure which is more appalling: that Skippy didn't have the decency to wait until after afterglow, or that he'd taken Miranda's call at all. Was the sex with the rebound girl really so whatever that he couldn't bear to ignore the ringing phone? Shouldn't couples turn those damn things off before foreplay anyway?

I just don't get it. What is this human obsession with taking every single phone call? Are people that afraid of missing something important if they let voice mail do its job -- even in the wee hours of the morning, when any news is most likely bad news? And if you must look to see who's calling, wouldn't caller i.d. rule out any pressing medical emergencies?

I can handle answering the phone and reading text messages during a date -- well, actually I can't -- but if I were on the side of the bed of Skippy's girlfriend or the guy with Tobias's ex, I'd definitely get out of it. If I'm not good enough to distract you from the ringing phone, you can get off under someone else.

Though the guy under (or over or beside) Tobias's ex had a lot more to be angry about, I could understand Tobias's ire, too. Talk about throwing "I've moved on" in somebody's face. It's safe to assume that the ex knew exactly who was calling, thanks to that aforementioned modern wonder known as caller i.d., and it's even safer to surmise that it's precisely why he answered the phone. And maybe I'm being a bit too conspiracy theorist here, but those grunts and moans he no doubt played up after picking up -- or did he tell Tobias what he was doing, which would actually prove my point even more? -- were no doubt for the benefit of the guy he probably used to call the love of his life.

I felt cheap just thinking about it. Suddenly the actions of my own ex, who once emailed me after seven months of silence just to let me know he was seeing someone new, didn't seem so bad, after all. But I still think he's kind of a jerk for disturbing my peace. When he called me three times in the middle of the night a few weeks later (and no, I wasn't alone), I certainly didn't answer the phone.

I wonder if he was the guy with Tobias's ex. Unlikely, yes, but how poetically just would that be? I can't think of two insensitive guys who deserve each other more.

Alison Moyet's "the minutes": A Track-by-Track Review

The world of pop is always a better place when there's new music from Alison Moyet about to enter it. It arrives today in the UK (6 May) in the form of the minutes, which is scheduled to wash up on U.S. shores on June 11. Here are my not-so-random thoughts on the album's 11 tracks.

"Horizon Flame" Ambient and futuristic, which are two words one might not have previously associated with Alison Moyet. A post-space age love song (not to be confused with "Yesterday's Flame," Track 1 on 2002's Hometime), the opening number on Moyet's eighth solo studio album and first since 2007's The Turn clearly signals a change in musical direction after the stately chamber pop of its predecessor, which was initially conceived, in part, as the musical accompaniment for a stage play. "Horizon Flame," with its hint of a dance beat, an instrumental bridge that sounds like it might turn into the introduction of Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money," and slightly processed vocals that seem to riding in on the wind, is more suited to future cinema. I can imagine it playing over the opening scene of a James Bond film 50 years from now, as Daniel Craig's third successor emerges from a ring of fire, dressed to thrill and still licensed to kill.

"Changeling" One step forward, then one step back, but in the case of "Changeling," that's hardly regression. Track 2 starts to deliver on Moyet's pre-release promise of a return to the electronic form of her early '80s work with Yazoo, but it has more musical elasticity (at times the synthesizers sound almost plucked) and bite than anything she ever did with Vince Clarke. This is what Upstairs at Eric might have sounded like if Clarke had been influenced as much by guys with guitars as he was by Kraftwerk.

"When I Was Your Girl" The album's first single is a standard Moyet ballad in which she covers familiar musical and emotional ground (welcome back to her torch zone). The backing vocals on the chorus are pure '80s power ballad (very Robert John "Mutt" Lange-produced Def Leppard), as is the musical interlude, and even the title sounds like it could have appeared on a previous Moyet album. Lacking any real aural connection to the tracks that precede it, "Girl" begins to suggest an album unburdened by any unifying musical theme.

"Apple Kisses" As industrial and Middle Eastern influences mingle in the background, Moyet plays sexual temptress, and it's a surprisingly good fit. Rihanna doesn't have a thing to worry about -- Moyet is too classy to try to win over a rude boy by acting like his female equivalent -- but it's nice to hear her putting aside her usual vocal reserve and letting her inner sex kitten out for a purr.

"Right as Rain" Moyet at the mid-'90s disco. In these mid-album tracks, 51-year-old Moyet sounds like a vintage diva experiencing a mid-life sexual reawakening. In 1995-96 this would have given Everything But the Girl's "Missing" a run for its under-the-strobelight following. Moyet sounds so comfortable with the beat that it's a wonder she hasn't spent more of her solo career riding one. But it's a short dance: At 3:07, just as you've begun to work yourself into a full sweaty frenzy, it's over, leaving you wanting at least a full minute more, which, in a pop world of short attention spans is saying a lot (all of it good).

"Remind Yourself" A variation on the ambient electro musical theme of "Horizon Flame." For all the pre-release hype that the minutes would be a return to Moyet's techno roots, most of it so far sounds more like her later solo work. Not that she's repeating herself on "Remind Yourself." It's neither groundbreaking nor resolutely of the moment, but there's a newfound tension and spark in the way her voice floats above and cuts through the electronic din, rendering the song somewhat revolutionary in the context of Moyet's previous body of work. Producer Guy Sigsworth has somehow managed to make the multi-layered musical backdrop sound spacious and airy instead of fussy and cluttered, and Moyet, always the vocal equivalent of a great, unattainable beauty (unlike her duo-to-solo British peers Annie Lennox and Tracey Thorn, her accent is more apparent in her phrasing, giving her delivery an aura of posh), sounds warmer and more accessible than ever, like she's singing -- no, cooing -- right into your ear.

"Love Reign Supreme" Up to now, this is the track that most sounds like it could be an '80s collaboration with Vince Clark (if Moyet had been the lead singer of Depeche Mode, Clarke's previous band, and not Yazoo) but with far more sunshine and light.

"A Place to Stay" The most pointed difference between Guy Sigsworth and Moyet's previous collaborators is in Sigsworth's harder, more aggressive approach on the minutes. Think his work with Alanis Morissette on 2008's Flowers of Entanglement, not his softer-edged production for Madonna, Britney Spears, Robyn and Bjork. Basically another torch song that goes industrial on the chorus, "A Place to Stay" might be one of the minutes' lesser tracks, but it's ongoing proof that synthetic pop need not sacrifice soul for sound.

"Filigree" I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the most Yazoo-inspired song on the minutes is also its best. Part of what pushes it to the top is its slow-burning drama, which reminds me of "Softly Over" and "Mr. Blue," the bare-bones You and Me Both Yazoo tracks that cemented my early obsession with Moyet. (It's the minutes' equivalent of "Coloured Bedspread," the best cut on Annie Lennox's last album, 2007's Songs of Mass Destruction, which also happened to be her solo offering that sounded most like her work with Dave Stewart in Eurythmics). Its crowning achievement, though, is mostly the result of spartan acoustic-electro production (for much of the song, little more than a tentative beat and delicate bleeps), which enhances Moyet's vocal -- a haunting blend of fragile and unbreakable -- by getting out of its way.

"All Signs of Life" Where do you go after the perfection of "Filigree"? For half of "All Signs of Life" (the best half) to a similarly stripped-down place, where mood trumps sound. But when the eerie, ambient verses turn into another pounding chorus, it tempts me to back track to the previous one.

"Rung by the Tide" More tender-to-tough and back and forth, but less jarringly so. It's a nice album coda with a title that, like the opening track's, references the elements. My only complaint is that there's a little too much instrumental and not quite enough Moyet, which is the reason we came here in the first place. Such a great singer always deserves the final word.

Shockers! Sane Words of Semi-Wisdom from Amanda Bynes on Twitter

@AmandaBynes is usually a tweeting disaster, but she's a savvy one. While calling @Drake and @JennyMcCarthy "ugly" isn't going to help her case in Hollywood, it probably did win her some new "followers" because everybody loves a good celebrity smackdown. Beyond the bile, though, there are actually some sweet observations about life and love. Like many 27 year olds, she has a weakness for cliches ("Be careful what you wish for") and platitudes ("win from within," "Love isn't real if it's not forever"), but if you scroll patiently through Bynes's tweets, original ideas eventually emerge.

They're so easy to overlook because she tends to give far more space to negativity, whether it's in the form of rants against magazine editors, including those at my professional alma mater Us Weekly, and the paparazzi (for the Top 2 offenses: covering her "erratic behavior" and running bad photos of her) and @PerezHilton (for simply existing).

If she's just looking for attention, it's working. While I enjoyed her work in Hairspray and Easy A, I was never particularly interested in Bynes or thought much about her one way or the other until she started driving really badly and getting arrested. Now that she's taken to going off on Twitter, I'm a little bit hooked. I never follow celebrities, and I starting following her because I could use the daily entertainment.

10 Sort of Smart and Totally Sane Things Amanda Bynes Has Said on Twitter

The reason I'm suing everyone I'm suing: defamation (of character) n. the act of making untrue statements about another which damages his/her reputation. If the defamatory statement is printed or broadcast over the media it is libel and, if only oral, it is slander.

@joeyislame don't hurt yourself babe! You're beautiful! Ily!

Don't worry about thoughts, it doesn't matter how it feels, all that matters is how it looks..

I don't care what you think, I care what you say.

When I like you the only one who can make me not like you is you.

When you're beside me I'm beside myself

When you're in love, only one persons opinion of you matters.

If you don't get jealous it's because you don't care

Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women like to be a man’s last romance.

What you think about is what you are ❤

11 One-Hit Wonders Who Are Far Less Deserving of the Dishonor Than Two-Hit Wonder PSY

One of the most unexpected developments of the year in pop so far must be the fact that PSY won't go down in history as a one-hit wonder. No performer of a recent viral hit this side of Baauer's "Harlem Shake" seemed as destined to never again scale the heights of Billboard's Hot 100 as the man behind the abominable "Gangnam Style" (the song and the dance).

Then something shocking happened on his way to the cut-out bin: PSY scored another hit. Alas, "Gentleman," the slightly superior follow-up to "Gangnam Style" that sounds like it might morph into "Harlem Shake" at any second, could manage only one brief week in the Top 10, at No. 6, before plummeting to No. 26. So long, Psy! (We hope!)

Whether or not he ever manages to pull off another chart coup, PSY is already more successful than these 11 far-more-deserving-of-more-than-one-hit wonders. (For the purpose of this post, I'm defining a one-hit wonder as any act that hit the U.S. Top 10 with its first Top 40 single at least five years ago -- which would disqualify recent candidates like Foster the People and Gotye -- and never again made it into the Top 40.)

Gregory Abbott "Shake You Down" (No. 1, 1986) A decade before logging his lone hit, he was the 12-years-younger husband of Freda Payne, the singer of the 1970 No. 3 hit "Band of Gold," who, unlike her ex, managed to eke out two more Top 40 singles (including the 1971 No. 12 Vietnam-protest hit "Bring the Boys Home.")

Amii Stewart "Knock on Wood" (No. 1, 1979) I've always thought that the singer of my all-time favorite disco hit (and one of my Top 10 favorite covers) deserved at least one more claim to fame.

Amy Winehouse "Rehab" (No. 9, 2007) Speaking of talented women named Amy, it's hard to believe that with all the great classic tracks on Winehouse's breakout opus, 2006's Back to Black, not one of them managed to climb higher than No. 77 -- the peak position of "You Know I'm No Good" -- on the Hot 100. At least her fellow countrymen, once again exhibiting far better music taste than the Yankees, were smart enough to send four more of them into the UK Top 40.

Jane Child "Don't Wanna Fall in Love" (No. 2, 1990) If you haven't heard any of this Canadian's other work -- the rest of 1989's Jane Child, 1993's Here Not There, and 2002's Surge -- you are truly missing out on some incredible music. (Read more about it here.)

Love and Rockets "So Alive" (No. 3, 1989) Of all the British acts to land only one Top 10/Top 40 single in the '80s, the trio that sneaked theirs in at the end of the decade was perhaps the most deserving of so many more. (Read more about it here.)

Tweet "Oops (Oh My)" (No. 7, 2002) The late '90s and early '00s introduced a number of female R&B singers who soared only once -- Nicole, Sunshine Anderson, Truth Hurts -- but anyone who has heard Tweet's "Party 2nite" (which was turned into a Top 5 UK hit in 2006 by Booty Luv, whose cover was as dreadful as its moniker) knows why she's the one who should have taken flight again.

Take That "Back for Good" (No. 7, 1995) Even more inexplicable than the lack of solo success in the U.S. for Take That member Robbie Williams is how one of the most successful boy bands in UK history, with 19 Top 10 singles there, managed to place only one of them on Billboard's Hot 100.

Faith No More "Epic" (No. 9, 1989) The 25-year-old who guessed my age to be between 35 and 40 the other night totally redeemed himself when he showed me some of the songs on his iPod, and I spotted FNM's shoulda-been-huge 1992 single "Midlife Crisis," a No. 1 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart that hit No. 10 in the UK but failed to dent the Hot 100.

James Blunt "You're Beautiful (No. 1, 2006) Despite Blunt's talent, I can't say I didn't see it coming -- or rather, not coming, if we're talking about hit status for his failed (in the U.S.) follow-ups to "You're Beautiful." Sensitive male singer-songwriters haven't been pop's thing in decades, and indeed, three No. 1s later, Canadian Daniel Powter became another future one-hit wonder, never again charting after "Bad Day." Two (good) days ago, though, my iPod shuffle landed on "1973" (Blunt's 2007 single that peaked, interestingly, at No. 73 on the Hot 100) and convinced me not to count out Blunt just yet.

Joan Osborne "One of Us" (No. 4, 1995) Though I hated her only charting hit (which is why I'm posting the infinitely more deserving "Right Hand Man," which flopped two singles later), I still consider Osborne to be one of the best things to come out of the mid-'90s Lilith Fair/Women in Confession Pop-Rock movement.

Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U" (No. 1, 1990) Here's another instance of a singer-songwriter's only hit (with a song she didn't write) not even grazing the surface of her talent, which is why I'm posting O'Connor's non-charting (except in her native Ireland, where it reached No. 48) 2005 single "Marcus Garvey" instead.