Album review: Susan Boyle's 'I Dreamed a Dream'

Since she first raised her arms in what now seems like a blessing on the talent show "Britain's Got Talent," revealing herself as the new queen of pop's Island of Misfit Toys, Susan Boyle has come to mean several things to her fans: hope, the triumph of the ordinary, the reality-television embodiment of the Euro-American Dream. As a singer, though, she offers something else: relief.

Boyle's clear but warm tone and stolid phrasing turns everything it touches into a more songful version of New Age music. It's relaxing to listen to those drawn-out syllables, gradually building toward a gentle, wavelike climax. Boyle possesses neither an impulse to swing nor an ounce of the blues; whether she's covering the Monkees, the Rolling Stones or Madonna, Boyle sings like she's in a place of worship, surrounded by white walls and soft light, cooking up some chicken soup for the soul.

Her unearthly calm and gently piercing timbre are her best qualities. It's what makes her version of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses" so touching. Instead of Mick Jagger's moaning, slightly derisive take on heartache, hers is truly resigned, the sound of someone who really understands and accepts life's limitations.

Album review: Rihanna's 'Rated R'

Judging by the arc of her still-young career, Rihanna is not what you'd call a "girl's girl." She began her professional ascent when, at 15, she dumped the gal pals in her vocal trio and moved to the U.S. to be closer to her male producer. Her mentor is hip-hop father figure Jay-Z; her main association with another female artist was with his longtime companion, Beyoncé, when rumors (later disproved) of a tryst between the younger singer and the mogul set the two up as rivals.

Her image evokes a style of female empowerment that predates and still stands outside of feminism: the lone female warrior who summons strength and endures danger to make progress in a man's world.

So it's ironic that, of all young female pop stars, it was Rihanna who became the subject of a classic feminist concern after an assault at the hand of her then-boyfriend, Chris Brown. At first she seemed unwilling (or unable) to embrace the role of advocate that's often assumed by prominent survivors of domestic violence, but apparently her sense of responsibility toward young women is what motivated her to finally leave Brown.

"Rated R," the album that will forever be viewed as Rihanna's statement on Brown's attack and her recovery, bears that burden of responsibility, but in a way that has little to do with conventional expressions of female liberation. Unlike Beyonce, who has an all-female band, or Christina Aguilera, who's often collaborated with the songwriter Linda Perry, or even Britney Spears, who's made a big show of being Madonna's inheritor, Rihanna still prefers working with men.

Aside from two songwriters who seem less than primary (one, Ester Dean, actually had a recent hit collaborating with Brown), the tracks here come from male producers and co-songwriters.

As much as it's a personal statement from Rihanna, "Rated R" also reflects how several of pop's male major players -- including Ne-Yo, Justin Timberlake, The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, will.i.am -- responded to her accounts of what happened between her and Brown, and how she's moved on from the incident. (She's said in interviews that talking about it with her collaborators helped her work through the experience and turn it into art.) 

Ladies' night at the AMAs [UPDATED]

Sure, the guys performed on the show Sunday evening, but it was the women who blazed.

Are guys even making relevant pop music right now? That's a ridiculous question, obviously, but after Sunday's American Music Awards telecast, it seems almost reasonable. Though plenty of men performed during this roundup of both trending and reliable chart toppers, the show's heat emanated from the feminine sphere.

[FOR THE RECORD: A review of the American Music Awards in Monday's Calendar section incorrectly said Whitney Houston sang "I Turn to You" on the show. Houston  sang "I Didn't Know My Own Strength."]

Lady Gaga playing a blazing piano, Whitney Houston giving a touchingly rough-edged vocal performance, a startled Taylor Swift grabbing the top prize from the spectral grip of Michael Jackson -- this show wasn't just another ladies' night: It marked a notable shift in American pop music.

The AMAs always offer spectacle, in part because the awards themselves feel less meaningful than either the Grammys or more genre-specific fetes like the Country Music Assn. Awards. Won in a public vote after nominations are made according to radio airplay and retail sales, these prizes always have seemed somehow less prestigious than those determined by industry insiders or artistic peers.

What's fun about the AMAs is the breadth of the show, as top draws in many genres work to generate the most glitz in what amounts to a pop free-for-all.

This year, rock bands such as Daughtry and Green Day played and sang earnestly, and Eminem (assisted by 50 Cent) and Jay-Z (partnering with Alicia Keys) both rapped at the top of their game. Yet these moments felt like standard fare on a buffet overflowing with more scintillating choices.

It's not that rock or rap no longer speak to the mainstream; Eminem's album rather quietly became one of the year's bestsellers, as did the latest from Kings of Leon, who were nominated for artist of the year yet did not perform Sunday evening.

Album review: Adam Lambert's 'For Your Entertainment'

The 'Idol' runner-up goes for it all in his major label debut, with the help of the Hollywood pop A-list. The results are mixed, but never a bummer.

To point out Adam Lambert’s boutique addiction is to reinforce a gay stereotype, but Lambert himself enjoys playing around with preconceived notions, and that includes proudly showing that there's depth and self-awareness beyond those stereotypes. Lambert's other clear goal as a newly minted pop star is to celebrate all aspects of the word "play": pleasure, performance, flirtation, virtuosity, masquerade. That's what he does on this quickly assembled yet purposeful major label debut.

"For Your Entertainment" is a polished affair, but stylistically, it shows Lambert running loose like a kid in a Comme des Garçons store. With the Hollywood pop A-list at his disposal, he chose to go for it all: The only names missing from his list of collaborators are those firmly in the R&B camp (wouldn't it be great if he worked with fellow drama club type Ne-Yo?) The results on "FYE" are inevitably mixed, but never a bummer; Lambert's deft enough to avoid getting stuck in any one of the tropes he explores.

On many tracks, Lambert stretches himself by putting on the style of his more seasoned collaborators. He's pleading and soulful on the Pink co-write, sneering on the song Rivers Cuomo tossed his way, moody when it comes to parsing Muse and appropriately silly on the neo-glam crusher penned for him by Justin Hawkins, formerly of the English band the Darkness. Versatility is Lambert's strategy here, one he might consider changing in the future -- when the material's second-rate, it sinks him a bit. 

Taylor Swift: Young, fearless and in control

The country-pop star wins Entertainer of the Year and three other prizes in a night dominated by up-and-comers.

In 1958, Johnny Cash released the song "Ballad of a Teenage Queen," the story of a pretty small-town girl who won Hollywood fame but gave it all up for the boy next door. In 2009 -- on Wednesday night, actually, in Nashville, at the annual Country Music Assn. Awards ceremony -- Taylor Swift updated and obliterated that story line.

The 19-year-old songwriter and universe-shifting star won in four categories, beating out mainstays such as Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban to claim country music for youth, femininity and pop. She also performed two numbers and was the subject of much running humor throughout the program, which found its spark whenever one of country's current batch of New Non-Traditionalists took the stage.

Swift started things out with a version of "Forever and Always" that was glitzy and high-concept -- and off-tune, a consistent characteristic of Swift's live outings that gave the lie to her one undeserved triumph, for best female vocalist. The prize should have gone to Carrie Underwood, country's most powerful young singer and the evening's co-host with Brad Paisley.

Struggling for her notes but not showing any concern about it, Swift made a flurry of arena-rock moves, shaking her long, gold tresses as if she were Robert Plant and sliding down a shiny pole in what seemed like a defiant nod toward her friend Miley Cyrus, who took guff for similar gyrations on this year's Teen Choice Awards. By the end of this production number, she owned the night. And she kept on owning it, right down to her tearful acceptance of the Entertainer of the Year prize, which she shared with her touring band and her fans, "and the shirts you made yourselves."

Album review: Robbie Williams' 'Reality Killed the Video Star'

"This is a song full of metaphors," Robbie Williams sneers over some dusted-off mid-1970s guitar crunch in the party anthem "Do You Mind," which comes right in the middle of this bullishly diverse album. What song isn't? Dwelling on the obvious is an easy pop star move, but the witty Mr. Williams is usually sharper than that.

Perhaps he's decided that being obvious is his only hope. The attitudinal crooner and former boy band star remains a novelty stateside, though in England he's basically Justin Timberlake minus the grace. Williams' eighth studio effort is a full-body flex matching buttery ballads with laser-flecked dance tracks and arch updates from the music hall; it's meant to both resurrect his flagging career at home and to finally capture America, now that younger stars like Katy Perry have made Williams' brand of power camp acceptable here.

To that end, "Reality" is all about metaphors, puns and other brilliant turns of phrase, from the title that nods to the old Buggles hit by its producer, Trevor Horn, to the rapper-like rhymes ("it's not a blast for me, it's blasphemy") and non sequiturs ("the hairdo of the godhead") scattered throughout its meditations of fame, age and noncommittal romance. Whether upbeat and sci-fi mystical or orchestrated and jaded, these songs showcase the nasally soulful Williams as an irresistibly smart, cosmopolitan manchild of the overly wired world.

He's always written about fame's fun and peril, but with "Reality," Williams focuses hard on the out-of-body experience of the everyday. "I've got no problem with the physical minimal real life," he croons, slightly Auto-tuned, in the Pet Shop Boys homage "Starstruck." But that's a lie.

Reclaiming Williams' spot in the line of self-skewering Brit wits that runs from Noel Coward to Ricky Gervais, "Reality" covers much musical ground while sticking to its main point: that for both the celebrity and the average bloke on date night, life is one big show full of flubbed lines and fumbled choreography.

Horn's production is gorgeous, and Williams benefits greatly from the gifts of the producer's longtime team, including the arranger Anne Dudley. "Reality" unfolds with deliberate variety -- its calculated pleasures won't appeal to those seeking earnest emotion or even slightly ragged sounds. Like the verbal tricks he loves to employ, the appeal of Robbie Williams might still be too tricky to be truly universal. But this album proves that he is a great brain teaser.

-- Ann Powers

Robbie Williams
"Reality Killed the Video Star"
Virgin Records
Three stars (Out of four)

Snap Judgment: Adam Lambert, 'For Your Entertainment'

 The first single and title track from Adam Lambert's soon-to-be-dropped debut album couldn't be more of an announcement. "For Your Entertainment" strides into the room, snaps its fingers and declares 2010 the year of Our Gorgeously Airbrushed Overlord.

With a toy whip in his hand and a glittery gleam in his eye, Glambert croons familiar phrases about making it hot, getting rough and staying in control. Scandinavian hitmaker Dr. Luke wrote and produced the track, and it has that compressed, noisy rock 'n' roll circus sound he's created for others, including Britney, Pink and that other neo-vaudevillian troublemaker, Katy Perry.

Some Glamthusiasts may bemoan the restraint (and processing) applied to the song's vocal, but Lambert is making another move in this song, one likely to become a signature. He sings with an arched eyebrow, executing a come-on that wryly takes the pffft out of itself.

As on his blockbuster-movie power ballad "Time For Miracles," Lambert practices some pop restraint at first, only really letting go at the song's three-minute mark. "Let me entertain you 'til you scream," he wails, his voice fully entering the androgynous zone. It's a game that's led from the dance floor to the bedroom: seduction as a wicked parlor trick fully enjoyed by the master and his victim, the light fantasy of dominance and submission that's a metaphor for what happens between performer and fan.

Though Madonna and Britney have both traveled this ground before, Lambert does it in a way that's very male. The song's beat is definitely contemporary, traceable to early-2000s electropop artists like Goldfrapp (thanks to critic Barry Walters for that observation) and typical of work by the aforementioned female pop stars, who push the dance floor in ways that are distinctly reminiscent of rock.

Ann Powers reviews 'Michael Jackson's This Is It'

Pop critic Ann Powers attended the premiere of "Michael Jackson's This Is It." Her review will run in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times, and is available online now. An excerpt: 

There's a sweet personal exchange near the end of "Michael Jackson's This Is It," the new concert film assembled from footage of the rehearsals for the London performances nullified by his death in June. Jackson is working out a dance sequence with Kenny Ortega, the director of the ill-fated concerts and of this documentary. Ortega lovingly mimics Jackson, overplaying his signature big hand gestures, and the superstar laughs.

"I love how the stewardesses do it," he says. "I love it!" 

It's a moment that illuminates not just the way Jackson danced or sang, but how he thought -- viewing the world in terms of movement, human semaphore.

"This Is It" offers only a few such insights into Jackson's artistic process, though enough surface to make this a useful document, as well as a beautiful one. Mostly it's a tribute to the power of Jackson's body and voice, which the film presents as surprisingly intact despite his age, 50 at the time of his death, and the various ailments that reportedly had plagued him in the preceding decades. 

Differing greatly from the rough, casual mood of many behind-the-scenes pop docs, this one is instead of a piece with Jackson's body of work: dazzling and strange, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

As a tragic teaser for the shows that might have been, "This Is It" hurts. If Jackson had been able to perform as he frequently does during these scenes, he would have accomplished the comeback for which he was so hungry.

Read the full review here.

Credit: Sony Pictures

Live review: U2's 360 Tour at the Rose Bowl

"Enough of the folk mass!" declared Bono during U2's historic Rose Bowl performance Sunday, leading his band and the nearly 100,000 fans in the stadium out of a singalong and into a dance party. The 49-year-old singer/activist/life of the party has been making such quick metaphorical turns for much of his life, fronting a band known for transcendence but hardly immune to sensual pleasure.

Usually, Bono and his band mates travel from prayers to come-ons on the force of charisma and a sound that's ascendant and sleekly funky, structured around the Edge's stretchy guitar parts and Bono's dirty-faced choirboy cries. But for this tour, U2 has adopted another mode of transport: the four-legged circular stage rig known as the Claw, or the Space Station. This contraption is an extravagance with a big carbon footprint and an even bigger price tag. But in Pasadena, it proved worth every Euro, allowing this most ambitious rock band to genuinely reconfigure live pop performance.

Plenty of artists have played in the round, built multi-tiered sets and spent time roaming through the crowd on ramps or trapezes. But the Space Station (Bono's preferred term these days) changes the architecture of the live concert. It not only puts the stadium audience closer to the band, it cuts holes in the fourth wall between star and fan, creating a feeling of immersion and communal connection that's startling in such a huge venue, and that translated differently in person than it could have on YouTube, where the concert was streamed live.

Ann Powers on Adam Lambert's 'Time for Miracles': His triumphant return begins

On our sister blog Idol Tracker, The Times' Ann Powers discusses the latest single from "American Idol" runner-up Adam Lambert. She finds it "a lonely declaration of faith in the healing power of love." Read an excerpt below:

Power ballads exist to climax. I use that final word, in all its lascivious glory, for the obvious reasons. Created to accommodate "soft" emotion in hard rockers, these flash-pot-fueled show-stoppers have to be as uncontainable as juvenile delinquent rock itself, and from "Dream On" onward that's meant one thing: an explosive ending in which the band, and especially the singer, pump blood into the vulnerability they've expressed by pushing themselves into unstoppable overdrive, straining at the song's seams, and finally breaking through with a swoon that obliterates everything else.

You think I exaggerate? Listen to "Time for Miracles," the single that begins this fall's triumphant ascent of "American Idol" finalist and hard rock liberator Adam Lambert with a swoosh and bang that does Freddie and Steven (and Ann and Jon and Axl) proud.

The song itself is surprisingly unoperatic, though its back story is straight out of "La Boheme." Co-written by Los Angeles rock power couple Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider, it's a lonely declaration of faith in the healing power of love -- a message made tragic by the fact that Shneider died of cancer in 2008.

Lambert communicates this context through a world-weary approach in the early part of the song, including a nice, depressive blue note in the middle of the first verse and a vocal crack a few phrases later. There's not much drama for him to milk here -- no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise, just an aching heart and some deeply familiar romantic imagery. Lambert works his way through the undying flames by keeping it conversational, adding a slightly soulful twist as the strings swirl behind him.

Then, three minutes in, Lambert's melismatic growl signals that the summit's within sight.

Read the rest on Idol Tracker.

-- Ann Powers

Photo: Adam Lambert. Credit: Irfan Khan / For The Times