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Believe it or not, the year hits the six-months-gone mark this week. And while there's no point in claiming these are the absolute best singles of the first half of 2009 (left "Boom Boom Pow" and "Poker Face" off, for instance, figuring you already know what they sound like), they're still 25 really good ones. Lots of rap, lots of country, lots of soul. Not a ton of "rock", though -- maybe because most of the non-rock rocks just fine.

single-phile: The latest singles, dissected and discussed

When Michael Jackson passed away last week, I think many of us felt like he'd been taken too soon, his life cut short just as he seemed to be poised on the verge of some kind of comeback (although the stress of that may have been a contributing factor in his untimely demise). A lot of that feeling probably had to do with his age: he was only 50, but even that relatively young age seems shocking since Michael often seemed to exist in a state of (largely self-perpetuated) boyhood for us, a Peter Pan figure we prefer to remember as a chubby-cheeked child star or a charismatic teen/young adult. But an important part of Jackson's legacy is his rather prolific professional life -- a career that extended over at least three decades and was often a touchstone for what was (or would soon be) going on in popular culture and music. In honor of the late, great King of Pop, this week's single-phile takes a look at some of his greatest hits, their relationship to the pop cultural climate at the time and their influence on the pop music that was to come.

Ms. Jazmin Lopez is an up-and-coming star of duranguense -- the Mexican regional music that is a kissing cousin of the Southwest's brassy banda and the accordion-driven norteño, but also grew up in Chicago. Even this early in her career, however, Lopez's resume is already impressively diverse: She also hosts MTV Tr3s's ReMexa and is a connoisseur of both the regional Mexican music that program showcases and the urban dance and hip-hip sounds on rotation at MTV Tr3s's parent station. Her self-titled debut is a tribute to her wide-ranging interests and experiences:

Jazmin Lopez: Jazmin
Banda and duranguense have always seemed like long shots for breaking Mexican regional into the pop mainstream. And yet the oom-pah-ing horns and synth beats of these genres share a common ground with the dance beats of the pop charts -- and Jazmin Lopez may have homed in on it. Jazmin is ebullient and infectious, like both good banda and good dance pop are. But like her paradigm-challenging predecessor Yolanda Perez, the savvy Ms. Lopez also manages to work in more mainstream pop elements, intertwining her husky "Oo! Oo!"s and throaty vocals with R&B flourishes ("La Carcacha") and hip-hop beats ("Tu").

Further Listening
Playlist: Jazmin Lopez Picks the Hits, a playlist of her inspirations and favorites

Michael Jackson passed away on Thursday, June 25, 2009, at the age of 50. The monumental loss has been felt around the world. Jackson was a prodigiously talented singer and dancer -- an icon that transcended borders, race and age. Beginning in 1969 with the Jackson 5, Michael Jackson loomed over the pop landscape like no one before. Thriller, Off The Wall and Bad rank as three of the greatest pop albums of all time. But more than just the music, Jackson understood the value of spectacle in pop entertainment, and his own life took on a mythical quality. Sure, the fall in the '90s was fast and hard, but Rhapsody would like to take this moment to remember the numerous career highlights from the King of Pop.

	LISTEN: Michael Jackson’s pinnacle, the unforgettable Thriller		PLAY: MJ’s best songs not on Thriller
	REMEMBER: Our Editors reflect on the man, the music and his legacy		FAMILY: The greatest music from the Jackson clan
	DISCOVER: Songs from Aaliyah, Jay-Z, Kanye and Bjork that sampled MJ		READ: The Top 25 Pop Albums of the 1980s

single-phile: The latest singles, dissected and discussed

It's shaping up to be a fabulously rainbow-hued kind of week, friends. Not only does it feature Pride celebrations in many cities around the country and the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that Pride commemorates, but Gossip, perhaps the music industry's most vociferously out and proud band right now, also digitally released their discoriffic fourth album (and major-label debut) on Tuesday. Therefore, focusing this week's single-phile on hot pop singles by LGBT artists seemed appropriate. The problem is, they are hard -- if not impossible -- to find.

Music for Men is Gossip's coming out party in every sense of the term: It's their major label debut, their first album after becoming Kate Moss-befriending-hype-generators, and it's an announcement of their commitment to the alt-dance (life)style they first experimented with on Standing in the Way of Control. In short, this album is under a lot of pressure -- which it withstands rather admirably. The sleek dance beats -- this time drawing from both '80s pop and four-on-the-floor disco beats -- are polished to a pricier gold lamé sheen (courtesy of Rick Rubin), but are also more elegantly blended with their chicken-fried roots (see "Spare Me from the Mold"). Their melodies could do with a bit more variety: Beth Ditto either really enjoys a certain progression of notes, or her distinctive, full-throttle wail has a tendency to make every vocal line sound like, well, that distinctive, full-throttle Beth Ditto wail. And Kate Moss or no, the once-and-future scrappy garage punks are still probably a bit too queer (in all senses of the word) to hit the big-time Stateside. But they are in a rather fascinating position, poised somewhere between glitzy pop stardom and avant-garde underground. It's a position that makes for some very interesting musical choices: Though nothing on Music for Men really sounds like a conventional pop song, the album quotes from them liberally, couching, say, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" in the gradually building, minimalist keys-and-beats of "Love Long Distance" or Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It" in the straight-up hipster disco of "Love and Let Love." In fact, Music for Men is almost -- dare we say it -- kind of a camp, taking up and queering bits and pieces of a popular culture to which the band has an ambiguous relationship. In all, it's campy, danceable and political -- everything a fabulous coming out party should be.

When constructing this flawlessly gorgeous and heart-wrenching compendium of soft rock, I was once again reminded that much of history's mellow gold is in fact a secret depository of mental imbalance (see playlist selections by Helen Reddy and Gilbert O'Sullivan and Lobo for instance) and downright sleaziness (the ones by Mac Davis and Cher and Gordon Lightfoot, for starters.) Or at least that was the case in the singles-bar-and-suburban-wifeswap-and-pagan-teenage-drug-commune '70s; the '80s tunes below are perhaps more inscrutable -- if no more deniable.

This week we got the rights to a song that is destined to go viral -- OK, already has gone viral if you're a hip kid on the West Coast who takes to YouTube to learn the coolest new dance (which, as demonstrated by that statement, we obviously are not). So, the song: New Boyz's "You're a Jerk," a repetitive, minimalist, dangerously addictive affair that is destined to crawl under your skin like the best kind of rash and accompanies a squirmy, jumpy dance style called (what else?) "jerking." In short, it's got "summer jam" written all over it.

Now, New Boyz might not ever make much of an impact beyond SoCal (though Diddy's son's fandom might suggest otherwise). But it's got me thinking about what other songs we're bound to hear booming out of every car window this summer. A few candidates have already set up camp at the top of the charts, and more are destined to assert their own claim over our eardrums before Labor Day rolls around. On this week's single-phile, we take a look at and listen to the likeliest contenders for summer jam dominance.

Read the review and listen to the Jonas Brothers' new album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times below.

There are at least two qualities necessary for success in Disney's magic star-making kingdom: wholesomeness and versatility -- and the ability to balance both so that kids adore you and parents approve and can stand to hear your album 5,000 times in the minivan. The Jonas Brothers display both qualities in spades on their fourth album. Lines, Vines and Trying Times is a genre-jumping melange of puberty-voiced pop-rock, country balladeering (some of it featuring Miley!), a pinch of '80s pop (that'd be oldies to them, friends) and a lot of this new sort of Chicago-meets-Stevie-Wonder's-harmonica-oeuvre adult-contemporary. The pop-rock is less pop-punk-oriented than it's been on their earlier albums, though the boys still maintain their G-rated edge on '90s alt-style tracks like the enticingly unsettled "Paranoid" (which has an oddly Oasis-esque vibe) and the Weezeriffic "Poison Ivy," which pulls the old "almost say a bad word but instead replace it with a flamboyant guitar strum" gag (the tweens will totally heart it). (Both of those tracks, by the way, also offer slightly warped and/or jaded takes on relationships, no doubt a nod to Joe Jonas's breakup with Taylor Swift. Joe also takes a rather nasty swipe at Swift on "Much Better," a mellow bit of horn-driven '80s pop that explains how "much better" his new lady friend is than the one with "all the tears on her guitar." Ouch. Where's your Disney spirit, boys?) It's all pretty compelling stuff, if at times so eclectic it lacks focus, as if the Jonases were just trying on every pop hat they could get their hands on, rather than really honing any of the styles they experiment with. The track that will totally blow minds (in the surreal, "did I just unwittingly jump into a parallel universe" kind of way) is "Don't Charge Me for the Crime," a collaboration with Common. Yes, Common. Musically, the track is surprisingly not horrible (although it's definitely weird). But for a very "whaaaa?" moment, take a closer listen to the lyrics, which feature a dark rhyme from Common about the state's role in the perpetuation of criminality and greed, followed by a Jonas singing about a friend with bags of cash making him scream so loud "like the females in the crowd." (Wow, what, did that friend mug him for his purity ring or something?)

single-phile: The latest singles, dissected and discussed

If there's one thing Black Eyed Peas do brilliantly, it's make what often seem to be (let's face it) incredibly dumb songs -- and then make those apparently nonsensical ruminations on humps and such incredibly fun and culturally prominent. (In fact, they're so good at it that Rolling Stone's review of B.E.P.'s new album, The E.N.D., for instance, focuses almost entirely on this talent and even situates it in the context of a pop history of great dumb songs.) Dumb songs serve some important functions: they allow you an opportunity to stop thinking, of course, but at the same time, they let you shift into a more sensory, visceral mode of listening where you just, you know, experience the music, man (that was supposed to be like a tripped-out hippie voice. I don't know why). And, of course, they're usually great for dancing.

But what if there's more to a dumb song than meets the ear? In this week's single-phile, we take another listen to some of most inane singles by Black Eyed Peas (aka the Kings of Dumb Songs), focusing especially on their latest offerings, and offer an alternate, "smart" reading. You may or may not buy it (hell, I'm not even sure I buy some of these), but therein lies another pleasure of the dumb song: the opportunity to pull it apart and search for deeper meaning in its innards -- and the opportunity to debate whether said surgery is even worth performing.

The Black Eyed Peas seem to be in the throes of an identity crisis. Their fifth album (the third with Fergie) is a sleek, minimalist and rather dark affair that sounds more like the wasted, exhausted wee hours of the morning after than the big, over-the-top, glam party they usually throw. Don't get us wrong, though. There are still plenty of party-oriented anthems on here; this is the Black Eyed Peas, after all. Their rhymes are often overly simplistic and their flow can be a little rough, but that is not the point. The point is to have fun -- to make hip-hop and pop a big, old, sometimes silly but always jumping good time.

We are all fallible. Remember that.

A week back, I wrote about the old synth-pop hit "Safety Dance." I may even have said that the song is "basically retarded."

Then, I returned to my ancestral home of San Diego, CA. The family ventured from Imperial Beach up north to the luxurious city of La Jolla for a seaside picnic. Towards the end of the day, I was standing on a cliff with my 11-year old nephew watching his older brother body surf over treacherous rocks. Yes, I was much too cowardly to go in and tempt death on those rocks. This timid nature helps explain my chosen profession of rock critic. We are a meek, bespectacled bunch.

In general,  I don't know what you do when confronted with a relative defying death amidst a setting sun. Cry for help? Pray? Perhaps conquor by demons and dive in and drag the child out of the sea and suggest a game of cards instead? 

That day, I discovered what I would do. It turns out, in times of crisis, I start to sing "We can dance if we want to/ We can leave your friends behind..." -- Yes,  the opening lyrics to "Safety Dance."

I have no idea why I broke into robo-song, but here is the beautiful part. My nephew didn't miss a beat, he picked it up with "Cause your friends don't dance/And if they don't dance/Well, they're no friends of mine."

I looked at him and asked how in the world he knew the song. He told me EVERYBODY knows "Safety Dance."

Later that night, they broke out their laptop and should me a video of Jimmy Carlin shredding to the Men Without Hats robo-classic. Then, the two boys fired Rhapsody up and put "Safety Dance" on "repeat" while my baby boy laughed and popped-and-locked to it for about 15 minutes (and by "pop-and-lock" what I really mean is that he kicked his legs around in an insane Riverdance style frenzy).

So, thank you Men Without Hats!

You and your "Safety Dance" are helping to bridge generations and to unite families. 

"Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas has now been the most popular song in the country for nine weeks and counting with no end in sight, making it the weirdest and most outlandish song to work up that kind of batting streak since ... what? "Hey Ya!" (nine weeks, 2003-2004)? "Macarena" (14 weeks, 1996)?? "Bette Davis Eyes" (nine weeks, 1981)??? Mighty impressive, either way, and what cannot be denied is that it is also the most shamelessly ridiculous and unabashedly catchy confection to hit the radio this year (only competition: "Poker Face"), and it's inescapable for primarily that reason.

So you know what? If you're not among the millions (if not billions) of human beings who've already surrendered to the song, you might as well. Otherwise, you'll certainly regret it 99 years from now (2108!), when you hear it on the intergalactic oldies station wired into the computer chip in your brain and it reminds you how life felt in the summer of 2009 the way no other song possibly could. And if that's not enough of a reason to embrace "Boom Boom Pow," here are 10 more.

La Roux

single-phile: The latest singles, dissected and discussed

The American pop charts are notoriously difficult to crack, even for artists with major celebrity cachet in other parts of the world. Just ask Kylie Minogue, who's never been able to match the success she's had in the U.K. and Australia stateside (in fact, if you can believe it, she's mounting her first ever U.S. tour this September). A lot of factors contribute to this impenetrability, not the least of which is a rather narrow definition of what kinds of sounds constitute a hit -- and what kind of artist is capable of making them. In this week's single-phile, we take a look at some of pop's outsiders: singles by artists who are making waves elsewhere, and who might even stand a chance on our turf.

Rhapsody recently sat down with Tori Amos to discuss her new album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin. The conversation quickly turned into a candid reveal of the singer's family: the highs and lows of working with her husband (key quote: "You usually want to have an affair with your engineer anyway!") and parenting an 8-year-old daughter who finds embarrassing YouTube clips of her mother. Amos also discusses her discontent with the music biz and her evolution as an artist before the chat comes back full circle to the impetus behind the new album -- what she believes to be the greatest sin of all.

We also convinced Amos to participate in our burgeoning On the Record program, in which artists speak about records they love in exactly 45 seconds. Click the link to hear her pick and see plenty of others.

Parts 2 & 3 after the jump.