Pop Music

Like the world, last week I was devastated by the news that Michael Jackson had suddenly left the room. This blessed artist commanded the stage with the grace of an antelope, shattered recording industry records and broke down cultural boundaries around the world, yet remained the gentlest of souls. Michael Jackson was a different kind of entertainer. A man-child in many ways, he was beyond professional and dedicated. Evoking Fred Astaire, Sammy Davis Jr.

In his youth, Chen Qigang's introduction to music came from playing the clarinet. Later, as a composition student in Beijing, then as an established composer in Paris, he could often be found at the piano. But for the last six months, Chen's primary instrument has clearly become the telephone. Since his appointment last June as music director for the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games, Chen's life has taken a radical turn.

LAVINIA GREENLAW, the British novelist and poet, remembers the first time that pop music let her down. Like many surly English teenagers in the late '70s, Greenlaw was entranced by Joy Divison's Ian Curtis -- a gangly, disturbingly intense singer whose morose lyrics were matched by his pained gyrations onstage. But when the epileptic and severely depressed Curtis hanged himself in 1980, leaving behind a wife and child at age 23, something snapped in Greenlaw's heart.

There's a song on Jackie Greene's new album, "Giving Up the Ghost," that sounds like an outright dismissal of the first commandment of rock 'n' roll -- that music can change the world. In "I Don't Live in a Dream," the Bay Area singer and songwriter, considered by some an heir to the Gram Parsons roots-rock maverick tradition, confesses, "I don't live on the moon . . . I don't live in some land forgotten . . . I don't pretend to make the world feel better . . .

REGIONALISM IS dead: That's one of many extreme ideas floating around pop music circles during these tumultuous times. The theory goes that, as the Internet turns music thoroughly ethereal and links in people from Athens, Ga., to Australia, the need to form community with one's neighbors -- or to share an artistic vision with them -- will wither. Yet this weekend at Marymoor Park, in the same Seattle suburb where Microsoft is headquartered, a new idea of cultural regionalism asserted itself.

SHAMELESSNESS IS not a problem for pop critics. Quite the opposite: It's a daily practice. Invented by rebel newspaper staffers (most notably, Ralph J. Gleason at the San Francisco Chronicle) who stayed out late and never came into the office, codified by freaks and attitudinal New Journalists, the pursuit of passionate thought about pop music rose up as a challenge to taste hierarchies, and has remained a pugilistic, exhibitionist business throughout pop's own evolution.

USC's Thornton School of Music will make room starting next year for singers and instrumentalists who play pop music, breaking a long-standing tradition in higher education that requires students to dedicate themselves either to classical music or jazz. Today the school is announcing its new bachelor of music degree in pop music performance, said to be the first of its kind at a major university. "Why shouldn't a program like this start in Los Angeles?"

Putting together this list, I pinged friends to ask what albums I absolutely should not have missed this year. Sixty replies quickly poured in. Only one release -- the big rock mountain "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds -- was mentioned twice. Some picks were already in my best-of pile; many haunted my get-to-it list. Others I hadn't heard, or even realized existed. The fragmentation of pop is getting to be an old story.

YOU'D think that competing on "American Idol" -- with its instant celebrity and public flagellation -- would provide juicy grist for a songwriter. But the debut album by Chris Daughtry, a semifinalist from the hit show's 2006 season, dishes no backstage dirt, nor does it reveal the true texture of Rod Stewart's face. Instead, Daughtry mostly sings about the everyday frustrations and reassuring comforts of married life -- hardly what you'd expect given his tough-guy looks and emo-beefcake vocals.