When it comes to tragic spectacles in this sorry age of reality television, beyond even the pathetic sight of Patti Blagojevich eating bugs on "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!" falls the obnoxious exploitation of Scottish homebody Susan Boyle.

Diagnosed with learning difficulties and, she says, verbally tormented and physically abused by teachers and schoolmates, Boyle also was blessed with a pure, clear and ringing voice. Until a few months ago, the 48-year-old singer most often displayed her talent in church while living quietly with her cat Pebbles in the house where she was raised. But things dramatically changed last April, when she appeared on the third season of the U.K. television show "Britain's Got Talent."

Though Boyle ultimately lost the talent contest--placing second to a dance troupe--she became a worldwide phenomenon as millions watched clips of her singing a track from the musical "Les Miserables" and the standard "Cry Me a River" on YouTube. Now comes her debut album, "I Dreamed a Dream," arriving in stores Tuesday, but already the bestselling pre-order CD in the history of Amazon.com, topping "Jay-Z, Whitney Houston and even the Beatles' remastered CDs," according to her publicists.

"One of the things that is so unique about Susan Boyle is her ability to touch people around the world," according to her American record label, Columbia. And it's certainly true that many of her fans have been attracted by the power of her voice and the story of an ordinary woman's triumph over the superficialities of our celebrity culture.

Unfortunately, it's also true that the way that story was calculatingly scripted into "Britain's Got Talent" has attracted just as many people--the kind who get a real kick out of watching a former governor's wife and failed "American Idol" Sanjaya Malakar eating bugs and enduring other tortures in the jungle--who are laughing at Boyle and ruthlessly mocking her on the Internet, on radio and in gossip columns, unleashing the same callous cruelty as those who attacked her during her school days.

Boyle has paid a price for all of this. Hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic the day after she lost on the TV show, she also dropped out of many of the dates on the live tour that followed. The British press endlessly speculated about her health and well being, though she said she needed to conserve her voice for her album.

Columbia refused to provide reviewers with advance copies of "I Dreamed a Dream," but despite one of the tightest security clampdowns in the digital age, the music finally leaked on the Internet Thursday. The verdict: While Boyle's voice is an impressive instrument, it cannot be denied that her interpretations of the 12 11 covers and one original are nowhere near extraordinary enough to merit a fraction of the attention and anticipation they've garnered if considered solely on musical merit.

Arranged for maximum orchestral bombast and drenched in schmaltz, the material clearly was chosen for the broadest marketing appeal. There are Baby Boomer-friendly pop songs ("Wild Horses," "Daydream Believer," "The End of the World"), traditional hymns ("Amazing Grace," "How Great Thou Art"), the tunes she sang on television and even, in consideration of the season, a closing version of "Silent Night."

None of these can fairly be considered the definitive reading of the song, as artful as the work of a Charlotte Church, or even anything beyond the capabilities of a thousand gifted mezzo-sopranos regularly appearing in musicals staged by community theaters around the world. The difference is that Boyle, for better or worse, is in the midst of Andy Warhol's fabled 15 minutes of fame.

In the end, the most notable track is the one purported to be Boyle's sole original, "Who I Was Born to Be," which stands as an autobiographical anthem. "I'm not a girl/I've known the taste of defeat," she sings over syrupy strings. "[Now] I've got the world in my hands/And it feels like my turn to fly/Though I may not know the answers/I can finally say I'm free/And if the questions led me here then/I'm who I was born to be."

Let's hope that Boyle truly is as free and as happy as she asserts.

For all the talk of an edgier, angrier and more mature new Rihanna, it's hard to buy the re-emergent dance-pop singer as a towering pillar of feminine strength akin to Patti Smith, Courtney Love, Queen Latifah or Mary J. Blige.

It will take more than a few fiery television interviews and a dark and futuristic new look that's equal parts Darryl Hannah in "Blade Runner" and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in TLC to really sell that.

Nevertheless, "Rated R," the new album recorded in the wake of Rihanna's altercation with former boyfriend Chris Brown arriving in stores Tuesday, is by far the best, most layered and most heartfelt effort of the 21-year-old artist's career, even if her new woman-in-charge persona is in part just another marketing pose.

Ever since Robyn Rihanna Fenty was discovered in her native Barbados by Evan Rogers, a veteran producer of 'N Sync, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Kelly Clarkson, the one-time beauty queen has followed the path of many other prefab pop princesses in the new millennium, cheerfully turning her scantily clad self over to the manipulations of the star-making machine.

Her first two albums, "Music of the Sun" (2005) and "A Girl Like Me" (2006), were easily dismissible dance-pop trifles with a hint of Caribbean spicing. Riri, as she's known to fans, began to show more range with the phenomenally successful "Good Girl Gone Bad" in 2007. But as that title and the enjoyable but ultimately insubstantial singles "Umbrella" and "Disturbia" indicated, she still seemed to be just another pretty puppet dancing on the strings of her (male) producers, managers and handlers.

Then came the altercation with Brown that derailed her scheduled performance during the Grammy Awards last February. Though the details were sketchy at first--and Rihanna, like many victims of abuse, initially seemed to absolve her assailant--Brown eventually pleaded guilty to felony assault, and Rihanna bid him good riddance.

There can be no debate: Penitent or not, Brown has proven to be a world-class creep and a brutal thug. He began serving a sentence of five years' probation, six months of community labor and a year of domestic violence counseling last August. And Rihanna started making her fourth studio album with a superstar team of producers and songwriters including Stargate, the Dream, Ne-Yo, will.i.am and Justin Timberlake.

"I was involved in a lot of the writing," Rihanna told Glamour magazine. "I put everything I've wanted to say for the past eight months into my music. The songs are really personal. It's rock 'n' roll, but it's really hip-hop: If Lil Wayne and Kings of Leon like my album, then I'll feel good... It's super-fearless."

Though there's nothing inherently rock 'n' roll or "super-fearless" about lacing slick, synthesized dance-pop grooves with a little electric guitar, some of it courtesy of Slash, a quarter of a century after "Thriller," there is a more insistent punch and electrifying energy in the 13 grooves on "Rated R," which also lives up to its title and emphasizes its maturity with a lot more profanity than we've heard from Riri in the past. (This is her first disc with a Parental Advisory warning label.)

The album moves through the same sort of emotional journey that one imagines the singer undergoing in the last year. After an opening old-school horror-movie homage called "Mad House"--more shades of "Thriller"--we find Rihanna boasting about being part of an unbeatable team ("Together we gonna be taking over") and sitting on top of the pop charts and the world in general ("Brilliant, resilient/Fan mail from 27 million") in "Wait Your Turn" and "Hard."

Then things get darker--and more interesting. Set against a spare, piano-driven melody, "Stupid in Love" is as honest an examination of how a smart woman can fall into a destructive relationship as pop has ever given us. The singer continues to probe this theme with the more upbeat and obviously metaphorical "Russian Roulette" before finally standing up for herself in "Rockstar 101." (And isn't it great that, even in these commercially co-opted times, some people still equate "rock" with "rebellion"?)

"I've never played a victim/I'd rather be a stalker," Rihanna sings. That's hardly a profound or particularly feminist lyric, but its strength comes from the way she spits out the words. In both the quieter, more introspective songs and the angrier dancehall-flavored club-stompers, her limited vocal range has never sounded more convincing or deserving of the pop spotlight.

As with the first third of the disc, the last portion isn't quite as gripping as the middle section. The album ends with a bit more sunshine, culminating with the lushly arranged, Timberlake-penned "Cold Case Love" and the aptly named sing-along coda, "The Last Song."

Is any of this the 2009 equivalent of Aretha Franklin belting out, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me"? Heck no. But "Rated R" is a much better effort than many might have expected from Rihanna, and one that makes this listener eager to hear how much more she may grow in the years to come.

During the world premiere of Them Crooked Vultures at Metro last August, the primary joy of this latest supergroup came from surrendering to the pummeling rhythms of Dave Grohl--one of the finest drummers of his generation with Nirvana turned one of the most pandering radio schlock meisters of the last decade with the Foo Fighters--as he gleefully channeled John Bonham while assaulting the clock with Bonzo's old bandmate, legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. You felt every punishing bass drum beat walloping you in the chest as Jones' rumbling four-, six-, eight- and more-string bass lines vibrated your innards, while at the same time you taxed your brain following rhythmic patterns turned inside-out and upside-down with no loss of forward momentum.

This was hard rock that was as visceral as it was intellectual, and it was a jolly good time and a pretty impressive trick--onstage. Unfortunately, it hasn't translated nearly as well now that the much-buzzed all-star trio, which expands to a quartet in concert, has finally released its debut album, and much of the blame must rest on the third leg of this glitzy tripod, Queens of the Stone Age bandleader Josh Homme.

Given the leisure and the dubious benefit of pondering the songwriting and parsing Homme's weak and not in a Robert Plant-like way vocals--not for nothing has this guy often ceded the mike to guest singers with the Queens--all of the flaws of this made-in-a-manager's-boardroom collaboration become all too obvious, and they are the same as most supergroups': Star power and virtuosity don't compensate for lackluster material, no matter how much the musicians are stoked to be jamming with storied peers.

Jones' impressive skills as a master arranger and versatile multi-instrumentalist are underutilized, with only the odd coda (such as the "Sgt. Pepper's"-style outro incongruously tacked onto the end of "Mind Eraser No Chaser"), afterthought dollop of keyboards ("Spinning in Daffodils") or downright bad idea (the lounge music-on-Mars detour of "Interlude with Ludes") hinting at that reservoir of talent. Grohl's undeniable ear for hooks and sweet backing vocals also go untapped, putting most of the burden on Homme to craft the vehicles to carry these Grand Prix drivers, and he delivers tunes that would be filler at best on the finest Queens albums (the single "New Fang" or the stomping "Elephants") as well as material that at worst wouldn't make the cut on a "Desert Sessions" toss-off ("Bandoliers" or "Caligulove," whose lyrics are even worse than that titles might indicate: "I already gotcha baby/Put yourself upon me/I'm in lust, a slave to desire/When you Caligulove me").

Yes, there are pleasures to be had: Muso-geeks would be happy to hear Jones and Grohl play the Britney Spears songbook, just because it was the two of them playing. But for all the promises the musicians showed onstage--or, for that matter, in much of what they've done before--the sum of the whole on record is much less than each of the parts.

Norah Jones, "The Fall" (Blue Note) [1.5 STARS out of 4]

John Mayer, "Battle Studies" (Columbia) [1/2 STAR out of 4]

Amid an infinite sea of rich, complex and at times challenging flavors, sometimes you just want a scoop of plain vanilla. There's nothing wrong with that, but even in the world of unfettered whiteness, there are degrees of quality, ranging from, say, a thick and creamy scoop of Ben & Jerry's to the generic, tasteless and ice-speckled stuff on deep discount at the supermarket.

Easy-listening coffee-house fixtures Norah Jones and John Mayer fall into the latter category. In both cases, this is nothing short of a crying shame, because each is capable of much better--30-year-old Jones with her sultry, smoky, sleepy-time jazz chanteuse vocals, and 32-year-old Mayer with his long-since-stifled grounding in credible electric blues. Yet on their fourth studio albums, both compromise their roots as never before, cheerfully yielding to the lowest-common-denominator demands of the pop machine to churn out buckets of blandness.

Jones is slightly more successful than Mayer with "The Fall," a title clearly meant to evoke the encroaching gray stillness of the season rather than her commercial potential. Though she turns to producer Jacquire King, a veteran craftsmen of hipster-rock efforts by Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon, a minimalist cabaret sound and somnambulistic mood prevail, with guest collaborators such as Ryan Adams and Will Sheff of Okkervil River doing little to elevate the lulling conformity of the songwriting. Jones does mellow chill-out reasonably well, but after a few tracks of it, you're thinking, "Snorah." Things only really pick up midway through the disc on "It's Gonna Be," a hypnotic swampy groove a la Dr. John, which underscores that this still-young artist could do great things if only she challenged herself a bit.

Meanwhile, though Mayer promises explosive excitement on "Battle Studies"--"Clouds of sulfur in the air/Bombs are falling everywhere/It's heartbreak warfare," he croons in the opening track--he veers closer to some unholy hybrid of Sting and Dave Matthews, and the romantic pap of the 10 original tracks fizzle like the embarrassing dud of a North Korean nuke. Laden with laughable romantic-schlock lyrics and trite, sappy melodies, these songs aim for the pathos of classic Carpenters but come closer to maudlin Barry Manilow. And no, neither the guest turn by Taylor Swift on "Half of My Heart" nor the two Boomer-courting covers--exceedingly lame, Lite-FM versions of the Cream via Robert Johnson standard "Crossroads" and Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire"--do a thing to elevate the dross.

The expiration date for Curtis Jackson, a.k.a. 50 Cent, was obvious from the moment he made his mainstream debut with "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" in 2002: No matter how strong your ear for catchy hooks and thumping beats, there's only so much mileage you can get from the "baddest of the bad-ass gangstas" routine when we've heard it so many times before, especially when you have little to add besides endless prattle about how many times you've been shot and stabbed.

Fiddy tried to show a bit more range with "Curtis" in 2007, timed for a celebrated showdown on the pop charts with Kanye West's "Graduation." But you'll recall that West won, commercially and artistically. The melodramatically entitled "Before I Self Destruct" actually was recorded before "Curtis," but the "more personal" effort was swapped out for the darker disc at the last minute, and the 16 tracks here haven't grown any fresher while sitting on the shelf for last two years as 50 Cent's been busy selling vitamin water and courting Hollywood.

There are enticing moments, to be sure--it would be impossible not to have a few, with a top-dollar roster of production talent including DJ Premiere, Dr. Dre and Polow da Don. But the cameos by Eminem (on the tired and tossed-off "Psycho") and R&B superstar R. Kelly ("Could've Been You," one of two ill-advised Fiddy smooth jams) add nothing, and the millionaire businessman's rhymes about scheming bitches, treacherous drug dealers and his allegedly unrivaled ability to beat all rivals to a bloody pulp have never sounded more predictable, boring, contrived or thoroughly insincere.

As is perhaps inevitable with any band that's built a 15-year career and an eight-album discography, fans have been grousing that "Weezer should go back to being Weezer" for years now. With its last release in 2008, its third self-titled disc or "the Red Album," the alt-era survivors and emo progenitors made a partial detour from the arena rock of recent years to return to the willfully naïve, exuberantly bouncy, heart-on-sleeve pop of their first self-titled disc and 1994 debut--though even gems such as "Heart Songs" weren't enough to please the grousers.

The only thing that could make them happy, it seems, would be "Pinkerton, Part 2." But bandleader and primary songwriter River Cuomo would be the first to tell you he could never really return to the troubled period of his life that produced that uniquely soul-baring epic, even if he wanted to.

With the wonderfully titled "Raditude," Cuomo appears to have stopped worrying about his history and fan base and begun to simply indulge his love for and mastery of pop song craft, in particular as it's practiced on the pop charts circa 2009. Though his nasal voice and the band's essential guitar-bass-drums attack will always mark his latest collection of songs as Weezer product, Cuomo could well have sold some of this material to, say, Lady Gaga (the band has been covering her "Poker Face" live of late) or any number of current hip-hop, R&B or pop chart-toppers (Cuomo also wrote a tune for Katy Perry). Guest producers include Polow Da Don,; Weezer has fleshed out and glossed up the poignant and brilliant "Can't Stop Partying," a collaboration with Jermaine Dupri first heard on a 2008 demos collection, with a much snazzier groove and a cameo by Lil Wayne (Weezer and Weezy, side by side!) and "I'm Your Daddy" is the best R. Kelly song that Kelly never wrote.

Of course, Weezer being Weezer, there also are some songs that couldn't have been done anyone else, in particular "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" and "Put Me Back Together," as well as a mind-boggling detour or two, including the sitar-powered Bollywood jam, "Love Is the Answer." It all combines to make what may be the most uneven and inconsistent album of the group's career, yet it also is one of its most entertaining and just plain fun.

One of the most exciting bands to emerge in the new millennium, the Strokes have spent much of the time since their 2001 debut "Is This It" lowering the expectations set by that classically New York, Velvet Underground-influenced explosion of droning melodies, speed-fueled guitars and runaway subway train rhythms. "Room on Fire" (2003) and "First Impressions of Earth" (2006) were hardly dismal efforts, but neither expanded the basic formula the way the Velvets continually stretched the boundaries of their sound, and the wait for album number four has officially grown interminable as band members are torn by the constant distractions of various solo projects.

Now the group's voice, primary songwriter and laidback if undeniable leader has given us his solo bow, a concise, eight-track, 40-minute set that takes its name from an Oscar Wilde essay ("Phrases and Philosophies for Use of the Young") and which veers far and wide for the sort of stylistic diversity sorely missing in the Strokes. Unfortunately, the results only make a fan miss that band more.

Julian Casablancas' delightfully laconic vocals remain as appealing as ever, and he still flaunts an unerring ear for hooks so casual and seemingly effortless you forget how infectious they are. These talents shine on the opening "Out of the Blue" and "Left & Right in the Dark," as well as the dark but frenetic "River of Brake Lights." But these suffer from the sterile computer rhythms; why use a drum machine when you have one of the greatest human rhythm machines in rock with Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti?

Elsewhere, though memorable melodies still abound, Casablancas sounds painfully out of his element--a New Yorker dressed head to toe in black leather stranded on a sunny beach. Witness the misguided lo-fi dance track "11th Dimension," the awkward computer-orchestrated ballad "Glass" or the bizarre drunken blues/uptight freak-folk of "Ludlow St." One wishes that producers Jason Lader and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) would have provided a bit more guidance. But one wishes even more for the return of Casablancas' old prep school mates.

At a time when the horrors of reality easily trump the vivid imaginations of the most wicked fantasists, what is a band that regularly traffics in gore and blasphemy to do? Unsurprisingly, Slayer's 10th studio album is among the most overtly political of its long and punishing career, with songs such as the title track, "Hate Worldwide," "Public Display of Dismemberment," "Americon" and "Not of This God," and four different CD covers that, when combined, create a map of the world covered in blood and bones.

Of course, as the many devoted fans of this most extreme and influential of thrash bands will cheerfully testify, the core of its appeal has never been the lyrics that raise the ire of blue bloods; those just help set the mood for one of the most unrelentingly powerful sounds in rock. And amid rumors of its impending retirement from live performance (apparently false) and with hardly any of the new tunes written before the band entered the studio (a departure from its usual methodology), Slayer incorporated more of the hardcore punk influence than it's displayed since the mid '80s, attacking with an undiminished fury belying the fact that it's fast approaching the third decade of its career.

How can these gents defy the inevitable aging process that has sidelined so many other monstrous metal bands? Perhaps steel-throated bassist-vocalist Tom Araya is offering a clue when he howls about "drinking blood for vanity" in "Beauty Through Order," though he swears this pleasant ditty actually is about "the first known female serial killer," Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who was said to be fond of bathing in the blood of virgins. In any event, like the rest of this disc, the song will send fans of "Twilight" and "The Vampire Diaries" running in horror, and the Slayer faithful wouldn't have it any other way.

When British ingénue Joss Stone first hit the music scene, she was a welcome change of pace from the many other teen pop princesses. For one, she actually could sing, with a smoky, soulful voice that belied her age. For another, she showed a genuine affinity for old-school R&B, even as the producers of her first two albums, "The Soul Sessions" (2003) and "Mind, Body & Soul" (2004), did their best to obscure it with an overly pristine sound pandering to commercial gloss.

Like so many of her peers, however--see also: Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson--the now 22-year-old Stone began to buck against the system that had fostered her, and her frustrations are given full voice on her fourth studio effort, which she claims to have written and recorded in about a week in her native Devon. The controversial cover art depicts her crammed into a cage with limbs numbered like the cuts on a chart in a butcher's shop, while the first single, "Free Me," spells out her gripes with her music-industry oppressors. "Don't tell me that I won't/I will," she sings with throaty defiance. "Don't tell me that I'm not/I am/Don't tell me that my master plan/Ain't coming through."

Noble sentiments, to be sure, but the problem is that Stone doesn't really have a master plan, or the discerning ear to tell her best moments (the more fiery, up-tempo, Aretha-lite grooves) from her worst (the schlocky slow jams, the worst of which, a dreadful cover of the Nat King Cole standard "L-O-V-E," thankfully was cut from the American edition of this album). She inexplicably reteams with two of the producers, Jonathan Shorten and Connor Reeves, responsible for her earlier, watered-down sounds; she trots out the pointless celebrity cameos (Jeff Beck, Sheila E., Nas and David Sanborn, though Raphael Saadiq is a welcome presence), and most of all, she seems more than a bit hypocritical railing against the system while remaining in its ranks and issuing this disc as yet another exclusive corporate commodity, available only through Target and iTunes.

"The world is a vampire," Billy Corgan sang back in the mid-'90s, but the Great Pumpkin was ahead of his time: These days, it's impossible to sit in front of a television or movie screen without catching some glimpse of the undead--now all unnaturally beautiful teens or twentysomethings--set to appropriately moody post-alternative dinner music. No one has made these pairings more skillfully, however, than that master musical sommelier, Chicago native Alexandra Patsavas, the in-demand music supervisor who scores "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gossip Girl," and now the second installment of "The Twilight Saga," the new film "New Moon."

It's a testament to both Patsavas' reputation as a tastemaker and the massive popularity of all things "Twilight" that the soundtrack includes some real coups, with artists who rarely contribute to this sort of project, including a fabulously creepy solo track from Radiohead's Thom Yorke; inspired collaborations between indie darlings Bon Iver and St. Vincent ("Roslyn") and Grizzly Bear and Victoria Legrand of Beach House ("Slow Life"), and worthy contributions from Death Cab for Cutie, Lykke Li, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Killers, whose mix of glam-rock bombast is leavened with just the right touch of self-parody here on "A White Demon Love Song."

Even if you think tween vampire flicks suck, there are plenty of good moments here to download for your Halloween party. Just be sure not to listen in the sunlight.