What's entering the pop music spotlight this week?

• Avril Lavigne's Hot is the highest debut of this week's new songs. You know, her stuff pretty much all sounds the same. It's not genius, but she's got reliably decent songs with solid production and OK singing. This one is a little quicker than mid-tempo and has plenty of rock guitar sound, but it is such a standard-issue Avril Lavigne song that it seems familiar--even if you've never heard it before.
• Ludacris returns to the charts with Down In The Dirty, featuring guests Rick Ross and Bun B (who, I presume, is looking for opportunities to make a career after the death of his UGK partner, Pimp C). I found Ludacris' last couple of singles painfully bad, lacking his self-effacing humor and cheerful exaggerations, so I find this tune to be a bit of a return to form for the man from Atlanta. And his return is very much welcome.
• In the UK, the big debut this week is Basshunter's Now You're Gone. It's funny, this is exactly the song that illustrates how British, and more broadly, European pop music differs from what we enjoy here in the United States (and is a big reason why I watch the UK charts). This is a club track at its core, using a triple-meter variant of good, old-fashioned trance music. You would never hear this on the radio or see it on MTV in these parts, but the Brits are considerably less prejudiced against dance music. Still, this isn't really a very good song and the odd triplets, programmed to be intentionally stilted, make the song's rhythm track feel awkward.
• Another UK debut I'm listening to this week is a new single from Scouting For Girls called Elvis Ain't Dead. While I thought their last single, She's So Lovely, was pleasant enough, this track is hard to listen to carefully. It's a pedestrian, guitar-and-keyboard-driven sound that the folks on that island like to call "indie-rock". This song does illustrate a bit of a trend in the British indie-rock scene where bands are increasingly using layered vocal arrangements rather than the formerly more-typical solo singer.
• Finally, the band Mika sees its fourth single, by my count, reach the UK top 20. This time, it's Relax, Take It Easy, and this is the weakest song yet from this group. It's based on a vaguely electro-funk beat with a falsetto chorus and the whole thing just doesn't fit together particularly well. I was pretty sure I wouldn't buy their CD after hearing their cringe-inducing, treacly paean to heavier women, Big Girl, but this cinches the decision.

CDs listened to today:

• Louis Armstrong: Volume V: Louis In New York
• Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain
• The Cult: The Singles, 1984-1995
• Esa-Pekka Salonen: L.A. Variations
• Chen Yi: Chinese Folk Dance Suite
• Konono No. 1: Congotronics