Let's talk about what's new in the pop music spotlight.

There are a lot of new songs again this week and I thought the crop was weaker than usual until I started writing this. It's actually a mixed bag!

• A band from my area, OneRepublic, has a new single. This time, they won't be out there with help from Timbaland, who substantially remixed their last, "Apologize". The new song is "Stop and Stare" and it certainly lacks the character of the previous tune.
• The Apple iPod effect has struck again, boosting Yael Naim's "New Soul" into the US top 20 after it appeared in an ad for the Apple MacBook Air. Shoot, I wasn't paying a lot of attention when my iTunes started playing it and thought it was a Feist tune at first. It's not bad at all, maybe not quite at the level of sophistication that Ms. Feist brings.
• Ne-Yo is back. It seems like he's been missing from the charts for a while, which just shows how frequently he visits. His new song, "Go On Girl", is a sugary arrangement and a rather insipid song.
• Hot Chip wouldn't be terribly welcome on the US charts, where more purely dance music isn't our thing. So for now, they're on the UK charts with "Ready For The Floor". It's a soulful track with a bouncy electronic beat, if not a lot of energy.
• "Bodysnatchers" from Radiohead is a track that seems a little heavier rock than usual. The tempo is pretty brisk, something I'd like to hear more of from these guys.
• One Night Only debuts with "Just For Tonight" and it's an odd duck. This is pretty much the indie rock style that still makes the UK pop charts, but the song has an odd tension that's never really resolved.
• "Crank Dat Batman" seems like it's another version of Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat". Of course, he didn't perform this, but I'm having trouble seeing why I should listen to this piece of low-budget cheese from the Pop It Off Boyz.
• Lil Mama is back with another joint in her signature style, "Shawty Get Loose". It's not quite as bouncy as "LipGloss", but it has the same high-energy chants and some guests that actually seem to drain the energy, rather than add to it.
• Speaking of Feist, she's enjoying a second minor hit with "I Feel It All". Not nearly as much fun as her earlier "1, 2, 3, 4", this song is still pretty good. It has a rollicking guitar rhythm that propels some singing that's a little more demonstrative than usual for Ms. Feist. She actually sounds like she's having a good time.
• "Feathers" by Coheed and Cambria sounds like every other song I've heard from them: a high-energy swirl of drums and precisely placed guitars back a helium-voiced singer. There's no reason for another one, is there?
• Jack Johnson returns with another one of those songs that seems to be targeted at parents of toddlers and pre-schoolers--no, not the zany, chaotic stuff of classics like Pee Wee Herman or Spongebob Squarepants, more like if the Teletubbies wrote pop songs. "If I Had Eyes" has a lilting gentle, groove and a simple, easy-to-sing melody where even the fast-moving parts seem measured and slow. He's hard to dislike, but golly, this isn't challenging stuff.
• Jimmy Eat World is a pretty reliable band. I hear some call them "emo" and I suppose that's largely true, given the raw emotional crises they sing about in straining, not-quite-punk arrangements. It's definitely better than most emo acts and this song has a lovely chorus.
• Need more dramatic, portentous arrangements? 30 Seconds To Mars is here for you, with "A Beautiful Lie"! Wow, the chorus on this one is over the top, ascending to a huge peak. Too bad the song's bombast undercuts that by simply not being bombastic enough. Fellas, you need to go all the way over the top to make this kind of song work!
• OK, oddball track of the week comes from Fuse TV's Oven Fresh, where they're featuring a clip from the film Juno. The film's stars, Michael Cera and Ellen Page, shyly sing a brief, off-key, awkward duet called "Anyone Else But You" to a gently-strummed guitar or two. Sweet, but not worth hearing too many times.
• Even with some stiff competition, this week's most awful track is "Sun Goes Down" by David Jordan. It has a kitchen sink in it, along with folk song elements, a big art-rock chorus, twangy guitars, horns, steel drums and a really bad song on top of this mess.
• Elliot Minor has actually brought us an up-tempo song. "Still Figuring Out" shows that no matter how fast you play a song, there's a producer who can file off the rough edges and make it sound boring. Of course, Mr. Minor is a pretty ordinary performer, so he was half-way to boring before the producers got hold of this one.

CDs listened to today:

• Juraj Filas: Sonata for Trombone And Piano (At the end of the century)
• Bill Watrous: The Tiger Of San Pedro
• Alfred Schnittke: Symphony No. 8
• Ludwig van Beethoven: The String Quartets, disk 1
• Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique
• William Schuman: Symphony no. 10 (Gerard Schwarz conducting)
• Hector Berlioz: Grande Symphonie Funebre et Triomphale