I’m certainly glad people have come back around to pop music once again—it was too long and too often I would find myself in a bar, with friends, defending the merits of artists like the New Kids on the Block, or Debbie Gibson. True, those stars have faded into sweet yesteryear, but at least pop music remains strong. Stronger than ever, one might say.

Yes, for those who would denounce Hilary Duff as a second-tier Taylor Dane, let me, for one, confess my enthusiastic glee for today’s pop star. They are more engaging, more attractive, and I dare say, even more enduring than the pop stars of days gone by. This year marks Britney Spears’ seventh as a top-of-the-charts entertainer. Does that sound like a flash in the pan to you? I think not.

Still, the press coverage of the modern pop star leaves something to be desired. Yes, Rolling Stone may put Britney on their cover, and People may tell us she owns a nightclub and is moving into the foray of films. But what about the music? How is it we so easily forget it’s the songs that made us love her, not her beautiful features and her body. Why are more magazines and television interviewers not asking her where she gets her ideas? I want to know where those songs come from. I, for one, want to know what goes through her mind when she sings “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman.” I’m always reminded of the Bob Marley classic “No Woman, No Cry” when I hear those aching notes she sings. For that matter, how does she choose those songs she interprets? Why is it she knew, instinctively, her version of the much-covered Stones hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” would stand out as a hit, and not fade into music history as a forgotten note?

Of course, some would challenge, quite fairly, that most modern pop-stars are overproduced; the studioesque sheen is too thick to hear the tremendous textures of their voices and the individual instruments. I agree, and yet I disagree. I can’t turn down a good Jessica Simpson album, no matter how slick and manufactured it initially sounds to me. But to some extent, I’m with you—the only way to hear these pop performers is live. Oh, the glory! To be sitting front row at an N*Sync concert, to hear those fluid notes sail over the audience, it’s as close to heaven on earth as we get in this life.

Not that I can afford concert tickets these days, for what TicketMaster charges. So mostly I just pick up bootlegs. I have a few I’ve recorded myself, but like most bootleg collectors, I receive more by trading those already in my possession. Not that I’m adverse to buying them outright, even if it goes against the spirit of the true pop music bootleg collector. Just last week I traded two separate Aaron Carter bootlegs I own (one at the Hard Rock Café, London, the other at the Fillmore) and a Spice Girls at Budokan just so I could get a tape of demos and outtakes from Lindsay Lohan’s debut album. Did I get ripped-off? I don’t think of it like that. I have my copies, and the sound quality is quite spectacular on them, but what is most important is that I avail myself to the most recent pop phenomenon available, and Lindsay Lohan is it right now. As an actress and a singer (a regular double-threat), I firmly believe Lohan will be the most popular breakout media star since Jennifer Love-Hewitt.

And I needn’t tell you, it makes me embarrassed to be a pop fan when you see something like the Ashlee Simpson “Saturday Night Live” scandal from a few months back. I’m sure she was sincere in her excuse for it, but it did make all of us Ashlee Simpson fans look quite the fool.