Summertime guilty pleasures How Sarah got her groove back In HBO's voyeuristic treat "Sex and the City," Sarah Jessica Parker finally gets a role fit for a comedy goddess. By Joyce Millman

"No Scrubs" and "Livin' la Vida Loca" have gotten enough airplay by now for you to start getting sick of them. So far, they suggest the kind of durability that characterizes the best pop singles: They haven't yet given up their mystery or exhausted the pleasure they hold out. And the longer they stick around, the deeper they seem to be taking root in your head. But summer pop doesn't have to suggest that kind of durability to be fun. Maybe because summer is about surface pleasures, a season that seems to both stretch out forever and vanish overnight, we're more open to the pleasures of pop that doesn't go as deep. Right now it seems utterly beside the point to wonder about the staying power of Jennifer Lopez's album, "On the 6," or "Hawaii," the lead track off of Bijou Phillips' debut, "I'd Rather Eat Glass" (best album title so far this year). Phillips (the daughter of Mamas and the Papas founder John Phillips) struts her famously decadent rock 'n' roll heritage by playing the role of teen scenester drama queen. I'm not sure what it is that's got her so worked up on "Hawaii": The combination of mundane and weird details that build up over the course of the first few verses paint a relationship that's likely in trouble -- but it also sounds as if the couple enjoys the turmoil. By the end, Phillips' voice is breaking with teenage petulance. She seems to be making impossible demands, and that's what's thrilling about it. (Rock 'n' roll should demand the unreasonable.) There's no telling what she intends the central metaphor ("Like Hawaii in the winter/like Hawaii in the fall") to mean, only that her delivery makes it sound as if she's imparting crucial information. When she slips away at the end with a coyly drawn-out "A-lo-ha" she takes the solution to the mystery with her. She's zoomed into the room, tossed the furniture upside down and slipped out a side door before we're even sure why she came. Half the time, I find myself starting the song over to look for clues.

Lopez's debut, a cunningly selected mixture of dance pop and Latin pop, isn't that perplexing. The pleasure of "On the 6" is the pleasure of handsome production that balances professionalism with energy. It may contradict what I said about the fleeting pleasures of summer pop, but part of the reason you surrender to this album is that it's been made by people who've taken care not to make it sound like a rush job, and to make sure that Lopez remains a warm presence at the center of every song. "On the 6" has just the right amount of polish.

That polish winds up feeling like shellac on "Schizophonic," the debut from Geri Halliwell, the former Ginger Spice. When the Spice Girls first appeared, there was plenty to resent them for: the shallow and wholly opportunistic platitudes about "Girl Power" and their comment about how it had been exhibited by Margaret Thatcher (though British journalist Julie Burchill beat them to that particular piece of idiocy). But at some point it just became too easy to hate them, too much the thing you did to show your superiority, either to a younger generation of pop fans or to the notion of pop itself. Maybe you have to remember when the only pop idols marketed to girls were fey, puppy-dog crooners, but I was starting to get a kick out of seeing little girls done up in "Girl Power" T-shirts. I liked that kids so young could listen to a piece of pop and feel, "This was made for me." And while I'd hesitate to make a case for the Spice Girls as good, a couple of the singles, particularly "Say You'll Be There," won me over; I perked up when they came on the radio.

Next page | Geri slips out of the Union Jack drag-queen glad rags