Pay to Slum: Oldsmobile Cailat

Video: Colbie Caillat - "Fallin' For You" (live at Six Flags, Louisville)

"And Lady GaGa's 'LoveGame' is still No. 5," states this week's Billboard chart action report, and you can almost sense the screen saying "I know, can you believe it?" While GaGa herself reads Billboard's statement and declares that she hasn't lost a step in the bed, America reads it and figures it's true: her best material peaked too early, and now there's no one left to fight off will.i.am's advances. We need a hero.

The problem with today's pop heroes is that they fly too close to earth. They're awesome all of the sudden, but then slam through three or four billboards on the interstate before skidding a few times and coming to a stop in a pile of "Why is THIS on your iPod?" That leaves the veterans -- "Check out the vintage section at this year's Lolla! I got some MCA-green Manic Panic!" -- and Michael Jackson -- "That's a big Sha-MOAN!" -- to grab the summer jam gauntlet. Can they do it? Probably. Vincent Hannah chimes in: "They will walk and you will let them."

Pacino and the screen are probably right. It's tough being a pop fan when's there no new jam to like or even dislike at any great volume. And just like that, Colbie Caillat drifts to a no. 12 debut on this week's chart, her "Falling for You" drifting like a Sunday morning stroll through Boredom Woods. It sure is pretty in here. Wait, which way is out? Hello? Anyone? Michael?

JTL

Each week Johnny Loftus will select a song from your hit parade to explicate, celebrate, or humiliate.

Colbie Caillat: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki