The day after Christmas, I discovered Ke$ha's "TiK ToK." I listened to the tune once. Then again. And again and again. Then I finally set my iTunes on "Repeat One" and listened to nothing else for a few hours. With lyrics like "Before I leave, I brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack" and "Now the dudes are lining up 'cause they hear we got swagger / But we kick 'em to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger," I easily identified with Ke$ha's teenage angst. So did all of America, apparently. Pop poetess Ke$ha has emerged in 2009's eleventh hour as a very viable threat to Lady Gaga. But alas, some pop songs were built--by geniuses no less--to be broken down and picked apart. Before this year, you actually heard "TiK ToK"--or at least its signature riff--in a Kylie Minogue stomper that bowed earlier this century.

Christmas is that magical, precious time of year when many of us will make up for months of missed calls home by buying totally useless crap for the people we love. Yes, Christmas is magical. Our pop stars think so, too. In the spirit of giving, they will take time-honored Christmas classics and then cover them in a last-minute seasonal cash-in. No contemporary carol has been reinvented more than late great Eartha Kitt's "Santa Baby." Today, we get to hear another desperate remake of Kitt's jingle, this one by beleaguered Brit band Sugababes. Following covers of the tune by Madonna, Kylie, Shakira, and even Taylor Swift, it not only sounds redundant, it seals the song's fate as the Gayest Christmas Carol Ever.

● That report of Lindsay Lohan and Gerard Butler getting it on in Morocco was shot down by Lohan, and Butler is threatening legal action against the British papers who printed the story. [GossipCop]
● Where do you go after getting publicly fired from your show? Disneyland! Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and husband Pete Wentz took little Bronx to the happiest place on earth to lift her spirits. [PopSugar]
● Rihanna says of all the media attention she received after the Chris Brown incident: "I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears." [USA]

If you're unaware who Calvin Harris is, you've probably already been cutting a rug to one of his slick mixes. Like his upgrade of Katy Perry's "Waking Up in Vegas" for example. It's also likely that you've caught wind of his recent studio escapades with Jake Shears and Kylie Minogue. So you'd think with all that, plus a #1 album in his homeland, the man who created disco would be stomping around with a god complex. Instead, Harris channels charm and humility when discussing lofty topics like plans for the future and more importantly, the impending apopalypse.

So sometime in between charting her North American take-over and crystallizing her next gem with Calvin Harris and a Scissor Sister, Kylie Minogue took a little time out to dabble in Bollywood. She was recruited to the tune of about $1 million to perform a four-minute tune composed by Slumdog Millionaire's A.R. Rahman.

Somewhere around the world, people are freaking out about swine flu again and Kate Gosselin won't shut up. But let's take a deep breath and shake off this stuff of heartbreak. Because in an age when none of us are immune to poverty, disease, and Kate Gosselin, pop music will be saved! Kylie Minogue, Calvin Harris, and the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears are holed up in a studio today probably working on the one anthem that could undo years of destruction ravaged on this earth by everyone from You-Know-Who to Flo Rida.

Kylie Minogue has nothing to prove. She’s the sweetheart of just about every nation in the world. Countless European tabloid covers have devoted serious headline space to her romance with Italian pin-up Andrés Velencoso, 10 years her junior. The mini-divinity has not one, but five fragrances. She was even honored with the prestigious Order of the British Empire and the French Order of Arts and Letters. So why, exactly, has Minogue’s career not taken off Stateside? Maybe it’s because she hasn’t toured in North America since first chugging along to “The Loco- Motion” in 1987. Even Neighbours, the TV soap opera that gave birth to her illustrious career, was broadcast almost exclusively for Australian and European audiences. But all that’s about to change as the gamine, 41-year-old entertainer from Down Under takes her spectacular live show this side of the pond for the first time ever. Through each endeavor and incarnation—from Charlene, the garage mechanic on Neighbours, to the early-’90s shiny bubblegum-pop princess and the moody soul-searcher alongside Nick Cave, to the breast cancer survivor and activist—Kylie stays Kylie. Both sexy and likeable, she is the diva-next-door.

Recently, none other than pop impresario Beyoncé invited me over to her manse and hosted an invitation-only soft-topics panel [note: did not actually happen], wherein she explained the nuances of being a diva, most specifically noting how "Diva is a female version of a hustler." When I raised my hand and asked, "What do you hustle? Strange-looking sunglasses and freakum dresses?" she cracked her whip and shrieked, "Quiet down, child." Well, then. But through the course of this seemingly endless week, Beyoncé and her ilk did a number of things that divas tend to do.

If conspiracy theories about the Chinese government are to be believed, absolutely nothing happened 20 years ago in Tiananmen Square. No blood was spilled over cries for economic progress. So how to ruffle a few red feathers among the communist bureaucracy? By staging choral arrangements of a relevant Joan Baez standard? No! Even better, by having dissenters balance boomboxes on their shoulders, blasting the single thing that organized governments and revolutionaries who despise organized governments detest equally: pop music. Consider it a new wave in a war of attrition.

Tonight on American Idol, Paula Abdul will be stumbling onstage, hair tousled and blouse wrinkled. She will be performing a new tune which is sure to bowl all of us over and herald the return of pop. Additionally, she may very well mime the words, because the performance will undoubtedly include intricate choreography. Her dancing will make you tenderly recall that time your spinster sister got knackered on wine coolers at your wedding and tried to unsuccessfully re-create the "Single Ladies" dance routine step for step in a bid to tell off relatives who, to this day, hush-hushedly admonish her woeful singledom. But as a pop peddler, even Abdul's got a bit of a green (i.e. recycling) thumb. "Here for the Music" is just the latest instance of Abdul's rummaging through Kylie Minogue's pop pile for anything that could tangentially go Top 40.