I haven’t stayed in great touch with Mariah — like I said, I pretty much stopped listening to commercial radio eight years ago — but the memory of her from the early ’90s has haunted the entire decade that has made up my 20s. As a teenager I spent countless afternoons after school, alone in my parents’ living room, belting out “Vision of Love” as the video played on VH1. (As a little, little girl riding in the “way-back” of my parents’ station wagon, I dreamt of being discovered by a radio executive because I knew every word to every song in the top 10 of Casey Kasem’s weekly top 40. As a 16-year-old with a decent voice, I subconsciously believed that hollering along to “Vision of Love” was going to get me somewhere — if not a record contract, then a boyfriend enchanted by my somewhat agile voice.) “Someday,” Mariah’s incredibly upbeat revenge hit that played on B104 at least once every hour of my junior year of high school, summed up my teenage angst and anger better than any Cure song could. And “Love Takes Time” — has any breakup ballad ever put it better?

Around then, my true loves were probably Jane’s Addiction, New Order and the Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head.” But Mariah, she got to me. “But the catsuit!” exclaims a friend, recalling her outfit in the “Vision of Love” video. OK, sure. But compared with other manufactured divas of that era, Mariah was the real deal. She wrote her own songs! She could really, really sing!

For most of the late ’90s, I watched from afar as Mariah coasted along, putting out more and more ballads and, eventually, a collection of greatest hits. Her outfits got worse and worse but, I must admit, I loved seeing her defiantly busting out of her clothes all the time on billboards around downtown. (Mariah is no Kate Moss.) However, when she suffered a very public breakdown in 2001, following her disastrous screen debut in “Glitter” and the tanking of the film’s ’80s-throwback soundtrack, I quickly snapped to, and rushed back to her side.

The press (and most of the public, it seemed) didn’t have much sympathy for Mariah. I understood why. The year before, she had signed a record-setting $80 million, five-year contract with Virgin records. (The deal was later dissolved.) She had been the bestselling female performer of the 1990s, with 13 No.1 singles and more weeks spent at the top of the Hot 100 singles chart than any other artist in history. She was famous and beautiful; she was, obviously, rich; she dated Yankees shortstop cutie Derek Jeter. It was easy to think that 2001 had brought Mariah’s day of reckoning: a 10-year run was enough; it was her turn to crash and burn and fade. Months later, when she finally spoke about the breakdown, she attributed her bizarre behavior — performing an impromptu striptease on MTV, writing rambling, suicidal messages on her Web site — to exhaustion. But it was fair to wonder, as many people did: Can someone as wealthy and successful as Mariah Carey really be more exhausted than your average fan?

I caught Mariah on “Oprah” doing damage control post-breakdown, around the time that her rebound record “Charmbracelet” came out. I was with Oprah: I felt sorry for the girl. On the show, she was surprisingly articulate and credible; when she described shuttling back and forth between L.A. and New York while making “Glitter” — and suffering from insomnia to boot — her breakdown seemed inevitable. Poor Mariah, I thought, spending all those nights in the studio and on red-eye flights. As she sang her inspirational hymn “Through the Rain,” and explained that it was all about her personal struggle to keep going, to survive, I teared up a little. She’s just a hard-working woman with a dream, I thought. She gives so much money to the Fresh Air Fund that they named an entire campsite after her. She doesn’t have a husband and spends most of her time with her mom. Why do people so love to hate her?

“Charmbracelet,” unfortunately, was a throwaway — a record rushed into production with the hopes that it would erase “Glitter” and the breakdown from minds of her fans. It bombed (though not quite as badly as “Glitter”) and, in its wake, things continued to look grim for Mariah’s future. So news earlier this year of a second comeback, one saddled with the improbable title “The Emancipation of Mimi” (after a nickname used by those closest to Mariah), was greeted with a groan by many, including me. A few weeks ago, when “Mimi” was hitting the stores, I held my breath and said a little prayer for Mariah, expecting the worst. And when the record debuted at No. 1, I quickly exhaled. The songstress of redemption and healing had done it. As she hopefully sang a few years ago, she “made it through the rain.” Mariah was back on top.

“Mimi” had a very strong first week of sales, moving 404,000 copies, and it’s currently sitting at No. 2 (behind the Boss) as it approaches its first million sold. The critics, by and large, are liking it (and I am, too). The first single, “It’s Like That,” didn’t get too far up the charts, maybe because the song is a fun but bland hip-hop throwaway that could have been sung by anyone. Indeed, Mariah’s voice here, and on a few other tracks, is barely recognizable as her own. The second single, a slow jam called “We Belong Together” that cuts a bit closer to the classic Mariah mold, is faring better, hanging in at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

“Mimi” makes it clear that Mariah’s voice is not what it used to be. The record holds a few signature Mariah flourishes, but mostly the diva is subdued here, playing it safe by avoiding the highest of her five octaves and staying within a tighter vocal range. It’s a little mean to say, but I honestly cringe at the thought of the woman on “Mimi” attempting the feats Mariah pulled off on songs like her 1992 MTV Unplugged cover of the Jackson 5′s “I’ll be There,” or the triumphant pop love song “Emotions.” As she ages, perhaps this is the formula for success. At 35, less of Mariah is actually more. It’s a sad fact of aging, but I’m very grateful she and her smart producers (including Jermaine Dupri and the Neptunes) recognized it.

I’m impressed. Just a year ago it looked as though Mariah was destined to be the next Whitney Houston. Remember her? Mariah’s soul sister, with her ex-star husband and her drug problems? Thanks to the tabloids and 10 o’clock news, an entire generation knows Whitney as a supposed crack addict instead of the girl in the tank dress singing into the telephone “How will I know if he really loves me?” or the poised young woman who covered millions with goose bumps when she covered Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” for her movie “The Bodyguard,” which seemed destined to make her a major movie star. Although she’s got an active contract with Arista and put out a full-length record in the late ’90s — one that garnered modest critical and commercial success — it seems unlikely that she’ll ever reclaim her former glory. Should she even try? The public is unforgiving; to most of us, Whitney Houston seems like a lost cause.

Mariah, on the other hand, appears to have been found, yet again. Scoff as you like at the title of her new record, but Mimi has indeed been emancipated. And I, for one, am delighted.

“Wasted Beauty” primarily concerns a young woman named Reba, who lives with her brother, Billy, on an upstate New York farm. On weekends, the two of them come to the city to sell apples at the farmer’s market in Union Square. Billy dreams of making apple farming his living, while Reba tries to figure out how to make something, anything, of herself. They’ve lost both of their parents to illness and are stuck with bills and an overdue mortgage; Billy, additionally, is saddled with a crush on his 19-year-old sister that fills him with hatred toward her, not to mention deep self-loathing.

Eventually, Reba finds a way off the farm: modeling. She is discovered in a McDonald’s, rechristened Rena, and sent off to shoots and parties all over New York. (This, inevitably, leads to her on- and off-again heroin use.) Billy becomes a drifter on a search for his sister, whose every magazine photo makes him lust after her more and more. He winds up broke and homeless, and, after a nasty street fight, institutionalized.

Rick, Billy’s E.R. doctor, is the other main character in “Wasted Beauty.” His story is woven through with Rena’s even before their inevitable meeting. He is in midlife, married with two kids, dreaming of cheating and leaving but never really doing either. He pops Viagra and beats off to porn. He spies on his neighbors having rote sex. Like Rena, he is neither bad nor good. He is human, and confused, and wanting not much more than to figure out how to be happy without hurting too many other people.

Indeed, for all the stretched circumstances and dark corners, the themes in “Wasted Beauty” are familiar: How do you grow and try new things, but avoid excess? How do you love others and preserve yourself? How do you deal with desire responsibly? What does it mean to love? Bogosian tells his characters’ stories through alternating second and third person, giving voice to the thoughts of Rena and Rick and Billy, and then stepping back to describe their encounters from the outside. He laces together changing voices and thoughts with great agility, never confusing his reader or leaving her behind.

But Bogosian’s greatest skill lies in his ability to keep the story moving, to keep the interior monologues interesting and enlightening, to keep things edgy, while also keeping them real. It’s not that these are people you necessarily know — we’re dealing with an E.R. doctor, a model and a mental patient here — but they are recognizable. It’s a compelling tension that makes reading “Wasted Beauty” both tremendously fun and poignant. There’s no gimmickry here, just storytelling.

Yet, there’s also a happy ending. It comes off as a little overly hopeful, but after all Bogosian’s characters have been through by the end of “Wasted Beauty,” it’s as much a gift to his readers as it is to Rena and Rick.

Our next pick: An exciting first novel turns Akron, Ohio, into a surprising fantasyland

I suspected this might happen. My expectations for the show were low. Like blind dates, setups like this one have never panned out particularly well. Watching bands I love play to indifferent audiences of slim, styled Abercrombie-wearing TV teens plunges me into despair. Inevitably, the bands look old and, often, fat; the sets are brightly lit and unconvincing; the sound is, if not completely dubbed in, terrible. Last year, I made my news junkie friend Laura turn off a White House press conference on Iraq to watch the Shins perform on “Gilmore Girls” — what a mistake! When Aimee Mann made a forced, awkward appearance on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” a few years ago, she was shown walking offstage muttering, “I hate playing vampire towns” — a memorably bad line in a memorably well-written show. Modest Mouse — a band that’s been around for 12 years and started out with tiny K Records — on teen prime time? Don’t ask.

I don’t blame the musicians for the lack of chemistry. They’re there to serve as backdrop for an unfurling plot rather than connect with their fans. Most of the time the music isn’t even live. With Death Cab, their three songs were clearly dubbed in; the sound of “Title and Registration” as it faded in and out to allow for Summer and Marisa’s bantering, was pristine, right down to its very un-live synthetic beats. I admire that “OC” creator Josh Schwartz (whose tastes in music have been passed on to lead character Seth Cohen) and his music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas are bringing the music they love into their hit shows; they’ve helped fuel the recent revival of indie rock. Seth’s well-known adoration of Death Cab is, I suspect, in no small part responsible for the fact that the band signed a major-label deal last year. But these performances can’t be doing much of anything for these bands that the various “OC” and WB soundtracks haven’t done already. Watching a bunch of guys pushing 30 perform in front of a crowd of kids who look like they’d rather be at the mall, or checking out “The Amityville Horror,” would only seem to raise doubt about their mass appeal — not strengthen it.

Around the time the Shins performed on “Gilmore Girls” last year, I had just seen the band play two sold-out nights in a row at Irving Plaza here in New York. (I know, dorky, especially for a gal who’s pushing 30 herself.) Those crowds — mostly college-age girls and their messy-haired boyfriends — danced and sang along like they were at a Beatles show in 1964. “So Says I,” the first single from their second record “Chutes Too Narrow,” came off like a club hit; the girls shook their bobbed hair and twisted to the floor while the boys engaged in some seriously earnest head-nodding. It was thrilling, especially since the Shins aren’t exactly the Beatles. Meaning: Their lead singer is a small, thin-haired sweetheart with little stage presence; their keyboard player (and default frontman) is a chubby goofball; the other two band members are not particularly charismatic. In other words, teen idols The Shins are not.

When it’s live, who cares? The music is what matters; the too-loud sound connects you to the band. It’s what transforms Shins singer/songwriter/genius James Mercer from a modest every-boy to the most beautiful man you have ever seen hold a guitar. But on TV, in these unconvincing clubs that mysteriously allow teenagers, these great bands look flat and lame; instead of rock gods, they devolve into throwaway garage bands begging for prom gigs. On “Gilmore Girls,” Mercer looked so paranoid and out of context, and the crowd (with the noted exception of Rory) appeared so mismatched, you’d have thought the Shins were a last minute fill-in for N’SYNC. Last night on “The OC,” Ben Gibbard was the only one of the Death Cab quartet to get any real face time, and that which he did was terrible. During “Sound of Settling” he looked absolutely spastic, there were so many jump cuts. And the lovable Gibbard — who, like Mercer, doesn’t have the looks your average female fan would dream up to go with his agile and warming voice — was shot from the side, so that the only sense you got of him was a blur of black, Clark Kent-style glasses and a mole on his cheek.

But it’s good marketing, right? All the kids watching “The OC” spend money on CDs and legal downloads after seeing the band on the show? But what was so wrong with keeping the music to the soundtrack, in the background? I’d rather associate a song with a kiss between Seth and Summer, or a fight between Ryan and some water polo player, than a limp hangout scene in the Bait Shop. On the stage, there’s no drama. A band is nothing more than a prop, a song is never loud enough, the very cute guitar player is never visible. The setup takes all the joy out of a live performance, and all the excitement out of a truly dramatic moment. It’s a waste.

And I’d rather keep my dates predictable. If “The OC” and its WB cousins keep trying to set me and my television up for some kind of crazy minage-a-quatre, I might have to break up with someone. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to be the band.

But don’t. At least not just yet. “Liz Phair,” produced in part by the Matrix (i.e., the folks who’ve brought us Avril Lavigne), may sound at first like a disc for the sub-17 set, but there are traces of the girl who made “Guyville” all over it. Phair’s been taking a pre-release beating for this record, and not just from my boyfriend but also, and probably more important, from actual rock critics. In Spin, Chuck Klosterman gave the new record a B-minus and put it this way: “[On 'Guyville,'] Phair deconstructed relationships with an insight that didn’t seem mortal. Now she plays videogames with some slacker dude.” But “Rock Me,” Phair’s song about hanging out with the cute kid and his Xbox, isn’t that simple. Shouldn’t she get some points for subversion? Admit it: An empowered, 36-year-old, divorced single mom who picks up a guy nine years younger and uses him for sex kinda rocks.

Speaking with Phair by phone on the eve of the scaled-down Field Day Festival (originally planned for eastern Long Island, the festival was moved at virtually the last minute to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.), I ask what she makes of people who continue to lament that she hasn’t made another album like “Guyville.”

“I don’t know what to say,” says Phair, with a trace of irritation. “I’m really happy that I made ‘Exile in Guyville’ — I love that record. But I don’t know that it’s possible for me to go back and make a ‘Guyville.’ That was really a product of me being 20 and having nothing else to do but sit around and get stoned and play guitar all day long.” After her annoyance subsides, she adds, ” I think people who choose to keep one thing that they do and just circle it again and again — that’s valid. That’s great, but that’s just not the kind of person I am.”

Besides, she notes, “I like big sounds.”

Although “big sounds” came through on “Whip-Smart” (think of “Supernova”) and “Whitechocolatespaceegg” (the title track, or “Polyester Bride”), this remark still comes as a bit of a surprise. It’s been easy to assume all along that Phair’s steady drift toward the mainstream came from an impulse outside herself — from some corporate pressure to capitalize on the success of “Guyville” by producing songs that are attractive to millions rather than thousands. In fact, Phair explains, each of her subsequent records has come closer to the way that she wants her music to sound.

“I used to feel afraid of being in a room with ‘real musicians,’” she confesses. “I didn’t feel like I had a voice enough to say what I wanted or to get to a place where the song felt like what I wanted. As I’ve been working, I’ve become more comfortable in those environments — and they’re less lo-fi and more hi-fi. I feel comfortable experimenting.” It’s hard to believe, but the same woman who redefined bedroom politics with songs like “Guyville’s” “Flower” (“every time I see your face/ I get all wet between my legs”) and “Whip-Smart’s” “Chopsticks” (“he said he liked to do it backwards/ I said that’s just fine with me/ that way we can fuck and watch TV”) was actually afraid of calling the shots in the studio.

Phair’s present self-possession was hard-won. Her marriage, subsequent divorce and newfound single-mom status, she says, have all made her tougher: “Going through what I went through was really difficult, and coming out on the other end OK made me feel pretty powerful as a person,” says Phair, now 36. And the same experiences that differentiate the old Liz Phair from the new have also defined “Liz Phair.” Where “Guyville’s” appeal resided in its universality — whoever you were, there seemed to be a song on that record that described your feelings about relationships — the new record’s strength lies in its intimacy. That the record is self-titled is no coincidence: These songs are Liz Phair.

Take, for example, “Red Light Fever,” a track about a relationship that stalls because the guy won’t commit. “That was about a really intense relationship that I had right after my marriage. I thought we were going to get married,” Phair says. “It was very messy but very passionate. I watched him being really self-destructive and really torn — he couldn’t decide which way to go. He couldn’t move ahead with me in his life and he couldn’t just stay where he was. I couldn’t help him.”

Then there’s “Friend of Mine,” a slower, sorrowful description of post-breakup exhaustion. (“I don’t have the heart to try/ one more false start in life/ It’s been so hard to get it right.”) When I ask Phair about it, she says ruefully, “That was also about the relationship after the divorce.” “Little Digger,” about Phair’s six-and-a-half-year-old son, “is me imagining,” she says. “It’s me giving him a voice. The hardest thing about divorcing was that he had no say in the things that were happening to him. What I do will affect this person forever. It’s his life, and that’s what this song is about.”

Still, for all the emotion underpinning what are, for the most part, upbeat pop anthems, Phair insists that everything is going pretty well. “I have a million things to do. I don’t have this uninterrupted freedom and I can’t get stoned all the time anymore,” she says, “but I’m really more enjoying my day-to-day moments. I’m really in them as opposed to standing outside myself going, ‘What if you do that? What will happen then?’ I think I’m much happier.”

It shows. Songs like “Why Can’t I?” and “Favorite” are positively ecstatic — to the point that they practically sound as though they’re by someone else. In a more familiar vein, there’s “H.W.C.,” a chipper paean to “hot white cum” — the “fountain of youth” and “the meaning of life,” in Phair’s formulation.

Still, just as “Divorce Song” from “Guyville” perfectly described the common early-adulthood experience of corrupting a friendship with sex — “It’s harder to be friends than lovers/ and you shouldn’t try to mix the two/ ‘Cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy/ Then you know that the problem is you” — so a handful of Phair’s new tracks capture the tensions in more mature relationships nearly as well. We shouldn’t write Phair off because she became a well-adjusted adult. We should congratulate her instead.

Then I saw the Pepsi commercial.

If you watch the WB, UPN, Fox or any station that airs prime-time teen dramas, you’ve probably seen it, too. The spot goes like this: It’s late at night. A geeky clerk is closing down the minimart after a long day of hawking chips and beef jerky, mopping the floor, when he sees her: Shakira — or at least a life-size cardboard cutout of her, propped up at the end of an aisle as part of a Pepsi promotion. Our geek looks around and, seeing he’s completely alone, drops his mop to embrace the inhumanely rigid image of the petite singer.

The music starts; it’s “Objection (Tango),” the first cut from “Laundry Service.” His sheer desire turns cardboard Shakira into the real thing, all flesh and hair. They tango. He’s in heaven. And of course, she drinks Pepsi.

I have never had an ad work such magic on me. But the effect wasn’t the intended one; I’ve always been a Coke drinker, and always will be. The Pepsi spot did make me want to possess Shakira, on CD. Immediately.

First, the music. “Objection (Tango)” — a slow-building tango updated with electric guitars and bass laid overtop more traditional accordion and piano — is irresistible. [Download the song here.] Its opening bars lodged in my head like the best bits of certain “guilty pleasure” radio hits: parts of Sublime’s “Santaria,” Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” and Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” all come to mind, keeping me up at night, providing a personal, slightly aggravating soundtrack to my everyday life. The staccato beat demands dramatic movement — preferably erotic dancing.

Add to this Shakira herself, and you have something way more potent than Pepsi. When the camera stares down the short grocery aisle to find live Shakira striking a pose worthy of Elvis, I was had. And when she gets body to body with the clerk and smiles in the most mischievous way, it’s clear she’s in on the joke. Who cares about the fucking Pepsi? These 30 seconds are owned by Shakira. This ad stands in marked difference to the overt way Pepsi usually peddles its cola through pop music. Last year we had the all-American pop-tart Britney singing the branded words “Joy of Pepsi.” Beyoncé Knowles has just done a minute-long spot in which she performs a highly produced and dramatic version of “The March of Carmen,” with the lyrics rewritten to tell the story of a guy named Zeke who wants a — guess what? — Pepsi. [You can view it here. ] While you couldn’t miss the point with Britney or Beyoncé, the Shakira spot simply doesn’t work as a vehicle for selling soda. What it does do, and remarkably well, is plant that little seed of a perfect pop song, along with an unforgettable image or two, in heads across America.

“Laundry Service” doesn’t quench my thirst for Shakira like the ad does — that pose, that sway, that smile! But I like it so far. There’s a song with overtones of the Cure, and another one that genuinely rocks. Still, I have yet to get past song No. 6. Around then I start to think back to the Pepsi dance, to crave that beat and accordion sound, and I tap the “back” button until it returns to No. 1. And then Shakira comes alive all over again.