Teen Pop

Just after the Bratz dolls and the Power Rangers get laid aside in favor of videogames and makeup kits, pop shifts into high energy. Once the province of boy bands, it's now territory where the grrrrrls rule with sugar and spice and everything naughty (check out Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl"). Sure, we'll allow the occasional Timberlake, but these Essentials belong to the likes of Avril ("Complicated," "My Happy Ending"), Britney (" . . . Baby One More Time") and Miley ("Breakout"). The Veronicas face off against the Jonas Brothers, in Next Steps.

After you get past the factory-fresh assortment of this year's models, there's a ton of great young artists out there. Some are due to graduate to the next demographic, some of them are, well, new kids on the block ready to move into prime time. One thing's for sure — the Veronicas are growing up fast, judging by 2008's "Take Me on the Floor," hardly the sort of lyric you're likely to hear from the Jonas Brothers, who keep Aussie teens sweet with lines like "She's be from Australia/She's so beautiful." Dreamy New York boys and spicy English girls energize the teen pop in Deep Cuts.

This is the kind of music that will grab you right around the ears and hang on: nothing subtle about it, which is the reason we're driven to listen. The Spice Girls didn't ask our permission — they told us what they wanted (what they really, really wanted) in terms that empowered a global army of future Spice Women ("Wannabe"), while *NSYNC laid down the law of teen love with "It's Gonna Be Me," and S Club 7 kept young hearts a-pumpin' with "Don't Stop Movin'."

Right around the time girls suddenly stop skipping everywhere and boys begin to get all . . . weird, there's a perfect instant in pop, delicate as a butterfly and resilient as a skateboard deck. Our Teen Pop Essentials capture that crazy, hormone-driven, can't-believe-the-parents-are-so-clueless worldview and serve it up in neat, three-minute slices. Unlike teen-pop stars of the past, whose sentiment was a little more innocent, today's performers exhibit an edgier view of the world they inhabit, from Britney's "Oops" to Ashley's "La La" to the Spice Girls' "Zig-a-zig-aaaah."