MICHAEL JACKSON THE NUMBER ONE ARTIST IN WORLD?

Last summer when "The Girl Is Mine" was starting to ascend the charts—the first detonation from the mega-platinum explosion for which it was blazing a trail—a good friend of mine was swooning over the whispy ballad to her soon-to-be-formergirlfriend. As she continued to gush starry-eyed over the merits of the tune, her soon-to-be-former girlfriend curtly attempted to bring her back to reality.

"It's just an ordinary song," sniffed the highfalutin dame, whose tastes run towards Sonny Rollins. "The melody isn't that interesting, the chorus is forgettable and the production is pedestrian. I would expect that when two alleged superstars like that get together that they would come up with something slightly less feeble."

"It isn't feeble," my incensed friend said, baring her teeth. "And anyway, it's going to be number one, and who cores what you think anyway, and it's Michael Jackson and he's the best and his last album sold six million copies and he's the greatest and who cares what you think anyway and..."