By Chris Richards
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, November 24, 2007

R. Kelly, the R&B maverick who's spent half a decade battling sexually related criminal charges, declares himself a "sexasaurus" on his latest disc, practically daring the world to write him off. Dude's crazy, right?

But just as his career seems about to implode -- whoosh-- his album debuts at the top of the charts, followed by a stadium tour that graces Verizon Center tomorrow night.

Britney Spears spirals from traffic citation to custody hearing to scalp-shearing meltdown while her singing career slides toward the brink of irrelevance. Girl. Is. Crazy. We lace up our boots, ready to kick a fallen former Mouseketeer to the pop-culture curb, when -- whoosh-- a frothy new album swoops in, delighting many fans and critics.

Amy Winehouse stumbles through the mediascape in a boozy daze, allegedly brawls with her beau and mangles her songbook on tour before taking a month-long sabbatical from the spotlight. Bona fide crazypants? Deja-whoosh-- her 2003 U.K. debut is rereleased stateside with Yankee devotees lining up to pledge allegiance to that bewitching, embattled voice.

The antics of pop-music stars might fuel endless tabloid tsk-tsking, but as our era of perpetual blog surveillance grants us unprecedented access to the artists we adore, an intriguing truth starts to emerge:

"Crazy-appeal" is stronger than ever.

"We love the drama as much as we love the music," says Danyel Smith, editor in chief of Vibe magazine. "We watch people like their lives are movies. We're living for the suspense, the twists, the turns."

And the soundtrack. Some of 2007's most brilliant pop music comes from artists waging hyper-public battles with vice, ego, expectations, the law, the bloggerati and/or Kevin Federline. And while the American highway to musical superstardom has long been littered with sin and squalor, we never got to see Johnny Cash passed out on YouTube. Now, we can't seem to get enough. And for a select few, just when the hoopla threatens to transform pop star into punch line . . . in comes luck, design or cold, hard talent.

Here's the gazillion-dollar question for an ailing music industry: Does crazy-appeal sell records?

"Is that a real question? Of course it sells!" Vibe's Smith harrumphs. "Controversy sells. Sex sells. Melodrama sells. People want to participate by buying a concert ticket. They want to download a song. They want to be a part of it."

But Craig Marks, editor in chief of Blender magazine, begs to differ. "There's no evidence that any of this controversy helps sell records or concert tickets," he says. "I think it only hurts. It's an inverse relationship between tabloid appearances and record sales."

In which case, crazy-appeal might just boil down to whether fans want to see an artist triumph or train-wreck. And either way, crazy sells best when you counter it with some quality jams.

"From the fans' perspective, if it's a good record, it's a good record," says Chuck Arnold, music critic at People magazine. "It erases all the controversy."

Michael Jackson, the embodiment of crazy-appeal gone awry, could certainly use a "good record" right about now. From being the self-described "King of Pop" to the tabloid-tagged "Wacko Jacko," Jackson's infamous descent registers as both tragic and surreal. Even a comeback of "Thriller"-esque proportions might never be enough to vanquish the specter of the umpteen plastic surgeries, the uber-creepy sleepovers, the weird pets, the babies dangling from hotel windows.

While Jackson's antics are hard to fathom, fans can better relate to the more commonplace vices of an Amy Winehouse.

"Most people are not carving their boyfriend's names in their tummies with broken glass," says Smith of Vibe. "But you might be having a fight with your boyfriend, and Amy's fight with her boyfriend seems more real and interesting than yours does to you."

And then there's R. Kelly, whose troubles almost no fan can relate to. Facing 14 charges related to child pornography, the singer went from famous to infamous in 2002 when a video surfaced of him allegedly having sex with a minor. He's been battling the charges ever since.

"I think that fans ignore" the charges, says Brian Davis, music contributor to the R&B blog ConcreteLoop.com. "They try to pretend like it didn't happen."

Davis notes on the blog, "We make a point to say: 'R.Kelly released a new remix and still is not on trial for having sex with 14-year-old girls.' We make a point to draw it to fans' attention." (Concrete Loop also refused to run Jive Records's ads for Kelly's recent album, "Double Up.")

Kelly's troubles have been extremely well-documented inside and outside the blogosphere, including a shake-up earlier last week in which publicist Regina Daniels dropped her client after 14 years. Daniels claims that Kelly acted "inappropriately" toward her -- the news launching a fresh wave of Internet speculation.

"Obviously, over the last 15 or 20 years, the press scrutiny and public scrutiny of celebrities has increased exponentially," says Allan Mayer, an adviser to R. Kelly. "Things that would have been relegated to the gossip columns are now front-page news."

Mayer's name might ring a bell -- he's an acclaimed Hollywood damage controller for the public relations powerhouse 42 West. (Joining Kelly on Mayer's client list: Halle Berry, Eminem and Rush Limbaugh). But Kelly himself might provide his own best spin. He's both ubiquitous and astoundingly prolific, as if on a mission to make more hits than headlines.

Kelly has done anything but tone down his lusty lyrics, but Mayer says the artist is merely burying himself in his musicmaking as self-therapy: "Everything in his life he responds to musically. Someone else under great tension or stress might go out and drink or maybe go jogging. Rob goes to the studio to make music."

* * *

But what about the stars lingering in pop exile? The Lauryn Hills? The D'Angelos? You remember the former -- her arms loaded with Grammys for her 1998 opus "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," before she became better known for notoriously bizarre and incoherent live performances. And while not quite as acclaimed, D'Angelo's 2000 album "Voodoo" left an indelible mark on R&B before fame took its toll.

Since those colossal records, both singers have all but vanished from the spotlight, perhaps frozen in the shadows of their masterstrokes. Now their crazy-appeal becomes mythic as die-hard fans dig in for the long wait.

"Talent trumps everything in the end," says Vibe's Smith, who -- while unsure about Hill and D'Angelo -- unflinchingly predicts a full-blown Whitney Houston comeback for 2008.

Few music fans are expecting such a comeback from Pete Doherty. He's the former Libertines singer-guitarist, current Babyshambles frontman and Kate Moss paramour whose every foible is seemingly documented by the British tabs. Sure, Doherty's penned some grabby rock tunes, but he's more famous for a drug habit so pervasive that he's gotten his pets in on it.

"His troubles are boring," says Marks of Blender. "And that's probably the worst possible fate an artist can have. If giving your cat crack to smoke is 'Been there, done that,' you need to reexamine your career path. He's spiraled into a punch line."

Does the joke ever get old? Thanks to the PerezHiltons and TMZs of the world, endless hours of celebrity misbehavior are there for the ogling. But for many fans, it's the melodies intertwined with the misdeeds that keep us coming back, hoping and hanging on.

"Nothing touches like music," Smith says. "With TV, you might get caught up at the end of 'Cold Case' and cry a little bit. But a song? C'mon! Just me going through my iPod is an emotional roller coaster. You'll be crying, laughing, memory lane. You don't get that anywhere else."