Emotions were fed through Auto-Tune, and downloading wrecked the industry. But things appear to be changing for the better.

Click here for Ann Powers' best of 2009.

Recently asked what the word "authenticity" meant to her, Lady Gaga -- the last major pop star to emerge during the decade we're now departing -- tried her best, at first. "Integrity, intention," she said, furrowing her neatly plucked brow. Then she gave up the pretense. "I can say this . . . to you all day," she harrumphed. "It's not gonna reap anything."

She's right. Of all the aspects of pop that went into fatal mutation mode in recent years, the cult of authenticity was hit perhaps the hardest. The advent of downloading wrecked the music industry as we've known it, and along with many jobs and old-fashioned rock star dreams, core assumptions about what makes music meaningful have been changing, too.

One major one has to do with what we think is most real, most able to embody sincere and powerful emotions. We have come a long way from the '90s, a period that saw the commercial triumph of credibility-obsessed subcultures like indie rock and hip-hop, and the rise of artists like Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur, who were undone, partly, by inner conflicts about crossing over and selling out.

Other important figures, including Lilith Fair leader Sarah McLachlan, R&B-hip-hop fusion pioneer Lauryn Hill and country maverick Garth Brooks, also sought to change the mainstream in the 1990s but were ambivalent -- and retreated artistically once they did so. 

It's unlikely that there's anything Chris Brown could have said on his new album -- his first since pleading guilty to assaulting his ex-girlfriend Rihanna -- to convince listeners that he's still the sweetheart that early hits such as "With You" and "Yo (Excuse Me Miss)" presented him as.

But if Brown's goal with "Graffiti" was to begin the rehabilitation of his damaged image, you have to wonder how he and his handlers convinced themselves that including the song "Famous Girl," in which Brown insists that his cheating on a pop-star girlfriend came after her own infidelity, was a good idea. "Should've known that you would break my heart," he sings at one point, prompting a presumably unintended question: Has pop ever produced a less sympathetic victim?

Brown spends most of the rest of "Graffiti" in upbeat party mode, which given the clumsy audacity of "Famous Girl" was probably a wise decision. In "What I Do" he's "throwing up [his] cash, acting like money ain't a thing," while opener "I Can Transform Ya" stresses spending power of an even more exclusive kind: "Whatcha need? You can have that," Brown promises over Swizz Beatz's robo-crunk groove, "My black card, they don't decline that."

Judging by the arc of her still-young career, Rihanna is not what you'd call a "girl's girl." She began her professional ascent when, at 15, she dumped the gal pals in her vocal trio and moved to the U.S. to be closer to her male producer. Her mentor is hip-hop father figure Jay-Z; her main association with another female artist was with his longtime companion, Beyoncé, when rumors (later disproved) of a tryst between the younger singer and the mogul set the two up as rivals.

Her image evokes a style of female empowerment that predates and still stands outside of feminism: the lone female warrior who summons strength and endures danger to make progress in a man's world.

So it's ironic that, of all young female pop stars, it was Rihanna who became the subject of a classic feminist concern after an assault at the hand of her then-boyfriend, Chris Brown. At first she seemed unwilling (or unable) to embrace the role of advocate that's often assumed by prominent survivors of domestic violence, but apparently her sense of responsibility toward young women is what motivated her to finally leave Brown.

"Rated R," the album that will forever be viewed as Rihanna's statement on Brown's attack and her recovery, bears that burden of responsibility, but in a way that has little to do with conventional expressions of female liberation. Unlike Beyonce, who has an all-female band, or Christina Aguilera, who's often collaborated with the songwriter Linda Perry, or even Britney Spears, who's made a big show of being Madonna's inheritor, Rihanna still prefers working with men.

Aside from two songwriters who seem less than primary (one, Ester Dean, actually had a recent hit collaborating with Brown), the tracks here come from male producers and co-songwriters.

As much as it's a personal statement from Rihanna, "Rated R" also reflects how several of pop's male major players -- including Ne-Yo, Justin Timberlake, The-Dream, Tricky Stewart, will.i.am -- responded to her accounts of what happened between her and Brown, and how she's moved on from the incident. (She's said in interviews that talking about it with her collaborators helped her work through the experience and turn it into art.) 

It's hard to imagine that this is finally happening. A music awards show without Kanye West and/or Taylor Swift will go down on Sunday night, and right here in our hometown.

The American Music Awards are set for a live Sunday night broadcast -- tape-delayed for the West Coast. Set to air at 8 p.m. on ABC, expect at least 20 music performances, and the occasional fan-voted award to be handed out at the gala at downtown's Nokia Theatre. 

In a tradition started last year by Pop & Hiss, here's three reasons to tune in, and three reasons one may be better off catching up on those episodes of "The Mentalist" you have on your DVR.

Reasons to watch:

1. Rihanna. Her "Russian Roulette" stands as one of the starkest, bravest, toughest singles to be released in 2009. The fact that it came from one of the world's biggest pop stars, and sounded more fit for a horror soundtrack than a dance floor, only added to its mystique. Even if it's not the song she'll be performing Sunday, it instantly catapulted Rihanna from a singles artist to a serious force to be reckoned with. 

2. Lady Gaga. In terms of unpredictable pop stars, no one, perhaps, can top one Mr. West. But the man who should have been Gaga's touring partner is a bit MIA at the moment, and likely won't grace an awards  show again until the Grammys, if they'll have him. But in the absence of Kanye, Gaga can be counted on for some sort of spectacle, even if her award-show speeches won't be quite as off the cuff. Her recent video for "Bad Romance" was a sci-fi-inspired explosion of arresting images, and her last major TV appearance -- a performance on "Saturday Night Live" -- featured the artist completely breaking down her hits.

3. Because the Bears are on. This doesn't really apply to those of us on the West Coast, where the American Music Awards will air later than the rest of the country, but there won't be anything broadcast on the gala that comes close to the train wreck that is the 2009 Chicago Bears. Heck, you can slap Adam Lambert, Carrie Underwood and 50 Cent together for a medley of Broadway hits of the '40s, and the three of them doing the foxtrot would make for more captivating television than the Chicago branch of the National Football League. 

Reasons to skip are after the jump.

A little singing, a little dancing from the performer in his first local show since his sentencing.

Chris Brown had already pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna earlier this year. But Wednesday night at the Avalon, in his first local performance since being sentenced to probation and community service in the February altercation in L.A., Brown still seemed to be offering up character witnesses in an attempt to prove, as he insists in a widely circulated YouTube video, that he's no monster.

First up was Keri Hilson, who appeared not long into Brown's hourlong set and sang her hit "Turnin' Me On." Hilson was followed by Ester Dean, whose song "Drop It Low" features a cameo from Brown. Later, the singer introduced a medley of Michael Jackson covers as a homage to his "homie, friend and loved one." And near the end of the show, during "No Air," Brown even pressed squeaky-clean "American Idol" winner Jordin Sparks into service, trading verses with Sparks' recorded voice in a duet that has surely taken on new meaning in Brown's mind over the last nine months of smothering media scrutiny.

If the female-heavy crowd at the Avalon was serving as Brown's jury, the testimonials had their desired effect: This was precisely the sort of adoring audience Brown presumably intended to draw by calling his current trek, which launched last week in Houston, the Fan Appreciation Tour. The singer made no mention of the Rihanna incident; instead, he repeatedly announced that he was in the mood to party.

Rihanna will take a break from the interview circuit to promote her upcoming "Rated R" at this month's American Music Awards. The pop star, on the verge of releasing her first album since last February's pre-Grammy incident with Chris Brown, was among of host of new performers unveiled Friday morning.

Green Day, Shakira, Mary J. Blige and Keith Urban were also added to the AMA lineup. The AMAs will take place Nov. 22 from the Nokia Theatre and downtown's L.A. Live complex, airing live for the East Coast at 8 p.m.

Tickets for the AMAs, which range from $70 all the way up to $1,000 VIP packages, not including Ticketmaster surcharges, of course, are on sale now. There is a four-ticket minimum when purchasing a VIP package, bringing the total cost to over $4,100. 

"I am strong" were the first words out of Rihanna's mouth in her short interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America." 

She made the claim unequivocally, a glint of anger in her eye. It was a sign that this carefully managed encounter -- part of a media flurry in which the Barbadian pop star and her ex-boyfriend, Chris Brown, try to manage the fallout from Brown's February assault on her as they prepare to release new albums -- would be heavy on message, and less so on confessions. In her first major television interview after the assault, Rihanna clearly meant to reclaim her position as a worthy role model for young women.

But a troubled relationship may stand in her way. Not the one with Brown, which is apparently 100% kaput, though she admitted to returning to him a few weeks after the beating. The bond Rihanna believes she endangered by returning to Brown is the one with her fans.

This interview's most interesting moment came after Sawyer, in a voice-over, announced that Rihanna would not be sharing the bloody details of the attack (not yet, anyway; ABC is saving that for a ratings bonanza Friday, when a longer version of this talk airs on "20/20"). Instead, we got "what other girls, she hopes, will hear."

"When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that part," the singer said. "I couldn’t be held responsible for telling them, 'Go back.' Even if Chris never hit me again, who’s to say their boyfriend won’t? Who’s to say they won’t kill these girls? These are young girls, and I just didn’t realize how much of an an impact I had on these young girls' lives until that happened. It was a wake-up call."

Our sister blog Show Tracker reported on Rihanna's appearance on "Good Morning America" today. Stay tuned to Pop & Hiss for more on Rihanna from Ann Powers. In the meantime, here's an excerpt from Matea Gold's post on Show Tracker:

Music star Rihanna said she decided she had to end her relationship with former boyfriend Chris Brown after realizing the message she sent to her fans by going back to him after he assaulted her.

“When I realized that my selfish decision for love could result into some young girl getting killed, I could not be easy with that part,” she told ABC’s Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” this morning in the first part of an exclusive interview. “I couldn’t be held responsible for telling them, ‘Go back.’ Even if Chris never hit me again, who’s to say that their boyfriend won’t? Who’s to say they won’t kill these girls?”

In August, R&B singer Brown, 20, was sentenced to five years' probation and community service for beating Rihanna, 21, on the eve of the Grammy Awards in February.

Speaking deliberately but with emotion, Rihanna told Sawyer that she was ashamed that she went back to Brown after he hurt her. “I fell in love with that person; that’s embarrassing,” she said. “So far in love, so unconditional that I went back.”

“That’s not what I want to teach people,” she added. “But I’m a human being, and people put me on a very unrealistic pedestal. All these expectations – I’m not perfect.”

Read the full post on Show Tracker.

For much of her career, Rihanna was seen as being not entirely herself. From her high-profile signing during Jay-Z’s Def Jam tenure to her steely, minimalist presence on blustery tracks by the-Dream and Tricky and Ne-Yo, Rihanna’s most successful setting in pop has been somewhere between mystery and machine, giving little of her personality yet simultaneously commanding our interest in her. The most famous hook of her most successful song, “Umbrella,” was her repetition of a nonsense fraction of a word, with which she invites a lover to join her in not feeling the rain around them.

That aesthetic was complemented by her often noirish, sci-fi inspired visuals, in which her inherent sex appeal was charged with distance and the sense that some other force was directing her movements. By giving us so little of herself, Rihanna’s songs let us fill the gaps by imagining her intentions, and that approach resulted in many excellent, unnerving singles.

Her new slow-burn of a song “Russian Roulette,” written by Ne-Yo, is akin to the sleek, paranoid club pop of “Disturbia” and Kanye West’s last album. In any other year, it would be a noteworthy but not unexpected continuation of many of her favorite themes -- claustrophobia, psychological tumult, the sense of having lost control. But this song is the first from her since her much-publicized February fight with then-boyfriend Chris Brown, which she's set to discuss on "Good Morning America" tomorrow. For better or worse, any new music from her will be seen in that evening's long, sad shadow.

If Rihanna’s career has been about noir, “Russian Roulette” is the moment in the novel where someone finally pulls a gun from a trench coat and changes everything. Lyrics like “I’m terrified but I’m not leaving / I know that I must pass this test” and “It’s too late to pick up the value of my life” pointedly allude to that event and a very bleak set of emotions accompanying it. Yet Rihanna purposefully avoids any hard statements about how (or if) the song relates to what she knows we’re all thinking. For music fans more accustomed to the upbeat revenge ballads of the Dixie Chicks or the stay-strong resilience of Mary J. Blige, Rihanna’s choice of metaphor in this song -- that she’s powerless before fate in a game of roulette for her life -- will come as a shock and, understandably, perhaps a disappointment to fans hoping for something more reassuring.

Wasting no time to return to the public eye, controversial R&B singer Chris Brown has confirmed a  date at the Avalon in Hollywood, promising an "intimate performance" on Nov. 18. The official announcement, oddly enough, comes on the same day that Rihanna released her new single, the stark "Russian Roulette."

In late August, Brown was sentenced to five years' probation and 180 days' community labor -- to be personally supervised by the chief of police in Richmond, Va. -- in connection with his attack on former girlfriend Rihanna.

Brown will soon see how forgiving pop audiences are of him. Tickets for his Nov. 18 performance, produced by Live Nation, will go on sale Friday via the promoter's website.The concert will promote his forthcoming release "Graffiti."