It's not that there isn't music that still speaks to me. I have rarely been as moved by any music as I was by "The Langley Schools Music Project: Innocence & Despair." Recorded in a school gymnasium in rural Western Canada in the mid-'70s, it's 60 kids with two mikes and rudimentary arrangements, singing their hearts out to a selection of '60s and '70s pop. In other words, it's the very audience these songs were directed to, taking possession of them, pouring their energy and enthusiasm and hopes into every off-key note. And the upcoming self-titled album by the Reputation, an Illinois band fronted by Elizabeth Elmore, late of Sarge, communicates directly. If Elmore's generation (she's in her mid-20s) doesn't feel she's capturing something of their essence in songs like "The Stars of Amateur Hour," it may only be because she cuts too close to the bone to leave anyone feeling comfortable. (The emotional bluntness of the music makes me, at 40, wince.)

And there are battles in pop music right now that I feel like I've already witnessed. Long before the Strokes won me over to their debut album "This Is It," the backlash the band generated pissed me off. It was a variation of the old punk-indie snobbery that decreed that a band receiving major label bucks and media hype just had to be sellouts. I'd heard it in the '80s, when X and then the Replacements signed to major labels and, then as now, the argument has nothing to do with the quality of the music.

And then there's the distance that older pop music fans may feel from the two types of music ruling the charts -- teen pop and hip-hop. (Rap-metal and nu-metal, in fact any kind of metal, might be included, too, but -- with the exception of Metallica -- I can't pretend I have any interest in it.)

In the case of the former, whenever I've tried to listen to Britney, Mandy, Jessica, N'Sync, et al., I can't hear a voice, not even the voice of a producer turning the vocalists into just one more element in the mix. There's an anonymity and -- for all the belly-baring and rump-shaking, all the impossibly low-cut jeans and visible underwear -- a sexlessness to the music that makes me feel as if my ears were sliding off each polished hook. (The exception was a 1999 single that didn't make it to these shores, "Honey to the Bee" by the Brit teen popster Billie Piper, that had a catchiness and salaciousness that Britney can only dream about.)

My feelings about hip-hop are more complicated. For older listeners, hip-hop may feel something like information overload. Trying to work our way into the rhythmic, sonic, and verbal density of the music may make us feel like watching younger kids whiz through computer programs and video games. There seems too much to process for the immediate access pop has always promised. And for me, hip-hop presents another problem: the question of how much, if any, irony is involved. The only answer I've been able to come up with based on my intermittent listening, and it's an unsatisfactory one, is that hip-hop is both a reflection of social realities and a celebration of the worst bling-bling sensibility. There have been albums and artists (Outkast, Q-Tip's "Amplified," the all-but-forgotten Basehead, the first album from Timbaland and Magoo) and singles (the Geto Boys' "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me," a slew of songs by Jay-Z) that I've taken to heart.

But there's a coldness to much hip-hop, a negation of the heart and soul that is the essence of the greatest black pop, that I can't get past. Ja Rule sounds great coming out of the radio or, in my Brooklyn neighborhood, blasting from cars driving by in the summer (last summer, you couldn't get through a day without hearing Jay-Z's "The Blueprint" drifting into the windows at some point). When I slip it onto the stereo, though, I find the deadness of his affect numbing. In the chilling opening of George P. Pelecanos' new novel "Hell to Pay," a dogfight takes place to the sound of "Dr. Dre 2001" playing as the animals rip each other to pieces. Pelecanos is clear in the book that the blame laid on hip-hop for urban violence is a canard, the panicked reaction of nervous people. But in that opening scene you can't escape the implication that the emotionlessness of the young men watching carnage as entertainment has found a fitting soundtrack. Especially in contrast to the '70s soul that plays constantly on the car stereo of the novel's middle-aged black hero.

Kylie Minogue belongs to diva pop, a category that encompasses many styles and performers. And it's a type of music that, in its own way, has had much of the pleasure bled out of it in the last few years. Its ruling eminence remains Madonna. But I have to confess that despite the occasional great single, like "Ray of Light," Madonna has struck me as a great bore ever since, around the beginning of the '90s, she gave up being a trash provocateur and began thinking of herself as an artiste. The change seemed to come in around the time she went on "Nightline" to defend her "Justify My Love" video, a parody of '60s European arthouse cinema (think Michelangelo Antonioni and Alain Resnais redone by a clever exploitation filmmaker), and, without a trace of humor, talked about it as if it were a serious exploration of the limits of sexuality. The "Sex" book followed, as cold as its stamped metal binding. The surprise and delight she once showed in pushing people's buttons had vanished, replaced by a lot of pretentious talk about her "vision."

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