With the Attributes of Goddesses

Female pop stars who attain the attributes of goddesses -- emblematic names, signature fragrances, the floating hair of Botticelli's "Venus" -- tend to share a few qualities. They are athletic vocalists, usually with multi-octave ranges, who can hold a note longer than most magicians can stay submerged in water. Their signature songs blend romantic axioms with the more current language of self-help. Their music is frequently dismissed as banal, yet often helps regular folk contemplate profundities, at weddings or funerals, or when a baby is born.
These traits link Whitney to Mariah to Shania to Céline to Faith to Beyoncé to Christina to Alicia, although each has her own strengths and quirks. But something subtler also connects them. Musically, they're border jumpers. On the surface, they epitomize pop banality, but they regularly defy their home genres, blithely disregarding musical rules that hem in more admired (and usually male) pop practitioners. Whitney Houston (above) set the template for this role by turning a country hit, Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," into a smash that redefined crossover R&B.

The mainstream's pop goddesses also blur lines on the level of identity. Many are biracial. Céline Dion is obviously bilingual. All pop stars are mandated to continually remodel themselves, but few do so as dramatically as Mariah Carey, who fled innocence (and Tommy Mottola) to become hip-hop's super-sexy honey. Christina Aguilera's been a teen sweetie, a sex radical and a retro vamp. Beyoncé, one suspects, hasn't even begun to show us her thousand faces.

More trend-focused dance-floor queens -- the ones who follow in Madonna's boot steps -- turn their makeovers into performances. For them, style comes first, and feeling flows from it. The goddesses take us inside the process, their songs chronicling how it feels to change from within. Their music is all about becoming bigger and better, with motivational lyrics, surging semi-operatic melodies and churchy rhythms. They show us how, as Oprah says, to run toward our best.

Chat shows, women's magazines and chick lit belong to the same world, where women rule -- and struggle. As theorist Laura Kipnis has pointed out, "Femininity in its current incarnation . . . is built on an underlying sense of female inadequacy." Pop goddesses represent women's constant fight to keep fulfilling their exhaustingly inexhaustible potential.
So, it's no shock that the two new goddess offerings commanding the charts have been packaged as transformations. Dion is "Taking Chances" on her eighth studio album; on her third, Alicia Keys (above) is finally, truly presenting herself "As I Am."

In reality, neither album deviates much from what these women have previously accomplished. Keys continues to develop her warm, contemplative approach to hip-hop R&B. Dion, celebrating the end of her long Las Vegas run, employs some new producers to go beyond ringing the rafters but remains most convincing at full blast.