It may be the worst time of year for new releases and gigs, but the music news is as amusing as ever.

Is there anything funnier than Mariah Carey getting dumped from her contract? In the last year, her reputation has headed in the exact opposite direction as her breasts -- way, way down. Sure, $28 million will ease a lot of the pain and embarrassment. But it's difficult to feel sorry for her. She was nuttier than a fruitcake long before she was medically diagnosed as such. Her wickedly ditzy interviews made the guest actress commentators on Iron Chef look like CJ Cregg in a briefing room on The West Wing. For years, her videos have been a living, breathing advertisement for Temptation Island. She was jettisoned so swiftly from EMI that I can't make up my mind if it's more hilarious or scary. It's scary because a proven commercial success like Mariah, who I has the third or fourth most #1 hits in the history of music, was dumped like day old bread at the first sign of weakness. She'll probably return strong in a year or two, but POP is about the bottom line, and in two years, EMI could release 329 albums by boy bands and make their money that way before that gravy train dries up.

Also, Starsailor have garnered themselves a notable superfan in Phil Spector. He invited the band to his house, and they stayed for two hours. Before you shrug your shoulders, please note that Spector is probably the second most reclusive man in the world after Osama bin Laden. And he wants to work with Starsailor. The man's last production was in 1980. As a Spector worshipper, I'm both excited and jealous at Starsailors' good fortune (particularly because they're not all that great, they're reaching like mad to be a hybrid of 1995 Verve and Radiohead and falling far short, but mainly due to the not-easily-attainable high quality of those bands in that year).

Actually, the Spector-Starsailor pairing would be a good idea. It would churn out shimmery amped-up folk pop, sort of like the sound of Sigur Ros' "Agetis Byrjun" playing cover versions of Slowdive. But if Spector really wants to make himself useful, he should grab the nearest revolver, three of his bodyguards, get on a plane to the UK, go to Kevin Shields' house, stick a gun in his ear to wake him up at three in the afternoon, drag his ass down to the studio, and start making an album. First of all, it would be the greatest album ever. If there was a 1990's equivalent of Phil Spector, it was Kevin Shields. On the flip side, if there was a 1990's equivalent of Phil Spector, it was Kevin Shields. That is, the album would take 100 years to make and cost more than Microsoft is worth, provided that those two perfectionists could spend five minutes together without killing each other.