Last week, as you might recall, I condemned Prince's shameless attempt to pander to the masses, noting this desperate attempt to regain past glory channels Prince style without mustering an ounce of Prince substance.

This week, of course, comes the news Prince has his first American chart-topper in 16 years.

Am I disappointed? Frankly, I'm more disappointed in the producers of Rock Star: The Series, for cheating some has-been band or other out of an opportunity to regain its own past glory by recruiting a new member. I can understand that talks with Van Halen fell through, The Doors brought legal complications and it might have been too much of a stretch to have, say, Andrew Ridgeley auditioning prospective new partners for Wham!

But to invent a band purely for the purpose of recruiting a vocalist? For shame, television. I do expect better of you.

Perhaps it's all timed to coincide with April Fool's Day.

Much like this spiffy headline: "Forget the Jack Black you know."

Don't you think we've tried?

But if my comments about the lifelessness of Prince's new album in any way helped to boost sales, let me now state a few days before its release that the new Pink CD is a freakin' work of genius. Everyone should buy it.

But back to Prince, not to dwell on the matter or anything. The man is responsible for some great music and many a great performance. And if it comes down to a choice between Prince and Barry Manilow (and it more or less does), I'm all for returning the Artist to the toppermost of the poppermost. Besides, he's done worse.

And whether it's the refusal of Nelly Furtado to fly away like the one-hit-wonder she was meant to be, or the inexplicable popularity of the painfully bad Walk the Line soundtrack, I do not pretend to fully understand the lowest common denominator nature of popular music sales.

That became apparent to me when I was eight years old, and confidently phoned a local radio station to vote for the greatest song of all time. I recall being baffled by the absence of my choice -- John Lennon's Cold Turkey -- from the resulting Top 300 of All Time. Surely, thought I, thousands of people should have voted for Cold Turkey.

"If it's popular," a friend once quoted me as having said, "it can't be good."

I maintain I meant to say something along the lines of, "Popularity does not equal quality" or whatever. After all, we've seen many examples of an artist's best song becoming their most popular song.

And let it be noted that the same chart that places Prince's 3121 on top has Ben Harper's excellent Both Sides of the Gun in the respectable seventh position in its first week of release.

There's even a Johnny Cash CD --the real Johnny Cash -- in the Top 10.

Maybe there's hope. Hell, maybe that Prince album isn't so bad after all.

Maybe I should just shut up about it.