How can you tell the difference between a good music critic and a bad music critic with a single question? Well, your mileage may vary on this, but for my money, you need only ask them to tell you their guilty pleasures. If they offer no hesitation whatsoever before launching into their list, then you should consider their opinions to be suspect. On the other hand, if they hem and haw for a moment before offering up a response that’s half an answer and half a clarification that “if you like something, then you shouldn’t feel guilty about it,” then it’s probably worth adding their RSS feed.

If you’re wondering, I don’t have the ego to suggest that I’m a must-add, mostly because I’m prone to answer the question by saying, “I know I shouldn’t feel guilty about liking them, but…” And as you’ve probably guessed, I have on more than one occasion ended that particular sentence by citing The Click Five.

In 2005, the Click Five released their bouncy debut album, Greetings from Imrie House, and picked up two distinct audiences the moment they left the gate: the power pop fans, most of whom discovered the album because Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne) had a hand in writing two songs on the record, and the teenaged girls, who just thought the band was cute. It’s sad but true that the former audience is pretty well negligible when it comes to sales figures, but the latter helped Imrie House sprint to #15 on the Billboard album chart, thanks to the powerhouse first single, “Just the Girl.” If you scour the song titles and the credits, you’ll see that one of the two Schlesinger songs is “I’ll Take My Chances,” which was originally recorded by Swirl 360, who’ll score their own “Hooks ‘N’ You” column one of these days. You’ll also discover that Paul Stanley…yes, the one from KISS…co-wrote “Angel To You (Devil To Me),” and that Elliot Easton – late of The Cars – contributes guitar to that song and well as “I’ll Take My Chances.” In other words, it’s not hard to argue that there’s more street cred here than on your average bubblegum pop-rock album.

So how did they decide to follow it up? Why, by replacing their lead singer, of course!

Talk about killing your momentum stone dead.

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