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Various Artists
Giant
Once a delightful hour of evil television, Melrose Place has stumbled this season. The Sidney-Kimberly-Michael love/hate triangle has grown stale, while boring Jake and his boring boat have consumed far too much screen time. And as if the show’s deterioration wasn’t painful enough, Giant is now inflicting Melrose Place—The Music on impressionable twentysomethings. The aural equivalent of Zima, The Music features 11 pleasant and utterly innocuous songs by such alternative rock darlings as Urge Overkill (“Back on Me”), Sam Phillips (“Baby I Can’t Please You”), James (“How Was It for You?”), Dinosaur Jr. (“Blah”), and, perhaps in a nod to Jane’s stupid new Aussie boyfriend, Frente! (“Ordinary Angels”). Only the Divinyls—another band from Down Under—manage to capture the depraved spirit of the show. On “I’m Jealous,” lead singer Christina Amphlett warns plaintively: “I can’t stand the thought of her having a piece of you…I’m out of my mind and I’m liable to do anything.” Sidney, who learned a thing or two about jealousy when Kimberly returned from the dead, couldn’t have sung it better.