It used to seem like the right star could sell anything. But think of the celebrities who lost some luster this year: Julia Roberts (““Mary Reilly’’), Jim Carrey (““The Cable Guy’’), Sylvester Stallone (““Daylight’’), Arnold Schwarzenegger (““Jingle All the Way’’), Bruce Willis (““Last Man Standing’’). If this goes on much longer, who’s gonna be left to open Planet Hollywoods?
WE WERE ROOTING for Sheryl Crow. Really, we were. We liked her do-what-I-wanna-do attitude and the sleek, girlish pep of her songs. But ““Sheryl Crow,’’ the follow-up to 1993’s megaplatinum “‘Tuesday Night Music Club,’’ was just one of this year’s resounding chart duds. Counting Crows’ rootsy retread ““Recovering the Satellites’’ plummeted. Rock reliables R.E.M. and Pearl Jam lamed out, and rap maestro Snoop Doggy Dogg barely barked. As for last year’s MTV buzz band Weezer–who the hell is Weezer? Pundits blamed the deaths of alternative and gangsta rap, but that hardly explains the failure of Hootie and the Blowfish, whose ““Fairweather Johnson’’ was perhaps the biggest bomb of all. Who needed their neoplatitudinous mush-rock, anyway? Oops, you caught us–we weren’t rooting for Hootie. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad year after all.
