Summed up perfectly by Alex Ross, New Yorker (non-pop) music critic: “There is nothing shameful in unchecked enthusiasm. If I walk out dancing on air, I say it in the review.”

On that buoyant note, here’s a savvy meditation by my esteemed former colleague (at Legal Affairs, you media-mapping loonies) John Swansburg on the James Dean morbidity cult, Brando, Hamlet, and the invention of the troubled teenager.