It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate memory and rewrite ourselves with the hope that, someday, we’ll be remembered for that one “good” thing and not that one “bad” thing, because as much as we’re told that identity is layered and complex and certainly never all one thing or the other, we still bury our dead with the distinction of being Those Who Did No Wrong or Those Who Did No Right. But try as we might, the outcome is consistently leveled by chance: when the music stops, you just hope there’s a chair underneath you.

I’ll remember Whitney Houston for everything that she was, the good things and the bad things, and I won’t love her any less for falling than I did for her soaring. I’ll also remember her for writing songs that sounded jovial when the music played, but elicited pain a cappella. Like the way she exposed her midriff and simpered for the picture sleeve in spite of the fact that “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” seethes with the desperation of feeling unlovable, I too know how it feels when your packaging betrays the product. I’ll remember Whitney Houston most for showing me how to smile when you’ve never felt more alone.

The Jealous Sound are not the type of band that get Best New Musics or ubiquitous thinkpiece subjectification, which is to say that when their new album, A Gentle Reminder, comes out today, chances are you will not have heard about it unless you’ve already been paying careful attention. These are the records that are hardest to write about because they’re not instantly polarizing — like that other record that’s coming out today — or even particularly heady; it’s music with the potential to make you feel inarticulate. But thinking about this record makes me think about this thing Joan Didion wrote about lifting the unfussy title to George Orwell’s “Why I Write” for an essay of her own: “I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you.”

There’s a modest refrain in this song where Blair Shehan sings, “I can’t do this on my own,” and it’s just inexplicably affecting. Like so many of the songs on this record, “Change You” sums up in a no-nonsense way all he has to tell us. Shehan thrives in such unembellished sentiment — he, virtuoso of the downstroke pick and palm-muted guitar riff — but not without leaving behind the dismal premonition that so many of the records that will quite possibly go on to eclipse this one are teeming with the kind of nonsense this album plainly rejects. This is the kind of record that changes lives, unbeknownst to everyone.

I had actually begun writing a satirical piece that I was going to call “What It’s Like to Be Kelly Clarkson’s Boyfriend: A Nervous Acid Investigation,” but the more I listened to the lyrics on her new album, Stronger, I actually became fatigued by my own project — and that’s not exactly my fault. For Kelly Clarkson, the narrative of the Stupid Boy and the Awesome Girl Who Disses Him has become more than a recurring lyrical conceit, but an ideology of sorts: She sings about being scorned by boys the way Earth Crisis sing about veganism or Jay-Z about being rich.

At some point, the listener has to wonder: Is it always the Stupid Boy’s fault? Why is it that the only common denominator in all these songs is you, Kelly Clarkson? And if you believe that the Stupid Boy “doesn’t know a thing about you” — as you claim in more than one song — might that be because you’re the one who is emotionally unavailable? I mean, hey, I’ve dated stupid boys too! But the Kelly Clarkson ratio of Stupid Boy-to-Good Guy is insanely skewed. Is it ever her fault?

I finally stopped writing that original post when I arrived at a song called “I Forgive You,” in which Clarkson attempts to take partial credit for a failed relationship. This is progress! I thought. “We were just a couple of kids,” she says. “No shame, no blame.” It’s a cute sentiment, but the reality is that by song’s end, she still doesn’t own it: Clarkson is intent on letting the Stupid Boy know she forgives him, but she doesn’t seem to think it’s worth asking forgiveness for herself or apologizing for the stupid things that she undoubtedly did. It’s as big as missed opportunities come: This song is to forgiveness as the phrase “I’m sorry that you feel that way” is to apologies.

This song sounds something like Robyn’s “Who’s That Girl,” which sounds something like The Knife’s “Heartbeats.” Icona Pop, like Robyn and The Knife, are also from Sweden, so it’s fair to say they were influenced. But “Nights Like This” is more referential than replica, if only because the synths occupy a dirtier, less commercial place while the hook is somehow more commercial than either of the songs it evokes. It’s the kind of single that would probably be on the radio if it didn’t feel all wrong when you put it there.

I wrote something short about the Nicola Roberts album for my Towleroad music column this week, and among other things, I said this:

Formulas work for a reason, and when Roberts teams up with former Xenomania member Jon Shave for “Say It Out Loud” — an immeasurably pleasurable synthpop track, the caliber of which we haven’t heard since “Dancing On My Own” — it’s like she’s no longer a struggling solo artist from a multiplatinum group, but the star of a group who never got her due.

I realize these are big claims! Is it on par with “Dancing On My Own?” They’re very different songs, of course — Roberts’ song is empowery, while Robyn’s is elegiac — but they hit the same dejected chords and both position the dancefloor as a locus for contemplation. They also withstand repeated plays without tarnished effects, and that’s a big one.

But the part about Nicola being “the star of a group who never got her due,” while more contentious, is also the one I feel more interested to protect. If Siobhan Donaghy was Sugababes’ most underestimated member — seriously, check out Ghosts if you haven’t already — then the direction that Roberts takes with Cinderella’s Eyes is an analogous equivalent for Girls Aloud. That both of them cite Kate Bush as an influence is kind of a gimme. But while Donaghy took the influence literally, Roberts’ eccentric tendencies tend to be more evocative than mimetic. It’s not like she’s singing paeans to 19th-century English novels, but there really isn’t another established pop artist willing to make slow-motion electrodisco covers of “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” either.