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Today, the LAT attempts to answer the nagging question that has been keeping much of America up nights: Will Paris Hilton's upcoming Warner Bros. Records release ("dropping," as her army of jr.-skanks-in-training might say, this summer) live up to its vast suck potential? Or, as the preliminary buzz may indicate, might it not turn out to be a half-decent dance record, throwing a nation into existential crisis as they curse the involuntary foot-tapping pleasures they are experiencing as they surrender to that most vile of things, the Paris Hilton side project? It's still too early to weigh in definitively, though the article reads like a compendium of backhanded compliments, as various journalists and music industry types relay their shock at how "Paris Hilton, Pop Siren" turns out to be not nearly as awful as "Paris Hilton, Human Being":

Superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold, who remixed Hilton's song "Turn It Up," sums up the conventional wisdom about her singing: "I think a lot of people were expecting it to be a lot worse than it is." [...]

"It's fun music, it's danceable, with elements of Blondie, a little reggae and great beats," [songwriter Kara] DioGuardi says. "She has a very sweet voice, very breathy. It sounds exactly like what you would want Paris to be doing." [...]

"Her fans are not responding to the concept of her fame for fame's sake," [Village Voice's Michael Musto] says. "They're responding to her personality. The blankness. I'm not saying it as a diss. She has the quality of allowing any viewer to project whatever they want on her. That's why she transcends all media." [...]

"It's a record for her to dance on banquettes to," says Craig Marks, editor in chief of Blender..."It's not a 'sit down and analyze the lyrics'-type of record. And it's not a Mariah Carey, 'this is the touchstone of a generation'-type of record. And it's not intended to be — any more than a chick-lit book intends to win a Pulitzer Prize."

We have a hard time imagining ourselves rocking out to a Paris track, but we suppose nothing is impossible. If the beat is catchy enough, maybe we won't have to tear out our ears the first time we hear "Stavros on the Bottom (Herpes Club Remix)" blasting out of a Bentley parked outside Privilege.