Creep. Stalker. Gross. Weird. Inappropriate.

Those are just a few of the (tamer) ways that Robin Thicke‘s new album, Paula, out Tuesday, has been described by critics, bloggers, people who think it’s just plain weird that the singer rush-recorded a whole album aimed at winning back his estranged wife, actress Paula Patton. But is it?

“Being a one-hit wonder is one thing and the usual follow-up is that nobody cares, not that everybody thinks you’re a jackass,” said Alan Light, who’s the author of the upcoming book “Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain.”

Thicke’s effort, a stripped-down, soulful meditation on love lost, regret and a yearning to have Patton back, is a brazen, old-school soul-sounding album that, yes, lacks the heat of a “Blurred Lines,” but Light, former Spin and Vibe editor in chief, wondered why it’s been met with so much bile.

Star Track

“Often the backlash after someone has a big hit is that people are tired of them or they’re overexposed, but it’s not about them as a human being, which seems to be what this is,” he said of the very personal venom aimed at Thicke’s effort to patch his broken marriage. “Think about Marvin Gaye’s record [1978's Here, My Dear, about the bitter dissolution of his marriage] or [Eric Clapton's] ‘Layla’ [about the guitarist's love for friend George Harrison's then-wife]. In this media environment what the hell would people ...

Your summer just got even more awesome. Why? Did they extend the World Cup for another six weeks? Is there another new Ben & Jerry’s Core flavor coming? Did Miley Cyrus sing “Wrecking Ball” as a Broadway show tune? (Actually, that last one is true.)

Nope, 5SOS announced the European leg of their “Rock Out With Your Socks Out” tour.

Okay, that’s the good news. Unfortunately, there are no U.S. dates… yet.

But it is Ashton’s 20th birthday, so that’s something, right?

Gil Kaufman

Miley Cyrus is versatile. This much we know. But is she prepping for a Broadway run?

Probably not. But after getting matching tattoos of her beloved late dog Floyd, the singer got back to business early Monday morning (July 7) by remixing her greatest hits… show tunes style. (With a touch of Lady Gaga, if you ask us.)

Wrecking Baaaaaawwwllllllll!

Hold It, Hold It

And You Gotta Have A Big Finish

This Stuff Takes A Lot Out Of You

Gil Kaufman

I once watched a friend eat a cheeseburger after she’d spent a decade as a vegetarian. Trust me, you have never seen anyone eat a cheeseburger with so much glee. EVER.

That kind of sounds like how Chris Martin is feeling these days. Just months after his “conscious uncoupling” from Gwyneth Paltrow — she of the restrictive, kind of no-fun diets — the Coldplay frontman is back on the meat wagon. “Not really,” he said this week during a BBC Radio 2 interview when asked if he was so thin because he’s a vegetarian. “Well, I eat meat. I was a vegetarian for quite a long time and for various reasons I changed.”

Okay, so Chris didn’t say exactly when he changed, but we’re picturing his re-coupling with beef this way.

Since daughter Apple is, and has been, a vegetarian since birth, Martin said he’s still tempted to go back to his old ways now and then. “I don’t eat very much meat… I felt like you should only eat something that you’d be able to kill. I don’t know why on Earth we’re talking about this. I’ve got to stop or this will be some kind of headline.”

Done and done.

“Could you kill a fish? I wouldn’t like it but I probably could, so I’ll eat the fish,” he explained. “A giraffe?”

Okay, maybe not a giraffe, but about that burger…

Gil Kaufman

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t care about holding on to your money (or dignity), then chances are you’ve made more than a few losing bets on erratic experimental hip-hop trio Death Grips.

You see, drummer Zach Hill, producer Andy Morin (aka Flatlander) and vocalist Stefan Burnett (aka MC Ride) have made a (short) career of not showing up when booked. So, when they unexpectedly announced their breakup on a napkin note on Wednesday on the eve of their biggest tour to date opening for Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden, well, one guy was not surprised at all.

Exactly.

Gil Kaufman

Five months after Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin introduced us to the concept of “conscious uncoupling” in announcing their divorce, “You Were Meant For Me” singer Jewel and her rodeo rider husband Ty Murray announced their split. Sorry, we mean “tender undoing.”

“My husband, friend and partner of 16 years and I have decided to get a divorce,” Jewel wrote in a long, emotional letter to fans on her official site. “Ty and I have always tried to live the most authentic life possible, and we wanted our separation as husband and wife to be nothing less loving than the way we came together. For some time we have been engaged in a private and difficult, but thoughtful and tender undoing of ourselves. Allowing ourselves the time and space to redefine what we are to each other with love rather than malice.”

Jewel, 40 and nine-time world champion rodeo rider Murray, 44, have been married since 2008 and together for more than 16 years. The couple have a three-year-old son, Kase.

“We have no desire to damage ourselves and each other in the process. Who better than each other to bear witness to the heart ache of redefining our family?” she said in her “Dear World” letter, which also chronicled the difficulty of living in the public eye for more than 20 years.

“And who better as ally, while we learn to redraw ourselves in whatever new shape we find as separate people who are still striving to be ...

We hate to break it to Zac Efron, but “Step It Up: All In” is all wrapped and due out next month. So, like, there’s no reason to audition now. But, don’t bother telling the former “High School Musical” star, because he’s dancing like he wants everyone to see.

After gifting us with his vacation take on Jason DeRulo’s “Wiggle,” Efron dropped the obvious sequel with his “Turn Down For What” clip.

“Enjoy the Autoironic dance Michelle , Z , Youssef , me… @mrodofficial @zacefron @youssefgiga,” he wrote. Seriously, we have to get invited on vacation with this guy.

Gil Kaufman

Kendall Jones is a lot of things: a 19-year-old Texas Tech student, an All Girl Squad cheerleader, world traveler and Marketing and Sports Therapy major.

Oh yeah, she’s also a major big game hunter who has posted dozens of pictures on Facebook with images of her trophies, which include elephants, leopards, lions, hippos and and a white Springbok. The life-long hunter proudly displays her kills on her page, smiling alongside the carcasses of the animals while wielding her high-powered rifle and crossbow.

Facebook

But not everyone is feeling the pictures, which she started posting in February. Jones, who said she’s been traveling to Africa on hunting trips with her father since she was a child, has come under fire from animal rights supporters, who’ve gathered more than 131,000 signatures from all over the world to date on a petition asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to take down Jones’ page citing “animal cruelty” in the images.

In a recent statement, Jones’ family defended her photos, saying that the hunts in Zimbabwe and South Africa were “100% legal with proper tags and licenses awarded on a pre-approved quota by the countries officials and wildlife department.” The statement also claims that the hunts have pumped more than $160,000 into the local economies, helping impoverished communities.

Jones is reportedly set to be featured in an unnamed TV show about her adventures next year. NBC News reported that Facebook had recently taken down some of the pictures for violating ...

We weren’t sweating whether Ed Sheeran would top the Billboard charts this week with his second album, X. The only question was how big he would go.

Do The Math
Frankly, it wasn’t even close. Ed debuted with 209,000, according to figures provided by Nielsen SoundScan, easily blowing by the #5 debut of +, which moved a comparatively modest 42,000 units in its first week in June 2012. The high landing also gave Sheeran his first #1 debut in the U.S.

It was already a good day for Ed before the official Billboard numbers came out with the news that he set new Spotify streaming records last week. In fact, Sheeran logged the fourth-biggest debut of 2014, coming in behind Coldplay, Erich Church and Brantley Gilbert.

Meanwhile, Sam Smith was down 60 percent from his debut, but the British singer held strong at #2 with In the Lonely Hour, moving another 67,000 units.

G-Eazy Does It
Oakland rapper and mtvU Fandom Awards performer G-Eazy proved that These Things Happen with a hot #3 debut (46,000). That was just enough to push last week’s #1, Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence, to #4 (44,000, down 76 percent).

Get used to the spotlight, G.

WireImage/Bennett Raglin

The Rest Of The Top 10
The week’s other top 10 debuts came from rockers Mastodon, who landed at #6 with Once More Round the Sun (34,000) and jam godheads Phish, whose Fuego boogie danced in just behind with sales of ...

Madonna‘s been working on her next album for a few minutes now. That is when she’s not working security for Disclosure.

And while there’s not much information about it so far, on Wednesday morning (July 2) Madge gave us a tantalizing look at what might be coming next. With the message “Coming soon……..#promise #keep#sorceress#deep,” she posted the sheet music for what we’re going to assume is her modestly titled next single “Messiah.”

Now, we can’t read sheet music, so she helped us out a short time later with a video featuring a string ensemble playing a haunting movie score-like melody. “Magic makes the people come together yaaaaaaaasssssssssss. #messiah,” she wrote.

She ended her spree with a quote from author James Baldwin’s 1965 short story “Sonny’s Blues,” which touches on the importance of art as a means of personal expression. “We have Art in order not to die from the truth”nietzsche #jamesbaldwin #artforfreedom,” Madonna counseled.

Madonna recently revealed that she’s been working on the follow-up to 2012′s MDNA with Avicii and Billboard reported that she’s also collaborated with Diplo, songwriter Toby Gad, S1, Miley Cyrus collaborator MoZella, singer Natalia Kills and Cherrytree Records chairman Martin Kierszenbaum.

Gil Kaufman