"I feel so dirty when they start talking cute, I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot"

Rick Springfield is cool.

Seriously.

Just check out the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, which called Springfield’s breakthrough album "Working Class Dog" a "relentlessly catchy power-pop classic" and compared it to Elvis Costello’s "My Aim is True."

"It’s worth re-evaluating his status in the pop pantheon," the magazine concluded.

Springfield was ripped by critics in the early ’80s for starring on "General Hospital" and crafting superficially sweet pop hits. If rock writers back then knew Dr. Noah Drake would one day be equated with their favorite bespeckled tunesmiith, they would have freaked.

Once you dig below the shiny surface of "Jessie’s Girl" and "Don’t Talk to Strangers," it’s not a big leap from Springfield’s romantic paranoia to the sexual hang-ups documented on "My Aim is True." For Springfield, the connection has always been there. It just took a while for the rock press to figure it out.

"Actually, ‘My Aim is True’ was one of the albums I was playing a lot as I was writing ‘Working Class Dog,’" Springfield said in a recent telephone interview. "It’s all truthful stuff and it’s all very stripped down power-pop."

Springfield, who turns 57 on Wednesday, talked about recent critical re-evaluation of his work, defended covering Mr. Mister and revealed who killed rock ‘n’ roll in an interview running Saturday in The Post-Crescent.

Until then, enjoy the video for "Jessie's Girl."