It's been almost 20 years since she unknowingly helped the Australia native earn a Grammy Award, but word is Richard Lewis Springthorpe never did land "Jessie's Girl."

Perhaps that was fortuitous, however, as the angst from his unrequited love - along with a lifelong battle with depression, the 1981 death of his father, a starring role in the 1984 bomb "Hard to Hold," conflicts with record companies, the inability to shake his teenybopper heartthrob image - led 50-year-old Rick Springfield to needed introspection and a spiritual wake-up.

The Malibu resident's soul-searching effort has been documented on VH-1's

"Behind the Music" and the like, but nowhere is his growth heard more clearly than on "Karma," Springfield's first new release since "Rock of Life" in1988.

It's taken the married father of two over 10 years to get his life together - hard to believe two years in the '90s filming the TV series "High Tide" around Mission Beach didn't help - enough to start making music for the masses once again.

If you're looking for sugary-sweet Springfield staples that saturated the airwaves in the 1980s like "Jessie's Girl" or "I've Done Everything For You," don't look here.

A new mature outlook with a heapin' load of sincerity oozes along the13-song release, from the upbeat title track ("As the smallest stream runs into the river/And every river runs to the sea/So every little bit of love I give to another/You know that I believe it comes back to me") to the more melancholy and haunting "Free" ("I had to close a door in my life for another one to open so wide I could get through").

There is depth to the country-style ditty to his wife in "Ordinary Girl" and to victims of incest in "Beautiful Prize" while healing is the theme in many of the tracks, including the uplifting lyrics of "Prayer" ("Now I send a prayer to heaven for the chance to be/A better man than the man I see"). The mellow rocker "The White Room" ("Come back to the land of the living/When you gonna break that chain...") features Point Loma native Jason Scheff, bass guitarist of Chicago.

Once assisting patients as Dr. Noah Drake on "General Hospital," Springfield has shown a lot more patience with his craft than ever before with the thoughtful and thought-provoking "Karma." Here he touches on feelings stronger than "Human Touch" ever did, speaks to the heart more sincerely than "Affair of the Heart" ever could and confronts the soul deeper than "Souls" ever should. **** (four stars)

-Karen Pearlman