Glee , an unapologetic send-up of Dawson's Creek if they burst into song, is a conondrum. It is frustrating in its conventions. It has catchy music and good-looking cast, but suffers from an overpacked ensemble, thin storylines, and ignorance of reality. But they sure do sound and look good.

Polished within an inch of its life, the music actually spans a wide assortment: the obvious Broadway, the Top 40 hits of now and last year, the classic oldies, and the less-than classic oldies that no one in high school has ever heard of: the Glee kids are excited to hear one of their own sing Neil Diamond. Seriously. And in anoth...
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One of my favorite things is remixes of Broadway and stage musicals. With the advent of celebrity after celebrity filling the vocals of the characters in the film versions of said musicals, it's become more and more likely that said remixes will find their way to release. Indeed, mix after mix of Dreamgirls appeared in various formats due to the popularity of Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson and Rent contained both mix awesome and tragic, but none were made public for Sweeney Todd or Chicago. Wi...
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After months and months of GaGa hits from her album The Fame, we may all be either ready for the Lady to take some time off or hit with a deluge of even more. For those who got into the inevitably defined-as-quirky singer-songwriter in 2007, recent smashes like "Paparazzi" and "LoveGame" seem like old hat, so I for one am enraptured to hear we're going to hear that much more from her.

GaGa is releasing her Fame album again with new material, and anyone who's tried to keep track of which version of the CD they have (does yours have "Again Again" or "Starstruck"? "Disco He...
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Rah rah ah-ah-ah
Roma ro ma-ma
Ga ga ooh la la

Expect to hear that incantation a bunch this fall. Lady GaGa's new combination of Madonna music ingenuity and Bjork's critic dividing fashion is here. It must be said that GaGa has gone out of her way to express herself as a multi-dimensional creature: it's never JUST about the money, JUST about the stardom, or JUST about the sex--it's all about all of it at once for true euphoria. And it's all fashion.

As memorable as Madonna's proclamation that she is a Material Girl or Gwen Stefani that she is not a Hollaback Girl, GaGa has sh...
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And we're all a little surprised:

Disc 1 - Hung Up / Music / Vogue / 4 Minutes / Holiday / Everybody / Like A Virgin / Into The Groove / Like A Prayer / Ray Of Light / Sorry / Express Yourself / Open Your Heart / Borderline / Secret / Erotica / Justify My Love / Revolver

Disc 2 - Dress You Up / Material Girl / La Isla Bonita / Papa Don't Preach / Lucky Star / Burning Up / Crazy For You / Who's That Girl / Frozen / Miles Away / Take A Bow / Live To Tell / Beautiful Stranger / Hollywood / Die Another Day / Don’t Tell Me / Cherish / Celebration

So there you have it.

Most exciting news is the DVD release that's coming out of this: VIEW FULL ENTRY

Devilishly sexy (and sexily devilish) Alan Cumming has been around so long in theatre circles (Threepenny Opera, Cabaret), cult film communities (Reefer Madness, Eyes Wide Shut), and even mainstream heterofests (X-Men 2, GoldenEye) that it seems nearly impossible that he hasn't been preserved on his own solo music disc. While he appears on the Reefer and Cabaret recordings and the odd tribute/compilation collection, he had yet to go the full Idina, or the complete LuPone. Until now.

I Bought a Blue Car Today is a studio...
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If you've been hankering to put a Tori Amos winter-themed album next to your Aimee Mann, Jewel, and Sarah McLachlan X-Mas CDs, you are in luck. Amos has confirmed that her next album is a solstice-centric collection. We're told to expect "strings, brass, tubular bells and harpsichord." Works for me, and thank your respective gods that she's not doing yet another damn version of "Silent Night." Although we may get another of Joni's "River." But Tori does that one proud live.

If we're placing bets, I suspect a ...
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"The final track listing for Celebration is not out there yet and "won't be available until much closer to the release," I have confirmed from a source so powerful she could drop any Madonna fan should she so choose."
-- Matthew Rettenmund, Boy Culture

So you fans of "Live to Tell" and "Who's That Girl" hold on--we're still not confirmed.

As for the source, I'm gonna go with Liz Rosenberg as my guess. ...
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Matthew Rettenmund and DrownedMadonna posted word about the tracklisting for Madonna's 3rd best-of (and 5th compilation total) that's due in September.

There are no surprises as to what made it on--in fact, it's one of the most legitimate lists ever in terms of "does this count as a hit?" status. What's something of a surprise is that a solid chunk of Madonna's best material is ignored. True fact: The Immaculate Collection and GHv2 already exist to cover much of the material that is again being released for this 2-CD set. But ...
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American Idol '07 winner Jordin Sparks premiered her new single "Battlefield" (presumably for a new album, or perhaps an expanded version of her debut) on Idol this past Wednesday with a sexy figure, lots of fog, and an LED screen that displayed a raging storm. Indeed, the song is thunderous, the closest to rock that Sparks has veered so far.

It's a decent single, although completely (and willingly) aping on "Love is a Battlefield" from a more believable rocker Pat Benatar. But the switch-up is good, even it is essentially one verse and eighteen choruses. It should a...
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Finalists:
- Danny Gokey - "Dance Little Sister" (Terence Trent D'Arby) (Paula Abdul's choice) / "You Are So Beautiful" (Joe Cocker)
- Kris Allen - "Apologize" (OneRepublic) (Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi's choice) / "Heartless" (Kanye West)
- Adam Lambert - "One" (U2) (Simon Cowell's choice) / "Cryin'" (Aerosmith)

The Theme
Songs chosen by the contestant (non-theme) and chosen by the judges (non-theme).

Voted Off:
Gokey finally packed it in, and with probably his best performance since "Hero" in Hollywood Week. "Dance Little Sister" had the c...
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Tori Amos has had nearly as many musical facelifts as Madonna, incorporating simple piano and guitar in her earlier work, strong strings and harpsichord along the way, and electronic beats in the last decade. Those who have followed her usually agree that you'll appreciate one version over the other and will therefore repeat the refrain, "I wish she'd go back to doing music like ____."

Tori Amos has basically laughed off those requests; she was never a very commercial musician, and her days of being a singles artist passed with the 1990's. Her music has gotte...
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Finalists:
- Kris Allen - "The Way You Look Tonight"
- Allison Iraheta - "Someone to Watch Over Me "
- Matt Giraud - "My Funny Valentine"
- Danny Gokey - "Come Rain or Come Shine"
- Adam Lambert - "Feeling Good" (arrangement: Muse)

The Theme
"Rat Pack," at least in theory. Mostly jazz standards came out to play, and nearly all of them fairly dismal. Their mentor was... Jamie Foxx. Okay, seriously, was everyone else on the planet busy?

Voted Off:
Matt Giraud who moped through "My Funny Valentine" has the distinction of being the only finali...
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After 3 albums (wow, we're up to 4 already?), the original American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson found herself becoming increasingly more irrelevant in his age of "Poker Face" and "I Kissed a Girl." Having established herself as an Aguilera without the vocal runs, Pink without the 'tude, and Avril without the stupid, Clarkson bucked the system with My December. It was moody, cloudy, and generally pissed. It was her Jagged Little Pill. But it just didn't come through as Clarkson's range (pleasant but again not a diva's prowess) went from 0 to screaming in 3.5.
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Cyndi Lauper's Bring Ya to the Brink is pretty fantastic but if you're one of those first-track-better-be-awesome-or-die folks, you may never know it. "High and Mighty" is a lame, lame opening bit, but the second track, "Into the Nightlife" is so full of sparkly energy, it will make you never think twice again about jumping immediately to track 2. High marks indeed for that one, even though it feels like a total crib on Madonna's "Get Together," it is so much better than even Madonna was able to make happen. In fact, "Echo" and "Lay Me Down" are right up there too...
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The new Madonna song:

"4 Minutes" features a minute-long intro from Timbaland that does nothing to really introduce the track... the lyrics don't make any sense: "We only got 4 minutes to save the world." Save the world from what? Why do you have 4 minutes? Is the idea that this song is the last hope to save the music world or something? 'Cause, well, you lost. And you only had 4 minutes and wasted 1 on Timbaland robotically saying the main line over and over? Talk about slacker saviors.

It's not an awful song. The horns are cute, if dated, and sound a lot like Missy Elliot 4 years a...
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Beyonce is bringing B'Day back with new single "Green Light." Ok, what number single is this already? Let's count 'em out:

"Check On It" -- Released a year and half before the rest of the album, it had the misfortune of being associated (loosely) with a shitty film, Steve Martin's The Pink Panther. No one who actually liked the song bothered to connect it to the film and it was a smash. Not willing to dismiss a legit hit, it fit snuggly as a bonus track for almost all non-US releases, as well as the American iTunes version. It was the third sneaky placement of the tr...
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