A benefit track for victims of the BP oil spill, "Madness" begs for justice on behalf of the Gulf Coast over spry zydeco. Too bad Slick, Jefferson Airplane's grande dame, is barely audible....
This U.K. band, known for head-snapping sound collages, returns with a mix of schoolyard chants, turntable scratches and horn blasts. It's deafening and funky — like a drill team strutting into a funnel cloud....
The Swedish diva drops the first single from 'Body Talk PT 3,' a disco remake of a ballad from 'PT 2.' She sings an uncommonly elegant Europop melody, promising, "I'm gonna love you like I've never been hurt before."...
With the second single from the forthcoming Loud,Rihanna has created a perfect little tropical storm: Over dark, humid synths and swirling snare skitters, she's in full-on Caribbean-queen mode, dialing up her islander accent and rolling out a to-do list for any adult male seeking entrance into her chambers: "Hey, boy, I really wanna see if you can go downtown with a girl like me," she sings, kicking off the chorus....
This Dr. Luke-produced anthem — about "sick and sexified" kids who wave their freak flags while hitting the clubs — was inspired by a rash of suicides among gay youth....
Months after Cee Lo covered their slow-burn gem "No One's Gonna Love You," Band of Horses step out of their bearded comfort zone with a charged-up version of the Lady Killer's homage to his home state....
Wall Street deserves abuse in all forms, and on the title track from his upcoming T Bone Burnett-produced album, Costello delivers a punk-blues indictment of Goldman Sachs culture. "National Ransom" mixes rootsy stomp with squealing guitars, as Costello invokes the 1929 stock-market crash, rails against financial "hocus-pocus" and ends with a dire summation of the way we live now: "We're working every day, paying off the national ransom...."
Taylor repurposes the "she wears short skirts" melody from "You Belong With Me" in order to bust up a wedding, 'Graduate'-style. But freeing the man of her dreams from bad-marriage hell is almost an afterthought on "Speak Now"; the real fun is listening to her unload...
The latest leak from Camp Kanye is less a song than an inspired chunk of Nineties-style DJ mixology. It begins with Bon Iver — the Wisconsin-bred folkie who collaborated on nine songs for West's upcoming album — singing a revamped version of "Woods," his haunting, Auto-Tuned meditation from 2009....
A benefit single for the victims of Arizona's immigration laws, this protest song (about a lover stuck in Mexico) is as pretty as it is angry.
