British theater is taking Broadway by storm – again. In the last year, Billy Elliot: The Musical – a London import – swept the Tony Awards. The Royal Shakespeare Company has announced a residency at the Park Avenue Armory in 2011. And a musical about Enron has come to Broadway ...

For the last half of the 20th century, the banjo didn't wander far from folk, bluegrass and the "Dueling Banjos" scene in the film Deliverance. But today, banjos are popping up in a wide variety of genres. Today: Stan Jay of the Staten Island-based instrument shop Mandolin Brothers explains the ...

Lady Gaga's new music video for "Telephone" is raising product placement to a grotesque degree: Ten brands appear in the 9-minute video, including Virgin Mobile, Hewlett Packard, and Chevrolet. While that may be an extreme example, many artists are increasingly selling their image and songs to products. Some say these ...

The digital age has spawned a do-it-yourself revolution. It's easier than ever to record music at home and distribute it using tools like MySpace and iTunes. But the band boom has its drawbacks, as the wealth of buzz acts can be overwhelming. Today, as more than 1900 artists descend on ...

This season will be Simon Cowell's last as judge on Fox's smash-hit American Idol. The caustic Brit everyone loves to hate is stepping down to bring his show X Factor to American audiences next year. Some say he’s brought diverse audiences together and made us all critics; others argue he ...

When Bruce Springsteen, Céline Dion and rap group Three Six Mafia performed at the Academy Awards, they nearly stole the show. But this year’s “Best Original Song” nominees will have to remain seated. J. Max Robins of the Paley Center for Media and music critic Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly ...

Google is poised to become a major player in the music industry. But the company with the “don’t be evil” motto is drawing criticism for its relationship with major labels and copyright detectives. Jon Healey of the Los Angeles Times explains Google’s rapid expansion into music. Then, writer Maura Johnston ...

With Fashion Week in high swing in New York, we turn to an artist who blurs the line between pop music and haute couture: Lady Gaga. The divisive superstar was called "a pretentious pop starlet" and "a savvy media manipulator" by the music writer Jonah Weiner -- and he's a ...

The drum kit has its fair share of esteemed idols: Neil Peart of Rush, Dave Grohl of Nirvana, ?uestlove of the Roots and many more. Yet drummers have always had a reputation for being unreliable and misanthropic. On today’s Soundcheck Smackdown, we debate whether the skin-bashers of the world deserve ...

Lampooned and celebrated in equal measure, Super Bowl halftime shows are a lightning rod. Some of the biggest stars in music take the stage -- but not without controversy. Performances can be underwhelming, predictable and even censored. (Or not, in the case of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction in 2004.) As ...

The New York indie rockers Vampire Weekend are topping the Billboard 200 chart by selling more than a 120,000 copies of their second set "Contra." While fans praise their unusual, global sound, critics call them Ivy-league elitists ripping off third world music. Joining us for a Soundcheck Smackdown: Chicago Sun-Times ...

The director of Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley, had to pay $50,000 to use old songs in her animation movie. She then put the movie online for free and turned herself into a free-culture activist. Composer Jaron Lanier was a digital pioneer in the '90s, but in his new ...

Green Day's 2004 release "American Idiot" sold millions of copies and grabbed a Grammy for Best Rock Album. It inspired a stage musical that ran for eight sold-out weeks in Berkeley, Calif. Now, the production is headed for Broadway, where rock music has an uneven history. In another Soundcheck Smackdown, ...

In the past ten years, pop stardom met reality TV, the mobile phone met the MP3 player, and music stores and record labels met their doom. Some say that as a result, music has never been so democratic and accessible. Others claim it has never sounded worse. We find out ...

Everything's in its right place for today's Soundcheck Smackdown as we debate whether Radiohead deserve to be regarded as the best band of the decade. Joining us are Rachael Maddux, assistant editor at Paste magazine, and Chris Norris, a contributor to Spin magazine who recently argued that Radiohead is "an ...

Soundcheck Smackdown goes Hollywood! Today: music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, who compiled the hit soundtrack to the new Twilight film New Moon, and Variety film writer Jon Burlingame debate which makes for better movie music: pop music or original score.

Few song topics resonate with listeners like romance and heartache. Today: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, stars of the 2007 film Once and the duo behind the Oscar-winning group The Swell Season, join us in The Greene Space to debate which is more powerful: the love song or the breakup ...

Last year's presidential election brought out a groundswell of political action by musicians. This year, the causes are lower in profile: Singer Will.i.Am is pushing for health care reform. Trent Reznor, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam are joining a movement to close Guantanamo. But can they effect any real change?

It's been a big year for the undead. Vampires are sucking blood on TV shows like True Blood and Vampire Diaries and in the upcoming film New Moon. Zombies are stumbling through movies starring Woody Harrelson (Zombieland) and books by zombie-loving scribe Max Brooks (The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks). ...

Having sold 140 million albums and won an armful of Grammys, Barbra Streisand has just released her first ¬full-length studio session in four years. Featuring her trademark romantic-ballad treatment on 13 well-known standards, it opened at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart. While fans say Babs sings like buttah ...