Music Blogs

On Monday, "The Voice" Season 4 Battle Rounds began, and there were quite a few surprises. An underdog held her own in the ring, a frontrunner unexpectedly went home, and three contestants were stolen for other teams--two by Shakira, who enthusiastically maxed out her Steal quota in just one night.

Today my "The Day After" cohost Matt Whitfield and I talk about last night's six battles and three Steals. Did the coaches make the right decisions? Is Judith Hill still the one to beat? Should Christian Porter have been stolen? We discuss all this and more.

(All photos courtesy MLS)

Looks like Christina Aguilera's found a new place to call home: The superstar vocalist and former Voice coach has just dropped a cool $10 million on a mansion in Los Angeles's exclusive Mulholland Estates community--where she'll be neighbors with such fellow A-listers as Charlie Sheen and Paris Hilton.

(NBC)

Several rappers have taken Jay-Z's "Open Letter" as an open invitation to remake it as their own.

Common and Wyclef Jean are the latest to revisit Jigga's new cut.

Pitbull reworked the track Sunday; his version was "Open Letter Freestyle."

On Common's "Open Letter Pt. II," the Chicago rapper leaves Jay-Z's initial verse as-is before coming in on the second verse.

Garth Brooks (Photo: Ethan Miller)Garth Brooks has a new lawsuit slapped on his radar: It's from a former friend, and it goes to "low places" indeed. In addition to levying serious charges against the singer, it also attacks his character--calling him "paranoid, angry, deceitful, and vindictive."

The suit was filed Monday by Brooks's former production partner Lisa Sanderson, who attests that over 20 years Brooks repeatedly messed up deal after deal she tried to strike for him in the film and television realms--as well as failed to pay her the full percentage of producer fees they'd agreed on when she signed up to work for his company Red Strokes Entertainment.

If you're jonesin' for some new Coldplay, you're in luck. The band has a new release available from Apple, but you won't find it in the iTunes store. Rather, you'll have to turn to the iBookstore, because it's not an album, but a comic book series that bears the same name of the band's six-million-selling 2011 album, Mylo Xyloto.

And if you're a huge fan of Coldplay, or even a casual observer, you even luckier, because the first issue is the iBookstore's Book of the Week, so it's available for free at itunes.com/ColdplayComics. The other books in the series will be released monthly, through July.

If you're more into physical releases than digital, Coldplay has an option for you. The band will celebrate Record Store Day in the U.K. on April 20 with Issue One of the comic book paired with a special seven-inch picture disc of "Hurts Like Heaven" and "Us Against The World (Live)." If you're not in the U.K., you'll still have an opportunity to buy the special limited-edition package a week later through Coldplay.com and selected independent record stores.

(Frederick M. Brown, Getty Images)Sir Elton John recently previewed his new album, The Diving Board, for an elite crowd of record executives, industry insiders and journalists. The album is due in September. As a result of the merger of Universal and EMI, Elton now records for Capitol, the label home of The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

Yet Elton has turned to yet another legend, Bob Dylan, for inspiration. "I wanted at 66 years of age to make records that I think befits a person of my age," Elton said during a Q&A session following the album playback, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Like Modern Times by Bob Dylan. When I heard that record I went, 'My God, this record could have been made any time in the last 50 years!' It's brilliant and I want to try to make records as good as that. And [Dylan] is the person that we look up to. He's the person that we aspire to be as artists because he's always changing, he's always mercurial, he's always like a chameleon. And his quality control is pretty damn good."