Music Blogs

(New York Public Library/Schomburg Center)Jay-Z is a true Renaissance man. He's a dude of many hyphens, including rapper-songwriter-producer-music mogul-sports team owner-sports agent-club owner-clothing line creator-husband of Beyoncé-father of Blue Ivy, etc.

Now, apparently, you can add time-traveler to the list.

Who will prevail? [photo Michael Becker/Fox]This week, Candice Glover and Kree Harrison will square off in the "American Idol" Season 12 finale, and this may be the closest "Idol" race since Ruben vs. Clay a decade ago.

Both girls are very strong but very different singers, and while song selection (particularly when it comes to the coronation songs) might sway on-the-fence voters and affect this Thursday's verdict, it's likely that pre-existing loyal fanbases and musical-genre affiliations will ultimately determine this year's champion.

If you force me to make a prediction--something I'm usually all too eager to do, but not this year--I'll go with Candice. She'd be a deserving winner, for sure. But I absolutely wouldn't count out Kree; after last week's top three shocker, anything is possible on this show.

Wings in 1976Let's go back to 1976, shall we? In that year, Paul McCartney and his post-Beatles band Wings had released their groundbreaking live album Wings Over America, documenting their North American tour.

Now--back to 2013, and a spectacular re-release of the album is on tap for May 28, including new and remastered material from the epic UK group. We at Yahoo! Music have the first listen to the remastered version of "Rock Show," which features the '76 lineup of the band including McCartney's beloved late wife Linda.

I’m not sure what it may mean as far as the record industry is concerned, but this week was significant indeed.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to the present-day music biz realizes that the buzz on Random Access Memories, the soon-to-be-released album by helmet-wearing French space dudes Daft Punk, has been bordering on the absurd since initial track “Get Lucky” emerged during Coachella weekend.

This morning it was announced that the entire album could be heard for free, streaming on iTunes.

This afternoon, everyone I spoke with who liked music had heard it and had an opinion about it. Most of them liked it.

And next week, when it’s finally available for purchase, many of them will have forgotten about it!

Who says things aren’t getting better than ever?

Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires Of The City (XL) As one of the few record-buying humans who was never deeply attached to or personally invested in the Strokes—and thus felt no sense of letdown by their latest album, which is

McFerrin's new album coverFor a while in the '90s, before the public knew to turn to Snopes.com on such matters, an urban legend persisted that the song's originator, Bobby McFerrin, had committed suicide. Surely a song that cheerful could only lead to a heavily ironic end, no?

The No. 1 hit that won the Record and Song of the Year awards at the 1989 Grammys also began turning up in strangely post-apocalyptic contexts. It was used in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and in Wall-E, where the title robot has a Big Mouth Billy Bass mounted fish that sings McFerrin's jolly tune amid the dystopian depression. There was only one explanation for this: The song made people so unbearably happy that the only antidote was to associate it with deep unhappiness, whether that involved suicide or the end of the world.

"The Voice" top 12 competed this Monday, for the first time this season without any team quotas or coach saves. It was every man, woman, and coach for him- or herself, and everyone was feeling the heat. Literally.

You see, the air-conditioning in the NBC studio was on the fritz, on a Los Angeles day when it was 100 degrees outside, so the contestants were sweating it out in more ways than one. Host Carson Daly warned that if the room got any hotter the stagelights might blow out, and while that statement was probably just for dramatic effect--as was Usher's stripping down to a skimpy black undershirt--the sweltering conditions surely only made things tougher for this week's competitors. But some of the singers delivered still fiery performances, in the best possible way.