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Anyone who'd like to delve into the career of Australia's highly acclaimed Paul Kelly--an award-winning singer-songwriter with a massive catalog of superb songs--but does not know where to start: You're in luck.

Kelly's best work is being now being released in the States in two convenient formats: Large and Extra-Large. And it's all extraordinarily good.

In the course of more than 30 years--since his 1981 debut album Talk--Kelly has been garnering acclaim as a masterful singer and songwriter with an uncanny knack for writing catchy songs of surprising personal depth. When A&M Records released his album Gossip in the U.S. in 1987 and introduced the singer to American audiences, it started a chain reaction of critical appreciation that's never really died down since. And the albums kept on coming.

If you'd like to make sense of it all, Songs From The South (Volumes 1 & 2) may be the best place to start. A two-disc collection of many of the singer's finest songs--from early track "From

Qualitatively speaking, I'd say that this is the strongest week of new album releases of the entire year!

And why not? Here we've got the complete works of Pink Floyd, the classic Verve recordings of legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, and a deluxe reissue of Nirvana's Nevermind!

Yet ironically--and perhaps serving as a statement regarding the state of today's music--most of these fabulous albums were recorded 20 or more years ago!

But no matter! Television is better than ever, there's a fabulous 3D remake of The Lion King out there, gas costs nearly 4 dollars a gallon, and if I really want to know what new albums are worth buying, I can just check out what my friends are listening to on Facebook!

The only bummer? Now I have to start making friends!

Noel Gallagher has a perhaps not entirely undeserved reputation for being a surly fellow and difficult interview--a rep surely only compounded by his former band Oasis's acrimonious breakup, after he and his famously feuding little brother Liam brawled backstage at Paris's Rock en Seine festival in 2009. But when the Britpop icon recently came by Yahoo! Music, he couldn't have been more pleasant. "It's not so bad doing interviews, innit?" the affable chap shrugged. "They fly you to Los Angeles first-class, you stay in nice hotels, and you go talk about yourself! What's not to like?"

Clearly going solo agrees with the man. The longtime songwriter for Oasis but only occasionally that band's singer, Noel is now going the full-fledged singer-songwriter route with his upcoming and much-awaited solo debut, Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, and it's a welcome return to fine form after his two-year hiatus. "I've gotta do something," he laughed. "My wife demanded that I go make a record

Last month, downtown L.A.'s Museum Of Contemporary Art hosted the groundbreaking "Art In The Streets" exhibition, which drew a record total of 200,000-plus visitors with its mind-boggling array of one-of-a-kind street art by renegade artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Fab 5 Freddy, and Spike Jonez. It was in fact the most successful exhibit in the museum's history.

In anticipation of Feist's upcoming album Metals, I took a deeper look into the Canadian songstress' musical journey--and quite a journey it has been. With countless collaborations and contributions, it's no wonder she has taken a well-deserved break from recording.

What really blew me away was the very first band Feist, neé Leslie Feist, joined back in 1991: An rock/metal group called Placebo--not to be confused with the English band. Thanks to the magic of Youtube here's a video of one of her early shows. I can't begin to express how much I love the metalheads and goths reveling in the audience.

If you're like me, and have spent some portion of your life completely enraptured with popular music, you may have noticed that at one particular instant--one brief, memorable moment--your perception of what was good and what was not suddenly veered from what some would call "common consensus."

Maybe you liked Limp Bizkit too much. Maybe you couldn't understand the appeal of rap music. Maybe you wish grunge had never died. Maybe you spent six months writing a 250-page graduate school thesis on the merits of Seven Mary Three, and one of your professors looked at it and said, "Hey, man--they suck!"

In my case, however, I would pinpoint the exact moment I went off the rails to the release of what I still maintain was one of the finest songs of the past few decades--Aqua's awe-inspiring "Barbie Girl"--and yesterday's stunning news that the readers of Rolling Stone have declared it to be not one of but absolutely the worst song of the '90s!