Bob Dylan's Xmas Album 'Sort of Insane'

Bob Dylan's Christmas album is just the latest in a long line

(NEWSER) - Bob Dylan’s decision to record a Christmas album is certainly ill-advised—“fans may have stuck by him throughout the musically self-destructive late '60s, the God-bothering late '70s, and the Grateful Dead-collaborating-Madonna-imitating mid '80s, but surely even Bob's fans have a limit,” writes John Matthew Hall for the Independent. But Dylan’s not alone; Hall offers up the worst disasters in rock and roll careers, from John Lennon to Michael Jackson: More»

New music video not exactly well-received

(NEWSER) - Justin Bieber teamed up with Mariah Carey for a new version of her '90s holiday classic, "All I Want for Christmas Is You," and the results are just about as bad as you'd expect. A sampling of the reactions:

• "Why has the Bieb launched a campaign to traumatize everyone who's old enough to remember the '90s?" moans Margaret Hartmann on Jezebel . His Boyz II Men video was bad enough, but "now he's released a Macy's commercial disguised as a Mariah Carey duet—though we used that term loosely because it sounds like Bieber is just wailing over the old recording of the song."

Norah Jones, Nelly also snag spots

(NEWSER) - The Beatles might have had its heyday a few decades ago, but the band managed to emerge from this decade with the best-selling album. Perhaps more surprising is the decade’s top-selling artist: Eminem, with 32.2 million albums sold—followed closely by, yes, the Beatles again in the No. 2 spot with 30 million sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The most surprising appearance of all, however, is a certain boy band… More»

Rapper will keep his language PG while performing for Yanks

(AP) - The lyrics to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" are sometimes as raw as New York, but it looks like the rapper will clean things up when he performs his city anthem at the World Series. A source close to the rapper says Jay-Z won't utter curses or other raunchy stuff in his hit when he and fellow New Yorker Alicia Keys sing at Yankee Stadium tomorrow night. More»

Really, it's about time rockers made concerts all about the music

(NEWSER) - Bono—he of the eons-long concert diatribes about everything from Burma to the whales—has done the unthinkable. "Bono has started editing himself," Virginia M. Moncrieff realized during U2's Rose Bowl concert. And it's about time: Though Moncrieff admires their causes, she has reached the age where the nicest thing rock stars can do is "just shut up and get on with the set," she writes on the Huffington Post. More»