In a story that recalls Paul Ryan's uninvited and unrequited declaration of love for Rage Against the Machine (and, for that matter, Chris Christie's obsession with Bruce Springsteen), the prime minister is a longtime fan of the new wave band — who split in the 1980s, and are perhaps best known for their songs "How Soon Is Now" and "Heaven Knows (I'm Miserable Now) — and has said so on many occasions. Marr has voiced his disgust, telling the BBC that this is "not allowed." But Cameron, who was on a visit to India, declared he'd "go on and listen,"anyway. In 2006, Cameron chose the Smiths song "This Charming Man" on Desert Island Discs.

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Here, the highlights:

Chris Martin got a surprise, when Michael Stipe popped in for a duet:  "Losing My Religion."

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According to PPP,  Christie, who recently filed for reelection in 2013, is beating out all possible Democratic opponents, including the very popular Newark Mayor Cory Booker. PPP reports:

He leads Cory Booker 50-36, Richard Codey 53-31, Steve Sweeney 57-20, and Barbara Buono 60-20. Against Sweeney and Buono Christie actually wins the Democratic vote, something I don't think PPP has ever found a candidate in any contest we've ever polled doing across party lines.

In a hypothetical match-up against Springsteen that PPP threw in there "just for fun," Christie is leading by a 61-25 percent margin.

As for 2016, 44 percent of voters say Christie shouldn't run, and only 38 percent say he should.

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At his final campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, a wrung-out and obviously exhausted President Obama roused supporters for one last voter push. Speaking near the site of his 2008 caucus headquarters, an emotional Obama addressed a crowd of 20,000, his voice cracking as he told them "what one voice can do." And as he did, a fan on Twitter promptly sent out an image purporting to be of the commander-in-chief rendered tearful as he delivered his ultimate chant of "Fired up" to the crowd.

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So, it’s good to be here with you today – and it will be great to feel the power of your votes and voices tomorrow.

I’m here today for Wisconsin, America and for President Obama. For the last 30 years I’ve been writing in my music about the distance between the American dream and American reality. I’ve seen it from inside and outside: as a blue collar kid from a working class home in New Jersey – where my parents struggled, often unsuccessfully – to make ends meet – to my adult life, visiting the 9th Ward in New Orleans after Katrina, or meeting folks from food pantries from all around the United States, who work daily to help our struggling citizens through the hard times we’ve been suffering

The American Dream and an American Reality: Our vote tomorrow is the one undeniable way we get to determine the distance in that equation. Tomorrow, we get a personal hand in shaping the kind of America we want our kids to grow up in.

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The Obama campaign provided a who's-who of 181 actors, musicians, authors, athletes, mayors, and more that fit any and all demographic groups in the president's target zone. All are being deployed to carry his message to television and radio in the waning days of the campaign.

The list includes some of Hollywood's big names — Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Celebrity sells. It remains to be seen if voters buy.

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A heartwarming case of some American icons coming together in a time of need to help out and rock out, right? Not so fast. The paranoid crew at Fox and Friends uncovered what’s really going on here: Secret Obama propaganda. "Good intention, raise some money for victims, but the timing is more than suspect," guest host Eric Bolling said this morning. "Is this more political? Is this more, let's get this thing on TV before the election to help President Obama look more presidential? Or is it more to help out victims?"

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In general, the list of celebrities contributing to, stumping for and endorsing President Obama is far too long for this column. But a week ago, when a little-known actress named Stacey Dash (who, ahem, is black) announced her support for Mitt Romney, conservatives went nuts. According to Glenn Beck’s the Blaze website, “Twitter exploded” with the news. Or at least his feed did. But the point is, just as Republicans were so excited to nab Clint Eastwood that they let him ramble unscripted to an empty chair for 10 minutes, Romney backers were so excited to have a black actress endorse Romney that it didn’t seem to matter no one had ever heard of her.

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Pundits have noted his earlier reluctance to stump for Obama, and suggested the statement he released on behalf of the president is less than a full-throated endorsement. ABC's Rick Klein called it "grudging." I worked myself into a Twitter frenzy trying to prove it was anything but grudging, so I decided to post the whole statement here. It's sober, factual about the obstacles Obama faced in his first term and yet full of praise for his accomplishments.

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Now -- as Springsteen prepares for a swing-state trip to Ohio with Bill Clinton to campaign for President Obama -- Meola's released a collection of those photos in a new book called "Streets of Fire: Bruce Springsteen in Photographs and Lyrics, 1977-79."

And considering how omnipresent that "Born to Run" cover is, it's an almost startlingly young, innocent Springsteen in these photos -- 12 of which are in our slide show -- shot with the cars and churches that fill his songs.

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I love Bruce. I think his best album is probably "Tunnel of Love" though I listen to "Born in the USA" more. I am seeing him at New Giants Stadium in September. There, isn't that boring? Like boring but also trying too hard and oddly boastful? Don't you just ... not care, that I like Bruce Springsteen? That is how America feels about you, David Brooks and Jeffrey Goldberg and Heritage Foundation assistant director of strategic communications Mike Brownfield.

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That night Springsteen rambled, more than usual. Before the postindustrial triptych of “Independence Day,” “Factory” and “Jackson Cage” midway through the first set, he began a long monologue, although not about his father, whom he frequently talked about before “Factory.” Instead, Springsteen used this opportunity to talk about his love of pop music, about what it had meant to him growing up. Spontaneously, falteringly, he offered the most coherent argument he would ever make for the essential unity of the two distinct compositional strains that had flowed into "The River," its idealistic and pessimistic “hearts”:

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There are obvious spots where he pauses to acknowledge the losses; every show review describes them. (If you haven't read reviews and you want to discover these moments yourself, as I did at my first show, bookmark this piece and read it later.) In the elegiac "My City of Ruins" (from "The Rising," his epic album of grief to commemorate 9/11), he announces a roll call for his band members, introducing them one by one, and then asks, "Is anybody missing?" over and over, as the crowd screams an ever-louder "Yes!" What began early in the tour as a spoken riff about the loss, "If you're here, and we're here, than they're here" is now, in mid-tour, part of the song, and the crowd sings along. The first time I saw him, in Madison Square Garden, that ruined me. I had never heard the closing lyrics, "With these hands, with these hands," as a prayer before.

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It is hard to remember it now, but in the beginning of his career Springsteen was largely apolitical. During his first decade and a half as a professional musician, he made almost no political endorsements or even statements from the stage. In November of 1980, he told an audience at Arizona State University that the election of Ronald Reagan “frightened” him, but he didn’t specify just what he was afraid of. In September of 1984, Reagan’s reelection team, looking for local references to liven up a campaign stop in Hammonton, N.J., had Reagan name-check Springsteen in that day’s variation on the president’s standard stump speech. When informed of this, Springsteen tried to shrug off the association and distance himself from Reagan, but there were certain vague similarities. More than anything, Springsteen and Reagan both often saw life in the United States as the same essential conflict: a war between individuals with dreams and the larger institutions that sought to keep them down.

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Springsteen and Clemons weren't quite living that way, either. In his memoir Clemons wrote: "You had your black bands and you had your white bands, and if you mixed the two you found less places to play." Springsteen explained the power of the "Born to Run" cover this way: "When you open it up and see Clarence and me together, the album begins to work its magic. Who are these guys? Where did they come from? What is the joke they are sharing? A friendship and a narrative steeped in the complicated history of America begins to work and there is music already in the air."

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It was June 24, 1993, and Bruce Springsteen was ending his "Human Touch"/"Lucky Town" tour with two New York-area shows, one at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., the venue he’d opened in 1981. But this homecoming was different. Four years earlier, Springsteen had fired the members of his longtime E Street Band in favor of working with other musicians. He recorded two albums with studio pros, then toured behind the records with a new band put together shortly before hitting the road.

The fan reaction was mixed, to be kind. The touring band – though it featured some talented players – felt less like a new direction than an attempt to recreate the E Street sound without the actual E Streeters. It seemed as if that band’s 20 years of history had come to an ignominious end.

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Yet, there I was, shaking my head with relief and amusement as I flipped through "Swing Steen," the New York Post's ingeniously headlined tale of Springsteen's reported dalliance five years ago with a woman from his hometown. I grinned as I read the story, not just because of the ample Boss puns ("Springsteen's 'Human Touch' made her melt;" "[T]he Jersey girl got lost in a ‘Tunnel of Love'"), but because after a year of John Edwards, Tiger Woods and Jesse James, even after the none-of-our-business-but-nonetheless-dispiriting splits of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins and Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes, the Springsteen infidelity feels like a clean mineral rain washing away months of grimy revelations.

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This dark art of handling the talent and dealing with deification is the tie that binds this week's Double Bill, which would be today's release of "This Is It," and its doppelgänger, the 1970 documentary "Elvis: That's the Way It Is."  Obviously, it does not take any particular genius to point out connections between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Haunted relationship with parent, incomprehensible musical genius, pet chimps, oh yeah, Lisa Marie, to count off just four of the easiest ones.

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