For music fans, the soundtrack, which features new music by top artists like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Gotye and Lana del Rey, arrives with as much anticipation as the movie set to open May 10. NPR on the jazz-infused rap and pop soundtack:

Whether Lurhmann's film does justice to Fitzgerald's essential work will become widely evident when the film opens on May 10. First, we have the film's soundtrack, which like Lurmann's [sic] previous ones both arises from within the film and stands separately from it. Some have wondered why, after Lurhmann enlisted Jay-Z's help and announced that his movie's music would recast hip-hop as the jazz of our boom-and-bust era, only a few rappers show up on the album. But just as Fitzgerald peppered his text with references to jazz-influenced pop songs to show how that music became a lingua franca, so this soundtrack aims to show how hip-hop now deeply informs rock, dance music and the Top 40.

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Producers announced Thursday that the Spice Girls musical will close at London's Piccadilly Theater June 29 after a disappointing six-month run.

Producer Judy Craymer said despite tweaks since the show opened in December, "we just can't make it work."

Written by "Absolutely Fabulous" comedian Jennifer Saunders, the show is a modern-day tale of female friendship and mother-daughter bonds set to songs by the 1990s "Girl Power" icons.

It set out to take a timely satirical axe to our information-saturated age of Twitter and TV talent shows, but the critics were overwhelmingly hostile.

The Independent newspaper's Paul Taylor called the show "lacking in any truly original or challenging spark," while the Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer found it "tawdry, lazy and unedifying."

Others felt that aside from a few hits - "Wannabe," `'Stop," `'Who Do You Think You Are?" - the Spice Girls' catalogue was not strong enough to support a two-and-a-half hour show.

The five-member group, known for its brash attitude and "Cool Britannia" branding, shot to fame in 1996 and sold 75 million records around the world. The Spice Girls still have many fans, but, 15 years later they were not enough to sustain a West End show.

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The Guardian reports:

The release, simply titled Extended Play, comprises a quartet of tunes: three originals by Lindsey Buckingham and one by Stevie Nicks, written in 1973 when the pair were still the duo Buckingham Nicks. This is hardly a set of sexagenarians' basement tapes: Without You – not be confused with the Danny Kirwan-written Mac song of the same name – and Sad Angel are as shiny as Rumours, and even the lonely piano ballad, It Takes Time, has a dramatic synths/strings coda.

Buckingham revealed plans for the EP at a gig in Philadelphia earlier this month – the band have been performing some of the new songs on their current tour. "It's the best stuff we've done in a long time," he said, promising that the record would be out "in a few days". It took a few weeks, instead, but within hours of appearing on iTunes, Extended Play had appeared in the digital shop's top 10 chart, though it has since dropped.

Download it here.

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In the following animated clip, the group talks to ABC News Radio's Rocci Fisch, telling him about their tour with Madonna, how they're not just "rappers for the suburbs" and the origin of their name "from the good old days."

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The band has been toying with the idea for years -- even before third member Adam Yauch (MCA) died at 47 from cancer in 2012. “After Yauch died, I didn’t push them,” said agent Luke Janklow. “But I think that Adam and Mike ended up realizing that it was the right time for them.”

From the Times:

The Beastie Boys are “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience,” [publisher Julie] Grau said in an interview. “There is a kaleidoscopic frame of reference, and it asks a reader to keep up.”

The book, to be edited by the hip-hop journalist Sacha Jenkins, will be loosely structured as an oral history. It will also have contributions by other writers, as well as a strong visual component. Ms. Grau and Luke Janklow, the group’s agent, both compared it to Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys’ acclaimed but short-lived magazine in the 1990s, which explored some of its wide-ranging pop-culture interests with curiosity and snark.

Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau, which published Jay-Z's "Decoded," has taken on the project and is targeting a fall 2015 release.

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Jurors will listen to remarks from attorneys who hope to frame the issues before testimony begins in the months-long trial.

Lawyers for concert giant AEG Live contend the company did nothing wrong and could not have foreseen the circumstances that led to Jackson's death in June 2009 at age 50.

The case will focus on the last few months of Jackson's life and his overall health and financial history. Jurors will also hear evidence throughout the case about Conrad Murray, the former cardiologist convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter after giving him doses of the powerful anesthetic propofol as a sleep aid.

Millions, and possibly billions, of dollars are at stake. Any award in the case will be determined by a jury of six men and six women who have agreed to hear the case, which may last 90 trial days.

Lawyers for Katherine Jackson and the singer's three children have said AEG failed to spot red flags about Murray's finances and created a conflict of interest for him between a major payday and maintaining the superstar's health.

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I will tell you: I am a passionate admirer of your songwriting, your singing and your recordings.

I've bought tickets to see you lots of times. You shaped my head and my heart as a teenager, and to this day continue to impact my various artistic forays.

You helped open me, you taught me that I could be brutally honest in my songs and that I didn't need to wait for anyone's permission.

You helped teach me that I could sing about anything I wanted to. So, no matter what you are, what you do or what you become, I'll feel forever indebted to you for your gifts to me.

I once had the chance to meet you. My band, The Dresden Dolls, were playing at a festival in Germany about eight years ago and you were in the dressing room next to us. Your keyboardist sat next to me and we started chatting over the very terrible backstage sandwich buffet. I told him how much I loved you, and he offered to take me back to your dressing room so that we could say hello to each other.

This is how much you mean to me: I couldn't stomach the idea of Morrissey meeting me and not liking me, even if the chances were small. In a move that shocked myself, I shook my head and declined the invitation. (I'll never know if I did the right thing...late at night, I have regrets.)

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I started writing my review of Twitter Music while listening to a George Jones country song I'd never heard before: "The King Is Gone (and so are you.)" I listened to a lot of George Jones on the day I learned he died. It seemed appropriate, if a bit macabre, to follow him on Twitter Music and see what sort of songs might pop up as a result.

I'm not going to list "The King Is Gone" in my top ten George Jones pantheon (frankly, any chorus with the words "yabba dabba doo" is right out) but I'm glad I heard it. I love being exposed to new music (even if, and sometimes especially if, it's old music).

Twitter Music is all about the social discovery of new music. It suggests for your listening pleasure songs that are already popular on Twitter, songs that the people you follow are tweeting about and listening to, and songs from artists who are in mysterious ways connected to the musicians that you choose to follow. It's confusing in a good, serendipitous, jumbled up kind of way. You're never quite sure how exactly the algorithm works that is generating the tunes, but that's OK. The whole point is discovery, hearing something new that you might like, generated through a fortuitous crunching of your social relationships. If you have a Spotify or Rdio premium account you can listen to the entirety of the songs; if you have iTunes you get a 30-second clip and the option to buy.

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i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized

i dont want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction

i dont want to live in a world where im gonna have to start employing body guards because this kind of behavior is so commonplace and accepted and I’m pissed that when I express concern over my own safety it’s often ignored until people see firsthand what happens and then they apologize for not taking me seriously after the fact…

I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if i did this by accident and i’m gonna flounder without them.  or as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology.  I have never seen this kind of thing happen to any of my male peers

I’m tired of the weird insistence that i need a band or i need to work with outside producers (and I’m eternally grateful to the people who don’t do this)

im tired of being considered vapid for liking pop music or caring about fashion as if these things inherently lack substance or as if the things i enjoy somehow make me a lesser person

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The acts, per Hollywood Reporter:

Vince Vaughn, Rainn Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen, Tim and Eric, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong, Norm Macdonald, Craig Robinson, Rhett & Link, Beardyman, Eric Andre, Garfunkel and Oates, Grace Helbig, Hannibal Buress, Jeff Ross, Jenny Slate, Justin Willman, Jerrod Carmichael, Nathan Fielder, Pete Holmes, Reggie Watts, Ryan Higa, Tig Notaro and The Lonely Island are some of the top-tier comedy talent taking part.
Other participants include Smosh, Nerdist, The Onion, College Humor, Epic Meal Time Funny or Die, Epic Meal Time, JASH, Epic Rap Battles of History, Above Average, Barely Political, FIDLAR, Fine Brothers, Improv Everywhere, KassemG, Three Loco and Tummy Talk.

The event beings with with a pre-show at 4 pm ET and officially kicks off at 5 pm ET and ends on May 25.

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Museum director Mattias Hansson tells AFP that “we’re going to offer visitors a unique experience."

More from the AFP:

For example, fans who have dreamt of becoming the fifth member of the band will be able to appear on stage with the quartet and record a song with them thanks to a computer simulation.

And in another room dedicated to the song “Ring, Ring”, a 1970s telephone will be on display. Only four people know the phone number: ABBA members Agnetha Faeltskog, Anni-Frid (Frida) Lyngstad, Benny Andersson and Bjoern Ulvaeus, who may occasionally call to speak live with museum visitors.

“It was Frida’s idea … so of course she’ll call,” says curator Ingmarie Halling.

Tickets, which cost $30, have nearly sold out for the first few weeks.

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After a year that saw Kiwanuka win BBC's Sound of 2012 poll, the Brit quickly took both sides of the ocean by storm with the 1970s-steeped sound of his debut, "Home Again." We caught up with him in the woods of Willie Nelson's ranch (seriously) right before his set at the Heartbreaker Banquet to reflect on the past few months, his rise to fame and the heroes that have inspired him.

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The term “gifted children” dates back to the 1920s, to the unsavory, sometimes racist world of early IQ tests, but it took fifty years to find its niche: “gifted and talented” summer camps became widespread and self-sustaining during the 1970s. The Center for Talented Youth (CTY), sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, opened its doors in 1979: about 9,000 students, aged twelve to sixteen, now attend CTY on six campuses each summer. According to its official website, those students discover “challenging educational opportunities,” in Latin, mathematics, neuroscience, and so on. According to realcty.org, maintained by alumni, they learn an argot (“flying squirrel,” “CTY-S”) and a set of diversions found nowhere else, such as “Silent Football,” “a complex game involving an invisible football, hallucinations, and tattling.… One CTY-er solved a Rubik’s Cube on stage while reciting the first 200 digits of pi.”

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Boyd wrote about the British ‘60s in the beautifully crafted memoir "White Bicycles," which Brian Eno calls "a gripping piece of social history and the best book about music I've read in years."

But for many music fans, Boyd will remain the guy who discovered Nick Drake -- the depressive English genius who recorded three heavenly folk records in obscurity before dying of an overdose in 1974, at the age of 26.

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This was the situation that the Beatles faced in 1969, when they first concocted the song that would become “Get Back.” Better known as a playful take on counterculture, starring the gender-bending Sweet Loretta Martin and the grass-smoking Jo-Jo, the song originally dealt with South Asian immigration to the United Kingdom. The strange story of "Get Back," its politics, and its bootlegs tells us much about the limits of what musicians, even hugely popular and politically engaged ones, can say in popular music -- and what's at stake in the battle over file-sharing and free culture today.

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It’s a very serious problem in our home, and I suspect it’s a problem in other houses around America: Song-lyric fascists are ruining our fun. Because here’s the thing: Song lyrics are constructs. They are guidelines. Song lyrics, like the Constitution, are living, breathing words. We bend them to our will. They are not meant to be taken literally. In fact, song lyrics are often indecipherable junk written to accompany the melody and rarely to stand on their own. They are not poems. We do not derive meaning from their words; we experience the music. The mood. The feeling. The joy or the sadness. The lyrics glue the music together, but they are not fixed.

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