Do You Realize?? Christmas on Mars at Music Box Theatre. Fri & Sat. The Flaming Lips' emphasis on spectacleand good-natured weirdness is potent. Now, singer-cum-impresario Wayne Coyne invites you to celebrate Christmas on Mars. The group's long-awaited feature film....

What is it about Kanye West's self-love that annoys people so deeply? No other rapper is taken to task as frequently and as fervently for crimes of the ego. Even West's fans, on message boards and in comments sections, often separate his work, which they adore, from his self-regard, which they toler...

The best proof available that Beyoncé Knowles is not a cyborg came in September of 2006. It was late, outside a club, when paparazzi caught the R&B titan slumped woozily in a Maybach sedan with her hair and dress disheveled—a party girl, it seemed, after one cosmo too many. On the spectrum of...

The news lede is simply: OMG. It's actually here. After 17 years, a reported $13 million, and countless rock critic invocations of Howard Hughes, white whales, and Fitzcarraldo, a new Guns N' Roses record will be released on Sunday. Chinese Democracy's album credits reflect the epic slog that brough...

There are things we can and cannot say in public, and we generally accept this without worry or serious regard. Hate speech, for example, is self-evidently bad: Its injury can be violent, sloppy, and incommensurably cruel. It's inadvisable to warn of a fire that's only figurative or to mock religiou...

Close listeners will notice something strange about "Violet Hill," the new Coldplay single: It isn't a Coldplay single. That term, after all, implies certain things about the shape a song will take, what it will sound like, what it will achieve. Here, the criteria go unfulfilled. Where's the part wh...

I'm always bummed when there isn't a posting by Molly Sheridan on Fridays, one of many great things from the American Music Center's New Music Box. (or as it kinda looks by what is supposed to be an unsmiley face, I'm mustached when there isn't a post) When the Friday Informer does return, no doubt ...

Raindrops on roses, And whiskers on kittens, Bright copper kettles, And warm woollen mittens, Brown paper packages, Tied up with strings, These are a few of my favorite things . . . Cream colored ponies, An' crisp apple strudels, Doorbells an' sleigh bells, An' schnitzel with noodles, Wild geese tha...