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Lubbock, Texas is famous as the birthplace of Buddy Holly, the pioneering rocker who inspired The Beatles. It’s also the birthplace of the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines, who sings about her hometown on “Lubbock or Leave It,” a roadhouse rocker from the group’s latest album that conjures up images of both Holly and an unwelcoming redneck town. “Dust bowl, Bible belt, got more churches than trees/Raise me, praise me, couldn’t save me, couldn’t keep me on my knees,” Maines warbles. “Oh boy, rave on down loop 289/That’ll be the day you see me back in this fool’s paradise.” Although the song was triggered by a documentary about a Lubbock teenage girl who tried, unsuccessfully, to have sex educatio...

Some bands get the Bono Talk, where U2’s Pope-like singer advises aspiring musicians on various rock truths and how to keep it real. Others get the Elton Chat, with Captain Fantastic dispensing his own sparkling pearls of wisdom. The Killers received the latter while Sir Elton was performing in the group’s glitzy hometown of Las Vegas. Brandon Flowers, The Killers’ singer-keyboardist, recalls that John was doing his thing at Caesar’s Palace last year as his band was recording across the street at the Palm Hotel and Casino. “We’d shoot over to catch his show every now and then and one day he dropped in to see us in the studio—it was quite an honor,” says Flowers. And what did the Chat entail?...

For years, Neko Case has been hailed as a siren, a honky-tonk angel with a stunning contralto described variously as “eerie,” “luscious,” “transcendent” and “the purest voice to emerge from the independent music scene in more than a decade.” But with her fourth studio album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Case has been winning high praise for another talent: songwriting. And the accolades for her songs are every bit as wide-ranging as those for her vocals. One critic even used four very different adjectives in a single sentence—“uplifting,” “melancholic,” “rollicking” and “ominous”—to describe them. Let’s just say that Case has never been easy to categorize. American born and Canadian bred,...

The Old Sod has a way of turning up surprisingly soulful female singers. First it was Joss Stone, a blonde, teenage schoolgirl from England’s Devon region, who burst on to the scene with a robust, older-than-her-years voice that drew comparisons to Aretha Franklin. Now comes Corinne Bailey Rae, a twentysomething singer blessed with a smoky, intimate vocal style that has caused British critics to breathlessly describe her as a young Billie Holiday. But, like EMI label mate Stone, Bailey Rae didn’t emerge from the highly cosmopolitan capital of London. Rather, the daughter of a mixed-race marriage hails from the northern city of Leeds. “My dad’s from the Caribbean and my mum’s English,” explai...

It’s been easy to dismiss Sinéad O’Connor as a kook, a volatile artist who seemed hell bent on career self-destruction by refusing to have the American national anthem played before her U.S. concerts and ripping up Pope John Paul II’s photo on Saturday Night Live. The backlash was swift and severe. The outspoken Irish-born singer suffered a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide and announced her retirement from the music business—several times. Last year, O’Connor took out a full-page ad in the Irish Examiner newspaper, pleading with her critics to be left alone. “I have been the whipping post of Ireland’s media for 20 years,” she wrote in the 2,000-word open letter. “If ye all think I am suc...

It looks like Andy Warhol’s fabled Factory in New York. Walls, windows, doors and furniture are all encased in tin foil. Silver balloons add a surreal, festive touch. It’s a photo shoot for Franz Ferdinand, the reigning dukes of pop-rock, and the four band members are happy to play along. After tossing and kicking many rolls of foil, more tin-foolery follows. First, the group mummifies drummer Paul Thomson. Then, hamming it up like Ringo, Thomson turns into a crack-head Tin Man, puffing on a dubious-looking foil pipe. Blame it on their roots. “We’re a product of the Glasgow scene,” says singer Alex Kapranos, “where artists play in bands and bands perform in art galleries. There’s a great cro...

Chris Martin seems perfectly at home in the Big Apple. Although quintessentially English, the Coldplay frontman talks at New York speed, his mouth racing to keep up with his hyperactive mind. And he walks fast, with a New Yorker’s sense of purpose, navigating Manhattan streets like a veteran. Martin is talking with boyish enthusiasm about Coldplay’s next album, X & Y, revealing that it was largely motivated by his becoming a father and Coldplay’s commitment to fighting global poverty. “Sure, we want to outdo Sgt. Pepper or OK Computer,” says Martin, striding along the Hudson River on a warm February day. “But this isn’t just about me and the band. Success doesn’t mean anything if we can’...

There’s a gulf in country music as wide as the Grand Canyon. On one side is a shopping mall, full of cowboy hats, sequins and schlocky songs with a well-polished sheen. On the other is a saloon, with soaring voices, twanging guitars and songs gutsy enough to shake the shingles loose. Neko Case resides on the saloon side of country. Over the course of three impassioned studio albums and countless tours of rowdy barrooms, Case has blazed a trail across North America that left fans awestruck and critics breathlessly drawing comparisons to Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. Now Case has made an album that captures the unbridled emotion of her live shows. Recorded in three different venues, including ...

Boyish John Mayer bursts into the hotel room like the Sundance Kid, crouching down with pretend guns a-blazing. The cocky, playfully combative pose befits the U.S. singer-songwriter who, at 26, is already at the top of his game and riding high on newfound fame. So far, Mayer has enjoyed multi-platinum sales for his Rooms for Squares album and then saw his current album, Heavier Things, debut at number one. Meanwhile, there’s a Grammy Award on Mayer’s mantle, which he won for “Your Body is a Wonderland,” beating out his idol, Sting, and one of his biggest supporters, Elton John. Now, after opening for Sting’s European spring dates, Mayer is headlining his own major North American tour—one of ...

Gwen Stefani is sitting in her 1920s mansion, east of Hollywood, waxing breathlessly about her solo debut album, Love Angel Music Baby. “Dude, the record is so frickin’ good,” she gushes, “not in a braggy way—I’m not the only one who worked on it—but I feel like every track could be a single.” Stefani’s enthusiasm is understandable; the singer has just finished work on her much-awaited “dance record” which, by her own admission, had a difficult genesis. “I got to work with so many talented people,” she continues, referring to collaborations with such heavyweights as songwriter Linda Perry and producers like Dr. Dre and Outkast’s Andre 3000, “that I’d sometimes feel that I was drowning in the...