Album

Elton John. Dave Grohl. Trent Reznor. Those are just a few of the guests set to appear on "...Like Clockwork," the new Queens of the Stone Age album which the California rock band announced Tuesday will arrive in June. In a statement, frontman Josh Homme described the disc, the group's first for Matador Records following a long stint on Interscope, as "an audio documentary of a manic year. " The band previously offered England's NME a more colorful description : "You're running in a dream in a codeine cabaret, then your alarm goes off and you wake up. That's kinda what our record sounds like.

When Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green announced last fall that they'd sit out the current season of "The Voice" -- which premiered Monday night on NBC with Shakira and Usher as the new judges -- both singers said they planned to spend more time focusing on music. Yet three months after they vacated their red-pleather judges' chairs, the two don't have much to show for it: Aguilera's "Lotus" album bombed (despite an awesomely freaky performance at the American Music Awards), while Green is starring in a coolly received production at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas.

He's already hit the top spot in the United Kingdom, where "The 20/20 Experience" entered the album chart Sunday at No. 1 -- and in the process became the fastest-selling disc of the year so far there. Now Justin Timberlake is almost certain to repeat the feat in the United States when Billboard reveals its new charts on Wednesday, reflecting U.S. sales through Sunday night. But can the pop superstar sell 1 million records in a week? REVIEW: Justin Timberlake's "The 20/20 Experience" Writing Sunday in Billboard , Keith Caulfield said music-industry sources were estimating that first-week sales of "The 20/20 Experience" will wind up between 950,000 and 975,000.

The Strokes "The Comedown Machine" RCA Records 1 star One of the key axioms of the acting trade is to never seem desperate for a role. To be a hot commodity, behave like you couldn't care less; those who appear to need a job are at a disadvantage. "The Comedown Machine," the fifth album by New York band the Strokes, exudes nervousness; you can almost see beads of sweat forming on the band's foreheads as it works, and fails, to stay relevant while tossing off harmless 1980s-style ditties.

The title of Lil Wayne's new album rings familiar, and not just because it's the sequel to a 2010 disc. On “I Am Not a Human Being II,” the famously out-there rapper boasts, as he has countless times over the last decade, that he's different from the rest of us -- weirder, funnier, richer, sexier. “She fell in love with the Martian,” he says of an admirer in “Wowzerz,” one of many Lil Wayne songs in which he refers to himself as an alien. “I said, 'You're too down to Earth.' ” Yet this month, Lil Wayne revealed just how human he is when a series of seizures put him in L.A.'s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for days.

Though it's still - on some nights - the most-watched show on television, "American Idol" is by all accounts a smaller proposition than it once was, with fewer viewers, less cultural clout and a seemingly diminished ability to produce megastars on the order of Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. The retrenchment appears to be affecting veterans of the program too: At the South by Southwest music festival this month, Season 8 winner Kris Allen and Season 9 winner Lee DeWyze could both be seen sharing cozy club stages with the kind of up-and-coming acts SXSW was designed to spotlight.

New music from Daft Punk appears -- finally -- to be coming. After teasing fans earlier this month with a mysterious 15-second television commercial aired during "Saturday Night Live,"the French disco-pop duo evidently made its new studio album available for pre-order Saturday on iTunes. Apparently due out in the United States on May 21 from Columbia Records, the long-awaited disc is to be called "Random Access Memories" and contains 13 tracks, none of whose titles is currently listed on iTunes.

At  South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, last week, Justin Timberlake diverted a huge amount of attention from the kind of up-and-coming acts the music fest was founded to spotlight. But if the pop superstar's intimate club gig Saturday night prevented someone from seeing the latest Animal Collective clone, well, I'm OK with that. The latest Animal Collective clone probably isn't any good. More troubling is the way Timberlake's album "The 20/20 Experience," which I like very much , is overshadowing another adventurous soul record released Tuesday: "More Than Words" by Brian McKnight, the R&B veteran who beyond his own work has written and produced for Timberlake, in both his solo career and during Timberlake's days with 'N Sync, as well as other artists including Alicia Keys and Boyz II Men. The imbalance in acclaim is as thorough as it is inevitable.

It was 50 years ago today….a Beatles album came out in the U.K. That would be the Fab Four's debut album, “Please Please Me,” released March 22, 1963. To mark the occasion, the Beatles official website is posting the five-minute making-of “Please Please Me” documentary, which also can be seen here: The album consists of several John Lennon-Paul McCartney songs including the title track, “I Saw Her Standing There,” “Love Me Do” and “Do You Want to Know a Secret” along with Beatles versions of several American R&B and pop hits they loved such as “Anna (Go To Him)

     Nearly a year after Philip Phillips edged her out of being “American Idol's” first female victor since 2006, Jessica Sanchez is making her debut. The 17-year-old mini pop diva will issue her post-“Idol” debut, “Me, You & the Music,” on April 30, 19 Recordings/Interscope Records announced Thursday. Sanchez, who also competed on the first season of “America's Got Talent,” won over “Idol” viewers during the singing compeition's 11 th season with stunning covers of Beyoncé, Jazmine Sullivan and Whitney Houston that made her an early front-runner.