Pop Music

Pop & Hiss weighs in on the most notable music moments of the year. L.A. owns 2012: Our fair city never lacks for great rising artists, but rarely have two locals so dominated the national conversation with groundbreaking, major-label albums. Kendrick Lamar's “good kid, m.A.A.d city” and Frank Ocean's “Channel Orange” each commanded the country's attention --  Ocean, for both his brave coming-out and for his sheer skill; Lamar for taking the legacy of L.A. gangsta rap and turning it on its ear with a finely observed (and still banging)

Marva Whitney, the R&B-funk singer who died Saturday at age 68, according to her official Facebook page, toured with the James Brown Revue from 1967 to 1970, and briefly held the spotlight on her own with three hits she charted in 1969. Rolling Stone reports the cause of death as complications from pneumonia. Whitney, whom Brown called "Soul Sister No. 1," got her biggest hit with a response to the Isley Brothers' “It's Your Thing,” a song she delivered as “It's My Thing (You Can't Tell Me Who to Sock It To)

With more than 1 billion YouTube hits, "Gangnam Style" by the Korean singer Psy is the most popular music video of the year. It has been imitated, parodied and re-purposed by fans around the world. It has been remixed in many different musical styles, including country, R&B, rap, Desi and heavy-metal. VIDEO: Viral  YouTube videos of 2012 So it was perhaps inevitable that someone would remix the single in the style of classical opera.  The above video comes courtesy of Radio-Television of Slovenia.

"Not so long ago," writes Beck Hansen in the introduction to his new collection of tunes, "Song Reader," "a song was only a piece of paper until it was played by someone. " Indeed, as far back as "Pride and Prejudice," all card-carrying members of the middle class had a piano in the parlor and a daughter or five with skills to play it. (Poor Mary. She did try.) It's been generations since gathering around the piano to sing the latest hits was a popular way to pass an evening, so why then are Beck's latest available only as sheet music?

The slower the traffic on the 101 Freeway, the less time Rachel York will have as Mommy before she becomes Reno Sweeney again. "Shoot," York says on a recent Sunday, squinting through her windshield wipers at the straggling line of taillights on the on ramp. "This may have been a mistake. " At home - or at least, what's home at the moment - there is a little girl clutching a stuffed red Elmo who shrieks "Mommy!" as York walks inside and who puts on tiny patent-leather tap shoes so they can dance together to the music of "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Odd Future's ethic of rowdy, self-aware antagonism extends across genres and subcultures. The variety of its young misanthropic fans — skate rats, hip-hop heads, hipsters and some tweens who probably lied to their parents about their night-out plans — mirrors Odd Future's mashed-up style, with its rap-scene in-jokes and riffs on Internet troll culture. But its main event is a showcase for the charisma and skill that have kept Odd Future the most exciting hip-hop ensemble since Wu-Tang Clan stalked Staten Island's Shaolin.

During José James ' encore performance of “Park Bench People” on Monday, all the musicians except drummer Nate Smith slowly dropped out of the mix until it was just a duet between James' vocal pyrotechnics and Smith's otherworldly beats. James, the genre hybridist who claims both b-boys and jazz purists in his fan base, became so immersed in the music that his eyes rolled into the back of his head. He free-styled a rapid-fire, almost speaking-in-tongues recitation about refusing to sell his soul, and it was hard not to think about the Faustian bargain struck by blues icon Robert Johnson.

Theater critics will tell you what they hate. What they really, really hate. In London, it's a new stage musical called "Viva Forever!" that uses songs from the British pop group Spice Girls. With a book written by Jennifer Saunders, of "Ab Fab" fame, the musical is backed by Judy Craymer, the producer who brought us another pop-jukebox musical, the blockbuster "Mamma Mia!" "Viva Forever!" opened over the weekend at the Picadilly Theatre on London's West End. The musical doesn't feature any of the original members of the Spice Girls, though the five singers -- including Victoria Beckham -- appeared at a curtain call on opening night.

A nine-piece band replete with tuba, washboard, accordion, fiddle, mandolin, trumpet and guitar joyously pumped out early 20th century standards such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," Muddy Waters' deep blues and original tunes that would have sounded utterly at home within the hallowed confines of Preservation Hall in New Orleans' French Quarter. The seven men, most with suspenders attached to well-worn trousers, broad ties and vests and some sporting 1930s-vintage newsboy caps, and two women in flapper-inspired dresses, are members of a ragtag outfit called the Dustbowl Revival, strumming, sawing and puffing enthusiastically as smiling listeners on the dance floor swung their partners infectiously.

Want to hear Mick Jagger talk about the Beatles? Tony Bennett laud the genius of Louis Armstrong? B.B. King express his blues over the future of the blues? Audio interviews with those and dozens more of the biggest names in rock, pop, jazz, blues, country and R&B are now streaming free at the Library of Congress website , opening access to hundreds of hours of recordings collected by veteran music industry executive Joe Smith. As reported  in June, Smith donated his collection of audio interviews with many of the most celebrated figures in 20 th century pop music.