Pop

Nearly four years after his death, Michael Jackson will return to Las Vegas , but now as part of Cirque du Soleil's newest production, “Michael Jackson ONE,” which will take up residency at Mandalay Bay . To the strains of “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin',” officials from the Montreal-based theatrical troupe and MGM Resorts announced Thursday that general ticket sales for the new spectacle would begin March 7. “ONE” comes on the...

From the control room, the producer gave host Matthew Rodrigues the cue to launch into a celebrity news segment featuring a Valentine's Day update on Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart -- she didn't travel to Australia to visit him during the filming of “The Rover”! Rodrigues followed with a discussion of the news that “Downton Abbey” dowager countess Maggie Smith doesn't even watch the series! With the season finale coming, Rodrigues quipped, “I guess Maggie Smith will be the only one who is not watching.” The production has all the gloss of "Entertainment Tonight" or "Access Hollywood" - including video highlights from the runways of “Fashion Week” in New York City - but this show appears exclusively online.

The VH1 biopic of platinum-selling girl group TLC is taking shape. Rapper and VMA stage crasher Lil Mama, Keke Palmer and actress-singer Drew Sidora (“The Game”) are set to portray the groundbreaking R&B/hip-hop/pop trio known for its brazen anthems and fiery interpersonal drama. "I would sing 'No Scrubs' over and over again to the point my parents would have to tell me to stop, but I never did, I had my little hairbrush as my mic and nobody could tell me I wasn't the fourth member of TLC," Palmer said in a statement announcing her casting.

Shadow Morton, the songwriter and producer behind such 1960s pop classics as " Remember (Walking in the Sand) " and " Leader of the Pack " -- both recorded by the Shangri-Las -- is dead. According to the New York Times , Morton died Thursday in Laguna Beach; the cause, said a family friend, was cancer. He was 71. A Brooklyn native who spent his adolescence on Long Island, Morton reportedly couldn't read music or play an instrument. But he used a feel for the highs and lows of teenage emotion -- a deep understanding not unlike that of his girl-group contemporary Phil Spector -- to create huge hits that tapped into the addictive torment of young love.

Usher and Diplo's last collaboration around a Valentine's Day was about a fraught relationship reaching its end. But their new one is about an enticingly dangerous beginning. Following their consensus smash single "Climax," a bold minimalist showcase for Usher's higher ranges and Diplo's classy restraint, the duo have returned with "Go Missin'," a new track that follows the same sonic principles to very different ends. (Watch the video below.) Built on a trim foundation of synth peals and well-placed drum machines, the showroom piece here is Usher's way with harmonies.

What signifies fame 2013-style more than a teen pop megastar with a momager? In his new novel, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” (Free Press, $25), author Teddy Wayne takes a look into the heart of celebrity through the perspective of an 11-year-old singer. "Love Song" follows young Jonny as he faces the manic highs and the claustrophobic lows of pop stardom. Jonny thinks and speaks in a language comprised of tween naivete and marketing lingo picked up from an industry to which he is bound.

Since at least 1989, when it was universally ridiculed for bestowing the hard rock-metal award on Jethro Tull over Metallica, the Recording Academy has lived in fear of seeming terminally out of touch. British neo-folkies Mumford & Sons won the evening's top prize, album of the year, for its earnestly hand-woven and homespun "Babel. " The irreproachably indie duo the Black Keys scored the rock song Grammy for "Lonely Boy. " Months before Sunday's awards show, R&B newcomer Frank Ocean had received a full-dress media coronation for his freshman release, "Channel Orange.

As the high-profile worlds of fashion and music collide at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night, one need only consider David Bowie to see why the two will be forever intertwined. Five decades after he introduced the first of his myriad manifestations, Bowie and his stylistic influences still reverberate from Hollywood red carpets to glossy magazine covers to the runway shows going on now at New York Fashion Week. And, if the first month and a half of 2013 is any indication, there's every reason to believe that the Thin White Duke will cast a long shadow across popular culture this year.

Kelly Clarkson, the "American Idol" winner who was one of few peers to maintain a major pop career, won the award for pop vocal album at the 55th Grammy Awards, besting a diverse roster of artists including Florence and the Machine, Fun., Maroon 5 and Pink. Clarkson won for her album “Stronger,” her fifth studio full-length, which was widely viewed as a return to form for the Texas-raised vocalist. Bolstered by popular singles, including the title track and “Mr. Know It All,” the album went platinum in America and returned her to the upper ranks of American pop stardom.

In the first of two shows at a recent Royce Hall stand, the jazz pianist Robert Glasper opened with a wickedly driving take on Radiohead's "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" that featured propulsive fuzz-bass from Derrick Hodge and Casey Benjamin taking his voice to the outer limits on vocoder. With the song churning at a breakneck pace, there was an exhilarating sense that the Experiment might be one of the sharpest bands working today. Here the group performs in a sort of tuneup for Sunday's Grammys, where Glasper and the Experiment picked up two nominations in the R&B category.