After the first American idol winner Kelly Clarkson made it big with her impressive and lovely voice it is now the second album was the charm for the former winner Carrie Underwood. It was far better than the first.

The 24-year-old country singer’s latest disc, Carnival Ride, checked in at No. 1 with 17,000 in sales, knocking Josh Groban’s “Noel” (11,000) down to No. 2. She has sold 527,000 copies of “Carnival Ride” just in the U.S.

She said something interesting about the title You step onto this ride called life, and it’s a crazy thing you don’t know anything about, but you get on it anyway. You do what you can to lean different directions to try and get it to go where you want it to go, but you can’t stop it – it just keeps moving. That’s why Carnival Ride works as my album title, because it describes the wonderful craziness that I’ve been through over the past couple years.

The fact that she has sold so many copies is more impressive since she has the critic charmed. Critical reception of the album so far has been mainly positive. A must have for country listeners.

She is a master at slipping into musical styles. Being a singer, musician and producer, the bluegrass-country icon Alison Krauss has had, along the years, a stellar career. Having such versatility gave her the chance to work with artists as diverse as Sting, Brad Paisley, James Taylor, Phish, Dolly Parton and Alan Jackson.

But she is not going to stop here. Her latest project, with former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant could be a big thing. Produced by T Bone Burnett and released last week, Raising Sand is a dark, whispery record that finds them interpreting the likes of Townes Van Zandt, the Everly Brothers, Mel Tillis and Tom Waits.

“I think of it as a window into some other world,” she says of her collaborations. “You take away something by watching someone sing and watching them do something they were naturally born to do.”. He said that “I think my vision was a little more lightweight,” he says, sipping hot tea. “Alison wanted something more serious, with more colour and shade.”.

It is hard to say how it is going to sound but words such as dreamy and eerie are probably good for describing it. “The idea was to take them both out of their comfort zone. To take us all out of our comfort zones,” says Burnett, who selected the musicians and most of the 13 songs, which includes a composition by Plant and Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page called “Please Read the Letter” from their 1998 album “Walking Into Clarksdale. So it is not going to be something you hear every day.

This day people from every corner of the world are getting their Halloween groove. Some find it hard to enter the mood. Some find it easy but feel that something is missing. Some have no interest in it but just listen to that kind of music. Here is a list of spooky and grave faves.

They should be easy to find and you are probably going to be able to find them with iTunes or your favorite download site. May you have a good time and happy haunting.

About anything that Slayer sings is in this list. Just look at the name of the tune and use your mind. These death-metal thrashers have a way of their own. Then you could listen to Sweet Transvestite from Rocky Horror Picture Show. The name says everything that should be said here. This gets us to “I Love the Dead” by Alice Cooper. Other tunes which could be included are “Welcome to My Nightmare”, “Go to Hell” and “Dead Babies”. The man has a thing for necrophilia. Themes could fit this thing. Terminator Theme and Incredible Hulk Theme are not bad. For the brits and not just them there is “Werewolves of London” by Warren Zevon. This man has such a howl that your neighbors are going to freak out.

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The hippy event is not just a live act. It is a state of mind which influenced the people who went to it and generations after that. It could be identified with the hippy movement and not just that. Rock singers were there. Names like Santana, Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joe Cocker and Jimi Hendrix speak for themselves.

After that other legends came and sang there. A tribute to those people is in the form of a museum. It is going to rock on even though the federal government pulled $1 million in funding for the memorial to the famous hippie fest.

Officially, the Woodstock museum is known as the Museum at Bethel Woods, and is due to open next year. Bethel is the upstate New York town where organizers eventually put on the three-day Woodstock Music and Art Fair in 1969. “Our plans haven’t changed,” said Ellyn Solis, spokeswoman for the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which is developing the museum as the newest part of its 2,000-acre performing arts venue.

The event was named “three days of peace and love,” and drew about 500,000 people to the natural amphitheatre on Max Yasgur’s farm. That is the reported number but it is probably not accurante since there were people there who were not accounted for. The museum is being built on top of the hill near where the stage was located. Thousands of people visit the site each year, where a stone monument is currently the only marker.

The artist has been described numerous times as a rapper who sprinkles folk, country, blues and rock into his highly-stylized sound. Few people know that he is a Rockies fan. “I’m really pulling for those Rockies,” he says, getting nostalgic for his first love just days before Boston would make quick work of Colorado. “Besides, who wants to see a completely lopsided World Series anyway?”. But baseball is of lesser importance and what concerns us is that he has been around for over than years and is still a great artist.

In the the early ’90s, his musical palette broadened, veering every which way. He began to play with music styles and he says that he has just followed his creative impulses and they should be held responsable for his music.

“I never really think about it,” he says, the beginnings of a smile curling at the corners of his lips. “I’ve never approached it like, ‘This one is for the radio, and this one is for the club.’” But after “Secret House” buried his husky vocals amidst a sea of synths and a crunchy mix of guitar and drums, he found himself once again drawn to his first musical passion: hip-hop.

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There are very few experiences which could be marked as an experience lived just once. Music is meant to speak to the heard regardless of genre or age or religion or those things. So it is lovely to hear about the kind of concert which is going to be held tonight in Halifax.

A vocal group from New York is going to sing the songs, which were found in a medieval book of Gregorian chants that was brought to Halifax in the 1800s. They are going to unlock the choral chants that once filled a convent in Belgium more than 450 years ago.

The work put into it is enormous and just transcribing them took three years. This was made by a music professor at Dalhousie University, Jennifer Bain. The other musicians put a lot of work in it and there were many who said that they were not going to be able to play this gig. But they are.

Jennifer Bain says that the pieces in the manuscript are standard chants that would have been used in many different areas - but at least three are unique and haven’t been found preserved in any other source. There are some which are not included in this category but a big part of them is. Beyond its music, the manuscript features colourful, full-page illuminations of biblical scenes and information about the nuns who lived at the abbey. It is going to take place tonight at Halifax’s St. Mary’s Basilica.

Jay-Z is not retiring again. Or he is not retiring. In fact he went to Brooklyn to give fans an early listen to some of the music on his upcoming album, “American Gangster.” Jay-Z, along with a full band, performed several tracks from the album inspired by the upcoming Denzel Washington-Russell Crowe flick.

“American Gangster,” in theatres Nov. 2, chronicles the rise and fall of notorious Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas. The artist said that watching the movie gave him a better view of his lifestyle and drug use. “Can I get my Lindsay Lohan on?” he joked before launching into his rap, though he quickly added: “I definitely went too far … I might have to edit that.”

He said that “I was watching the movie and I was pulling emotions from the film,” the 37-year-old rapper told the crowd, which included girlfriend Beyonce, on Wednesday night. He claims that rap releases lack a story and in his mind this is the most important thing. They lack substance.

“I know there’s a whole thing on censorship; this album is an easy target. I think it’s misplaced,” he said. He also seemed to criticize those who are against the use of the N-word in rap lyrics, noting there are other hurtful slurs in the language: “What are we going to do, take every word off the table?” “I’m not knocking the way anybody makes (their music),” he said, “(but) I think a body of work is what the game needs right now.”

He has a point. Hip hop and rand are not at their better times.

Ozzy Osbourne is a veritable heavy metal titan that has been making music for forty years and he is the undisputel prince of darkness. That is what some think. Others think that he is just a man reduced to a pop culture punchline by years of overindulging and the embarrassing spectre of that MTV reality show.

The White Zombie frontman Rob Zombie is giving him a run for his money in the creepy weirdo department; let us think in the halloween spirit who is the true bad guy here. Osbourne was born into poverty in Birmingham, England, where he suffered from dyslexia and other learning disabilities as a kid. He sheltered himself in music. Zombie, meanwhile, was an American college student with a longtime interest in horror and exploitation movies. Ozzy is the true thing; Zombie is the devoted student. Zombie is 1down. Osbourne was dogged by charges he was a bad influence on kids. At first, critics simply accused him of glorifying Satanism, but he’s also been sued twice by the parents of teen boys whose suicides were apparently inspired by his albums (both cases were tossed out in court). Zombie’s career is controversy-free.

The Ozzy and bad scene is known in the world. But Zombie’s movies — particularly the ’70s throwbacks House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects — are an endurance test for even the most hardened horror fans. He wins and he is just 1down again. In 2002, Zombie married longtime girlfriend Sheri Moon.

Osbourne, as anyone with a TV knows, has been married to professional ballbuster Sharon ever since she took over as his manager. She is probably the brains behind him. And she is scarier than anything on this list. Ozzy wins by a mile.

Yesterday afternoon, the famous music torrent tracker OiNK, was shut down, after it’s Amsterdam servers were raided and seized. Also it’s owner, a 24 year old IT worker from Middlesbrough, England was arrested by UK authority and “is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law,” states BBC.

OiNK had a pretty large membership of 180.000 users (invite only) and specialized in uploading pre-released albums, often weeks before their official dates. IFPI officials estimated that the torrent website is responsible for leaking over 60 major records only this year.

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At his age and with his knowing of music it is hard not to listen to what he says. His words are often filled with wisdom and when he says that the inspiration for the title of his latest album, Memory Almost Full, came from a phrase he saw on his cellphone there is a story there. A good story is there.

“It seemed symbolic of our lives today,” the 65-year-old ex-Beatle said Monday. “Your messages are always full. And your mind is full. And it doesn’t matter if you’re my age or 20. I think that we all need to delete stuff every so often.”. He launched his 21st release earlier this year.

“The business was changing, everything was changing,” said McCartney, who left EMI Music, a unit of EMI Group PLC. “I started to think that the record companies didn’t know how to deal with it and they were getting boring and jaded.” “If you’re among 300 artists whose album is coming out, they have no time for you,” he said.

He is going to sing at the Olympia theater in the city of Paris. He sang there in 1964 over 40 years ago. Dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, McCartney gave the press a concert preview of “Let It Be” and “Lady Madonna,” singing and playing the piano.