It's a stifling July day in Pittsburgh, and Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, is dressed accordingly: soccer shorts, white T-shirt, and a bandanna around his forehead. After releasing 2006's Night Ripper, the pop-savvy cut-and-paster quit his biomedical engineer job and went from playing tiny underground venues to chaotic dance parties around the globe.

The missing link between punk and riot grrl wasn't a band or even a fleeting subgenre, but an amazing 1982 Paramount music-biz satire that was never properly released, seen only on late-night cable, crappy bootlegs, and at art-house revivals.

In June, while beset with allegations of crack abuse, apologizing for singing a nursery rhyme laden with racial slurs, and lamenting an incarcerated husband, Amy Winehouse found time to give a private concert in Moscow.

Music has always come easy for Glen Campbell -- his gift for ballads ("Wichita Lineman") and rodeo-bar staples ("Rhinestone Cowboy") made him the king of country pop, but it's away from the mic where life's been hard -- drug abuse, divorces, a much-ridiculed mug shot from a 2003 DUI arrest.

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You gotta give Nas points for trying. After a year in which he caught flak from Bill O'Reilly for participating in a benefit, saw his nemesis turned label boss Jay-Z leave Def Jam, and shot a failed reality show with his wife Kelis, the 34-year-old Nasir Jones lost his long, contentious struggle to name his ninth album Nigger, replacing the title at the last minute.