M.I.A. pulling out a middle finger during the Super Bowl half time performance seemed pretty shockingly non-shocking when compared to oh say, Janet Jackson, and every other thing M.I.A. has ever done (example:  banned videos, stalking a reporter over writing she ate a truffle fry) but its still been a hot topic.  How did Madonna feel about the whole thing?

Adele is set to perform for the first time since her throat surgery at the Grammys this Sunday, which has everyone wondering just how she will sound. Only four months since she went under the knife, will she struggle, will her voice crack, have her vocal chords healed enough, will she burst into tears because Karl Lagerfeld called her fat all over the media?  The singer gave a preview of her performance to Anderson Cooper for an upcoming 60 Minutes and she sounds…see for yourself.

The first photos of celebrities’ kids can fetch big bucks from the tabloids.  Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins Knox Leon & Vivienne Marcheline garnered over $11 million, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s kids Max & Emme Muñiz were priced at $6 million, and someone was even willing to lay down a whopping $1 million for Britney Spears’ sister’s baby.  It’s not chump change. But instead of cashing in on Blue Ivy's pic, Beyonce and Jay-Z have chosen to release the images themselves on a Tumblr called HelloBlueIvyCarter. The shots are adorable.

It’s been a year since The Kills released Blood Pressures and excitement over the album hasn't waned. Celebrating their 10^th anniversary as a band this week they'll play a show at NYC’s Terminal 5 tonight, but have already given the city's elite a preview.  On Thursday, they gave an ultra-private performance at the swank Top of the Standard to help kick off Fashion Week.  Take a look.

Welp, The New York Times has caught on to Lana Del Rey (ON IT!), and we've all been treated to an incredibly insipid profile of the scarlet starlet/harlot in T magazine. It's full of incredibly fascinating and concrete facts, like her possession of a Tennessee Williams paperback and her "neither rich nor poor" upbringing. Journalism at its finest!

As a criticism of domestic policy, Bruce Springsteen's "We Take Care Of Our Own" falls somewhere in between "The Rising" and "Born in the USA." But it's a solid anthemic rocker, as only the Boss can do it, good enough to be the first single off his upcoming Wrecking Ball album. Today, Springsteen dropped an accompanying video for the song, a collage of black and white imagery that slowly shifts to color as his vocal becomes more emphatic. It's also hilariously subtitled by way of Power Point, it seems, the lyrics awkwardly flashing over the screen with the subtlety of a last-minute chemistry presentation. Matched to the distinct imagery of Bruce rocking out in doorways and on top of rooftops and shots of everyday Americans working through the sprawl, it doesn't quite fit, but hey, any help is better than none at all.

Because he is our most bloggable head of state, President Obama has made a "2012 Campaign Playlist" available for perusal on Spotify, the popular streaming music service. Posted to the official Obama Tumblr, of course, the playlist is filled with uplifting ballads, uplifting rockers, and... well, it's pretty much all uplifting. Click here to queue up Spotify, and check out the entire playlist after the jump.

Finally, finally: Jay-Z and Kanye West have released a music video for "N----- in Paris," the song they played up to like eleven times in a row on their Watch the Throne tour. It's a live video, too, perfectly capturing the sensation of being bombarded over and over and over by the song's walloping beat. A kaleidoscope effect doubles the 'Ye and Jay we see, as well as the well-dressed fans losing their mind in the crowd. (Warning: if you're sensitive to flashing lights, you may want to pass on this one.)

Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo has released a music video for "Off the Wall," the first song off his upcoming solo album, Between the Tides and the Times. It's split between live footage of Ranaldo jamming out at Glasslands, along with video he shot himself. "Other footage by me: Battery Park trees, Holland tunnel, Frey in Walt Whitman's forest, girl fr Calgary, MP3 experiment in Hudson River Park, David Linton installation at the Clocktower," he writes in the video's official description. As you can imagine, it's a kaleidoscope adventure through Ranaldo's impression of New York City, surely to tug the heartstrings of anyone who's already begun to miss his old band. 

A year ago last week, the White Stripes called it quits, much to the dismay of Candy Cane Children across the land. Then Jack White started doing some other things, most notably—lest we forget—releasing a single with Insane Clown Posse and JEFF the Brotherhood in which they sampled a Mozart piece called "Leck Mich Im Arsch."