Album

John Rzeznik, lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, should know a thing or two about wedding songs. He wrote the inescapable hit "Iris" in 1998, which plenty of newly married couples have played for their first dance, including, most famously, singer Avril Lavigne in 2006. And yet, for his own upcoming wedding in July, Rzeznik has no clue what song he and his fiance, Melina Gallo, will dance to. "I'm just happy that I'm getting married. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm still a guy," Rzeznik said from his Los Angeles home recently.

John Rzeznik, lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, should know a thing or two about wedding songs. He wrote the inescapable hit "Iris" in 1998, which plenty of newly married couples have played for their first dance, including, most famously, singer Avril Lavigne in 2006. And yet, for his own upcoming wedding in July, Rzeznik has no clue what song he and his fiance, Melina Gallo, will dance to. "I'm just happy that I'm getting married. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm still a guy," Rzeznik said from his Los Angeles home recently.

If Drake's brand of hyper-detailed rap-meets-loverboy-R&B turns you cold, it's time to step away from the Internet for the rest of the month. Late last night - hours after Drake hosted a two-hour radio stint on his hometown's Flow 93.5 and premiered his collaboration with the Weeknd, "Crew Love" - "Take Care" leaked, almost in its entirety. (We still don't have the closer "The Ride" or all of the bonus tracks.) But it's safe to start dissecting the record as a whole, or at least as a substantial preview to the retail version.

You know the Goo Goo Dolls' hits: "Name," "Long Way Down," "Slide," "Black Balloon" and, of course, the once-ubiquitous ballad from the "City of Angels" soundtrack, "Iris. " But what about the less popular album cuts? Like any band with material spanning decades, the Goo Goo Dolls have hidden gems in their catalog. Here are five worth seeking out. "On the Lie" (from 1993's "Superstar Car Wash") It's mainly a strange back-and-forth conversation between a man and woman, but this song highlights Rzeznik's ability to craft unique - and even mysterious - characters.

When Sara Bareilles' new album was released, it surprised many by heading straight to the top of the charts. It was a shock not just because it was just Bareilles' second album, coming off 2007's "Little Voice," but also because of the kind of music she makes. At a time when dance-infused hip-hop is dominating the Billboard charts, here was a 13-track album of upbeat, traditional pop nestled at No. 1, with 90,000 units sold, according to Nielsen Soundscan. "There's a lot of stuff out there that's dance and club-oriented," Bareilles said.

There's a moment from Kyle Durfey's adolescence that has always stayed with him. He was sitting next to his dad in their Crofton home, watching the sci-fi movie "Contact. " In the film, Jodie Foster's character sees her long-deceased father walk up to her on a beach in space. "I'll be damned," Gordon Durfey said to himself, just loud enough for his son to hear him. The significance wasn't lost on the teenager: Durfey realized his dad was imagining meeting his father again. It's a feeling Durfey knows well now. "The Lack Long After," the second album from Durfey's Baltimore screamo band Pianos Become the Teeth released in November on Topshelf Records, is about the death of Durfey's dad, who died of pneumonia in April 2010.

It was a week of superstar debuts at the nation's record retailers, though some of the stars have apparently lost a lot of shine in recent years. Prince and AC/DC managed to bow their latest albums in the top 10, but David Bowie and the Grateful Dead had to make do with the top 30 and Diana Ross opened at No. 114.Speaking volumes about the state of music today, the old warhorses struggled to the gate while such perky newcomers as Alanis Morissette, Coolio...

Lately, life has been a blur for singer/songwriter Ben Harper. At 5 a.m. last Friday, Harper and the Relentless7 walked out of Jackson Browne's Groove Masters recording studio in Santa Monica with a fully mixed new record. Without missing a beat, they finalized their plans for the next national tour, which started yesterday in Illinois, brings them to Baltimore's Pier Six Pavilion on April 20 and continues through the summer. It's only been a year since Harper's last release, "White Lies for Dark Times" – Harper's first with the Relentless7 – but the square-jawed singer doesn't take much down time between albums.

Perhaps there's a dearth of great songs out there. Maybe artists just want to interpret the tunes they loved way back when. Whatever the reason, there has lately been a wave of tributes and tribute albums. In the past few weeks, we have seen the release of A Tribute to Joni Mitchell, a star-studded affair featuring the likes of Bjork, James Taylor and Prince interpreting the poetically complex songs of the singer-songwriter. There's also The Sandinista! Project, a song-for-song remake of the Clash's sprawling 1980 Sandinista!

Camera-loving American Idol finalist Constantine Maroulis may or may not have TV-engineered pop stardom in his future. He will, however, have a record in stores next month. Pray for the Soul of Betty, the rock band Maroulis fronted before auditioning for the Fox show - to the camera-captured disdain of some of his bandmates - will see its self-titled album hit music stores May 10. The album is being distributed by KOCH Records, the label that inflicted two William Hung albums on the public last year.

Michael Mayer knows a thing or two about coming of age. The Maryland-born director won a Tony Award for his work guiding the 2006 Broadway hit "Spring Awakening," which chronicles teens getting a grip on their budding sexuality. In 2010, he directed "American Idiot," a punk rock musical based on the Green Day album of that name, which follows a group of cynical, spent youths as they seek excitement in a big city. Mayer didn't just direct the latter, but collaborated on the book with Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong.

Seated at a downtown coffee shop last week, Victoria Vox quickly noticed the table was wobbly and uneven. Rather than ignore the minor nuisance, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter took the newspaper she walked in with, folded up a few pages and stuck it under the table's leg. She punctuated the correction with a shrug. "I fix things," Vox said nonchalantly. Born Victoria Davitt, Vox's do-it-herself mentality has served her well since May 2003, when she quit her managerial job at New York & Company in the mall of her hometown, Green Bay, Wis. Since then, music has been her only career.

At first glance, the Metro Gallery's Saturday night bill seems like an odd pairing: Dope Body - one of Baltimore's noisiest, most abrasive bands in years - and Mykki Blanco, a gender-bending, impressively nimble rapper from New York. But watch some live YouTube clips of each act, and the show makes more sense. Dope Body and Mykki Blanco command attention immediately, and both are capable of consistently winning over new audiences through sheer force and charisma. It doesn't matter that their albums would be categorized at opposite ends of the store.

Of all the cities Chris Tomlin plays, Baltimore is one of his favorites. "I don't know what it is, but it seems like there's nights where you feel really connected to the people immediately," Tomlin said. "There's other nights where you have to work at it. At Baltimore, you never have to work at it. " Tomlin, 40, is returning to Baltimore on Friday, to perform at 1st Mariner Arena . It's the third stop of his Burning Lights tour, promoting the album of the same name that topped the Billboard 200 chart - only the fourth Christian rock album to do so. "It's pretty crazy," Tomlin said.

In 1993, a trio of University of Colorado students released a debut album, "Sister Sweetly," as Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Four Top 10 singles, including "Broken Hearted Savior," pushed album sales passed one million. An unknown at the time named Sheryl Crow opened some of the band's tour dates. That same year, the group made its network television debut on "Late Show with David Letterman. " Frontman Todd Park Mohr remains proud of the band's biggest - and earliest - accomplishments, but he doesn't sugarcoat their affect on him, even 20 years later.

Get Arbouretum frontman Dave Heumann started on certain topics - such as maximizing the sound quality of vinyl, fictitious narrators in songwriting, photography - and expect long-winding exchanges full of ideas and anecdotes. But ask the 40-year-old Roland Park musician why he started playing music in the first place and the answer is uncharacteristically succinct. "You start a band and you get to play guitar solos for as long as you want," Heumann said from a corner of a coffeeshop late last month.

Chris RockBigger and Blacker (Dreamworks 50055)Comedy albums have traditionally fallen into one of two categories: joke collections and party records.Joke collections are by far the most familiar of the two. Although they sometimes include racy language or taboo material, most of what they offer is the safe, radio-friendly comedy made by Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Steve Martin or Steven Wright.Party records, on the other hand, are the kind of album people hide on the back shelves so the kids won't find them.

WAYNE'S WORLDMusic from the Motion Picture (Reprise 26805)What makes the denizens of "Wayne's World" so believable is the attention to detail Mike Myers and Dana Carvey lavish on Wayne and Garth; not only do these two look like typical suburban rivet-heads, but they talk and think like them, too. So why doesn't the soundtrack album to "Wayne's World" ring as true? Part of the problem has to do with movie production up-sizing -- for instance, taking the raucously amateurish "Wayne's World Theme" and inflating it to the album-rock proportions found here.

The anticipated self-titled debut album from Dungeonesse, the Baltimore pop duo of Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Jon Ehrens (White Life, zillions of other projects), will be released on May 14 via Secretly Canadian. In November, we received the first offering, "Drive You Crazy. " Today, the group released its second single, the album opener "Shucks. " Listen to it at the bottom of this post. The tracklist, posted below, features 10 songs. Most intriguing are two songs that include TT the Artist and DDm, rappers featured in the June 2012 b cover story, "Baltimore gay rappers are loud and proud.

During the sweltering months of this past summer, Matt Pryor realized he was completely burnt out from writing and touring as a singer-songwriter. This breaking-point (or as he facetiously describes it, his "come-to-Jesus moment") makes sense when you remember he and his most famous band - pop-punk pioneers the Get Up Kids - released their debut album, "Four Minute Mile," in 1997. So Pryor, a 34-year-old stay-at-home dad living in Lawrence, Kansas, explored his other interests.