Digest: Lady Gaga and Pearl Jam Do More With Social Media; Slash and Usher Join Black Eyed Peas' Super Bowl Show

Jason Merritt/Getty (Gaga), Andy Sheppard/Redferns(Vedder)

Pearl Jam and Lady Gaga Partner With Social Media Company
Pearl Jam and Lady Gaga have announced partnerships with SkyGrid, a new service that will organize and collect media from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms in one location. The service promises to consolidate fan chatter with official content from the artists. [Billboard]

Usher and Slash Join Super Bowl Halftime Show
Usher and Slash will be joining the Black Eyed Peas during their Super Bowl halftime show this Sunday. Both artists have collaborated with the Peas in the past, with will.i.am turning up on Usher's hit "OMG" and Slash joining the band for a rendition of Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" at the 2009 Rose Bowl. [EW.com]

Juelz Santana Released From Prison
Dipset rapper Juelz Santana was released from the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack, New Jersey earlier today after posting $125,000 bail. Santana was arrested yesterday on four counts of possessing firearms and drugs. [Radar]

American Idol Greatest Hits Coming Soon
American Idol 10th Anniversary - The Hits: Vol. 1 will be released on March 15th. As the title suggests, the set will include hits by all nine winners of the singing contest, along with tracks by notable finalists Clay Aiken, Adam Lambert and Daughtry. [MTV]

Ellie Goulding Plans American Tour
British pop singer Ellie Goulding has announced that she will be touring in North America to support the release of her debut albm Lights. She's begin with several dates in Austin, Texas for the SXSW festival and hit several major cities in the United States and Canada before concluding the tour with an appearance at the Coachella festival on April 17. [Idolator]

MORE: Stevie Wonder to Join Apollo Theater's Hall of Fame; Dipset's Juelz Santana Arrested in New Jersey

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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