More Top Stories: 'America's Got Talent,' Kanye West

Blues Singer Defeats 10-Year-Old Opera Singer on 'America's Got Talent'
Michael Grimm, a 30-year-old blues singer from Mississippi, pulled an upset victory over 10-year-old soprano Jackie Evancho on the America's Got Talent finale. Grimm performed "When a Man Loves a Woman." [BBC]

'American Idol' to Allow Online Auditions
For the first time in American Idol history, the show will allow hopefuls to submit auditions through MySpace. Starting today and running through through October 6th, fans can upload videos of themselves singing a song from Idol's list. Winners will be invited to a call back in Los Angeles. [MTV ]

Kanye West Pens 'XXL' Cover Story
Kanye West designed a 40-page spread in the new issue of XXL, including a cover story that he wrote himself where he talks at length about his 2009 VMA incident with Taylor Swift. [ XXL ]

Linkin Park on Pace for Number One
Linkin Park's new album A Thousand Suns is estimated to sell around 260,000 copies in its first week, making the album the frontrunner to top next week's Billboard 200. Trey Songz's Passion, meanwhile, is expected to sell in the 230,000 to 250,000 range. [Billboard.biz]

'Hot, Hot, Hot' Singer Arrow Dead at 60
Soca musician Alphonsus "Arrow" Cassell, who wrote the hit single "Hot, Hot, Hot" (also performed by Buster Poindexter), passed away after a battle with brain cancer. He was 60. [ N ew York Times ]

Google's Digital Music Plans Unveiled
Google's upcoming digital music service will reportedly feature both an online store and a web-based "locker" that allows users who pay $25 a year to upload their music libraries into a digital storage place, giving them access to their library from any computer or internet-connected device. [Billboard.biz]

Plus: Queens of the Stone Age ready reissue, Jack White invents the "triple-decker record" and more.

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES 'Great Gatsby' Is a Crushing Disappointment
• 
  TV Why You Should Watch 'Happy Endings'
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter