Reviewed: Foo Fighters' Best Album in Years; Young Bob Dylan in Concert

In this week's slate of new Rolling Stone reviews, David Fricke says that the Foo Fighters' seventh studio album Wasting Light is their best since their first two records from the mid-Nineties, and that frontman Dave Grohl is still writing great, compelling rock music inspired by his memories of former bandmate Kurt Cobain. Also, Andy Greene praises Bob Dylan in Concert: Brandeis University 1963, a fine -- if incomplete -- document of a 21-year-old Dylan in action, Jon Dolan declares that Nine Types of Light is TV on the Radio's most impressive and accessible disc yet and Will Hermes says that Panda Bear's Tomboy is less stunning but more focused than his breakthrough album Person Pitch.

ALBUMS

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light (stream full album)

Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What (stream one song)

Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan in Concert: Brandeis University 1963 (stream one song)

Panda Bear - Tomboy (stream full album)

TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light (stream one song)

Alison Krauss - Paper Airplane (stream one song)

Ponytail - Do Whatever You Want All the Time (stream one song)

Jessie J - Who You Are (stream one song)

The Feelies - Here Before (stream one song)

Glasvegas - Euphoric Heartbreak (stream one song)

Plan B - The Defamation of Strickland Banks (stream one song)

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis - Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles (stream one song)

Pusha T - Fear of God (stream one song)

Edwyn Collins - Losing Sleep (stream one song)

Bill Callahan - Apocalypse (stream one song)

Los Lonely Boys - Rockpango (stream one song)

SINGLES

Thurston Moore "Benediction" (stream)

Laura Cantrell "Letters She Sent"(stream)

Teddybears featuring Robyn "Cardiac Arrest" (stream)

LAST WEEK: Paul Simon's Best Album in 20 Years; Robbie Robertson's Ambitious New Disc

• 
  MUSIC Exclusive Live Chat With Linkin Park and Incubus
• 
  MOVIES & TV Peter Travers: 'The Avengers' Has it All
• 
  POLITICS Matt Taibbi: Jon Corzine Is the Original Zimmerman
• 
  VIDEOS Exclusive Premiere: Tenacious D's 'Tinnitus'

Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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