There's something about a voice that's personal, not unlike the particular odor or shape of a given human body. Summoned through belly, hammered into form by the throat, given propulsion by bellows of lungs, teased into final form by tongue and lips, a vocal is a kind of audible kiss, a blurted confession, a soul-burp you really can't keep from issuing as you make your way through the material world. How helplessly candid! How appalling!

Contrary to anything you've heard, the ability to...

You could say that being yelled at by Janis Joplin was one of the great honors of my life. Early in my career, Lindsay Buckingham and I were in a band called Fritz. There were two gigs we played in San Francisco that changed everything for me: One was opening up for Jimi Hendrix, who was completely magical. The other was the time that we opened up for Janis at the San Jose Fairgrounds, around 1970.

It was a hot summer day, and things didn't start off well...

James Taylor has a tremendously rich and beautiful voice, and he controls it so well. It's easy to get fooled by his understatement: As beautiful as James' voice is, there's nothing mellow about a performance like "Fire & Rain" — it's a song of great depth sung by a man who's experienced the highs and lows of life, and has the ability to convey them directly and honestly. It also doesn't hurt that he's up there as a songwriter alongside Lennon & McCartney,...

Anybody my age turning on MTV and seeing Annie Lennox sing "Sweet Dreams," that was enough right there. And then when she started doing songs like "Walking on Broken Glass" or "Missionary Man," there's just something that's so soulful in those — and it's not like a put-on, blue-eyed soul kind of thing: It's just pure power, this gigantic voice. The Eurythmics was her fantastic voice mixed in with Dave Stewart and his otherworldly, ahead of its time...

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Fable II
Xbox 360

PREMISE: The sequel to the epic medieval role-playing game takes place during the Enlightenment, with castles and catacombs waiting to be explored.

SECRET WEAPON: Depending on whether you...

1978

Simon

FROM: Milton Bradley

BEHIND THE MUSIC: Launched May 15th at Studio 54, this Jurassic forerunner to today's touch-sensitive Nintendo DS featured four colored buttons (red, green, yellow, blue) and three simple variations. Memorization's the goal, with players required to repeat back a randomized or user-created sequence of lights and tones with a simple poke. Named for "Simon Says" and...

It's the morning after the vice presidential debate, and Barack Obama strides onto the football field at Abington Senior High School in suburban Philadelphia as Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" rings out over the loudspeakers. The bleachers on both sides of the field are packed with cheering students and their parents, and the crowd has spread out onto the lawns beyond the goal posts. Abington is one of the swing districts where the presidential race will be decided on November 4th. It's...

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• Karl Rove's A-Team

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the...

• Photo Gallery: Three Decades of Metallica
• Video: Behind the Cover Shoot
• James Hetfield: "There's More Dedication From the Four of Us Than Ever Before"
• Lars Ulrich: "If We Don't Get Along, Everything Else Is Irrelevant"
• Kirk Hammett: "I Was Ready To Start Working On a...

Photo: Torey Mundkowsky

One of Brandon Flowers' favorite songs on the new Killers record features a ripping tenor-sax solo, steel drums and a string section...