Music Preview: 10 Big Questions for 2011
Will the Stones tour? Can ‘Idol’ be saved? What will be the biggest albums? And much more

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic (Wayne), Kevin Mazur/WireImage (West, Jay-Z, Gaga).
Record sales keep slipping, but that hasn’t kept artists from producing albums. Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV are the biggest albums on the horizon this year, along with Jay-Z and Kanye West’s hotly anticipated team-up Watch the Throne. We’re also in for new albums from R.E.M., the Decemberists, PJ Harvey, the Mountain Goats and Lupe Fiasco by the end of spring. Also, though nothing is set in stone just yet, there’s a very good chance that we’ll get full albums from U2, Coldplay, Radiohead and Dr. Dre at some point before December rolls around.
—Matthew Perpetua