Naming your band after one of the all-time great albums is quite a yoke to saddle yourself with, and The Big Pink are making heavy weather of it on Future This.

There's an inter-denominational inclusivity theme to Carole King's seasonal offering. The star turn is "Chanukah Prayer", a haunting, jazz-inflected Jewish hymn on which she's joined by her daughter Louise Goffin (who also produced the album) and grandson Hayden Wells.

Laura Marling has dropped the obligatory encore. Other acts should too, says Elisa Bray

The world swarms with dangerous beasts that, given the opportunity, will have you for lunch. Lions like to seize you by the throat and shake you as a dog shakes a rat. Leopards prefer to jump on you in the dark and dispatch you with a single bite to the back of the head. Hyenas use their powerful jaws to take chunks off you as you run away. Crocs, on the other hand, roll you in the water and shake you until bits fall off.

Watch and listen to a live performance 'House' by Patrick Wolf from his new album Lupercalia.

Lady Gaga has released the video for her single Edge of Glory.

Great news re the Lesbian Sticker Lady. I spoke to Mulligan on the phone and he has agreed to come up to London for the time in his life and attempt to catch her. I’m not sure the ability to snare rabbits is quite what is needed to get this irritating battleaxe, but it will be fun to see Mulligan in London and he is bound to have a plan as he is very practical.

Dropping off the music-industry conveyor belt with a ker-chinggg, Kesha Sebert – or, to render it properly, Ke$ha – is a terrifyingly ambitious 22-year-old from San Fernando, first heard on Flo Rida's abysmal "Right Round", who is now being given the full Max Martin treatment.

<preform>Swearing is banned, nightclubs close at 10pm, and Valentine's Day has been replaced by a wholesome Christian festival. Andrew Osborn </b></i>reports from Belgorod, a Russian town where the values of the 1950s live on</preform>

Inspired by one of Jacques Brel's final performances, erstwhile Brother and moody teen idol Walker released this extraordinarily passionate, but unfashionable, collection of songs during the summer of love. The antithesis of Sgt Pepper, Scott alienated fans and critics alike with its perceived cynicism and monochrome cover. Yet this (uncredited) shot of Walker in scarf and shades, head bowed and frowning in contemplation, has become the definitive image of the singer, and the paradigm for all tortured artists since.

The melody gives me goosebumps. The lyrical content is very affirming and inspiring and very rise-to-the-challenge. There's a quiet verse and then it builds up to a beautiful chorus that just makes me sit up straight. I was part of the harmony chorus and I had a hard time concentrating because I was getting into the song and I would miss my cue. When I hear it live, it's like I hear the good bones of the song. Shawn's such an agile and beautiful singer that it's not like I miss the big punch of the voices. When you strip it down, the colours and the timbre become more extraordinary. The variant of the bridge that says: 'And if you could show me the story of love / I would write it again and again / And then you could be the woman you need / If you just let me be the man that I am' - that reaffirms my own belief about how men and women are so much alike. People who are so much into being women or men, without any regard to how androgynous we may really be, lose out. It makes me feel strong when I hear it.

MUHTARRAM finished third in the Arlington Million in Chicago yesterday. Ridden by Willie Carson, the Newmarket-trained horse was sent off a 4-1 chance.

HOWEVER often we may argue about why two small boys came to commit murder, we end by agreeing that what was done was evil, which is as much as to say that we still don't know the answer. (Milton spent 15 years composing Paradise Lost to try to explain evil's origin, and even he failed.)