It's been exactly four years since Low's Drums and Guns, which uncharacteristically focused mostly on a single issue, an extended meditation on the war in Iraq.

A man who appeared on the television show Canadian Idol appeared in court yesterday on terrorism charges.

It is one of the more unlikely cultural synergies of recent times: Glee and Coldplay, together at last. After months of denial, lead singer Chris Martin has finally given in to allowing the hit US show access to the band's back catalogue.

Imagine the face of 19-year-old Coco Sumner, frontwoman of I Blame Coco and daughter of tantric soft-rock god Sting, on finding out that Courtney Love had been squeezed on to the top of the bill for tonight's show at the last minute.

Keep it down, boys – we're trying to sleep down here

Nick Cave's musical career is easily summarised: 20 years of musical and lyrical excellence - first with The Birthday Party and then the Bad Seeds - each album an improvement on the last, reaching a high point with The Boatman's Call in 1997, a record that sits happily alongside Bob Dylan's Blood on The Tracks or Neil Young's On The Beach as one of the greatest rock records of the 20th century. Then a four-year hiatus during which he cleaned up and got married, followed by a sequence of records which have received near unanimous acclaim, yet are far more scattershot. Cave has moved from the chiselled perfection of his earlier lyrics to an anything-goes approach, as he notes in a lyric from "We Call Upon the Author": "Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!"

Singing sensation Susan Boyle, who became an overnight star with her surprising performance on a talent show, has made the top five in a list of the most watched viral videos of all-time.

The first record I bought was…

I don’t honestly remember. There was no place to buy records where I was living, so I used to tape songs off the radio and listen to them on my Walkman.

Good news out of Africa is not as rare as is often supposed, but yesterday's headline was especially heartening. The continent's 53 leaders refused to bow to the insistence of Sudan's ruthless President, Omar al-Bashir, that it was his turn to be chairman of the African Union. He tried to get the job last year but the situation in Darfur - where government-backed militias have killed 200,000 people and made 2 million more homeless - led African leaders to choose the Republic of Congo.

Her début album sold 14 million copies and provided a perfect antidote to Britney. But two years on, can Avril Lavigne prove that she's more than just a teenager in a tantrum? Interview by Craig McLean