Home to some of the most celebrated music of the past sixty years, Motor City has filed for bankruptcy

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

It sounds like a hoax but the protagonists behind it swear it's true: a super-sized version of Lionel Richie's head will be officially unveiled at Bestival this summer.

The singer, guitarist and songwriter Clarence Burke Jr., who died on 25 May at the age of 62, was a mainstay of the Five Stairsteps, the “First Family of Soul” group best known for the sublime 1970 US hit “O-o-h Child”, writes Pierre Perrone.

Stooshe are the latest prefabricated girl group trying to plug the vacuum left by Girls Aloud and The Saturdays.

Multi-instumentalist, string arranger, model, senior editor of Love Is the Magazine and busker … the surprise here is only that the violinist/singer Toliver's debut LP is, on the surface, such a conventional, Radio 2-friendly affair.

The Other Voices festival has been bringing big and new names to the tiny St. James church in Dingle, County Kerry for a decade. For this franchising expedition to London, Dexys, Laura Marling, John Grant, Villagers, Imelda May and Matthew E. White are amongst those playing short sets in the similarly old, intimate, lovely Wilton’s Music Hall. Subsidised by TV coverage hosted by Aidan Gillen, over three nights, rare, close-up snapshots of the varied musicians take shape.

'I want to have Scott Walker on vocals – there's no bigger singer'

A sinister and sombre Florence gives an uncannily gifted novelist his latest stage.

Kevyn Orr helped organise the successful restructuring of Chrysler, when the venerable car maker was considered all but dead. Now the top bankruptcy lawyer has an even tougher task: to lead Detroit – the city that rose and fell with America’s car industry – back from the brink of ruin.

The singer and songwriter Bobby Rogers was a founder member of The Miracles, the soul group whose formation predated the launch of Berry Gordy Jr's Motown operation in 1959 and earned them premier status on the company's roster. In 1960 the quintet scored the first million-selling Motown single with the catchy "Shop Around" – containing the peerless advice "My mama told me you better shop around" – co-written by Gordy and their primary vocalist and composer Smokey Robinson. Two years later, Rogers sang tenor lead alongside Robinson's yearning falsetto on "You've Really Got A Hold On Me", an arrangement the Fab Four emulated for the version included on their second album With The Beatles.

Former member of Motown group Temptations Richard Street died at a Las Vegas hospital at the age of 70 his widow confirmed today.

"I'm going to do something I never do," confesses Allen Stone. "I've got a song called 'The Fly' I wrote two days ago in my hotel room I'd like to sing to you." It's a courageous and daft act from this resolutely bland American soul singer.

Khatia Buniatishvili and Alice Sara Ott have more than their youth and keyboard skill in common: they both enjoy the dubious privilege of being their record companies’ pianistic pin-ups.