No one loves a side project like Jack White. But now that he's gone solo, the blues-rock maestro can, finally, do what he does best: shred that guitar

Mark Ronson, most famous for his work with Amy Winehouse, has co-created a new dance piece at the Royal Opera. He tells Elisa Bray what attracted him to it

I took my son recently to buy some football boots. This is usually a bonding thing for a father and son to do, just like passing on the baton of sport in a "my-time-has-gone-now- its-your-time-son" sort of way. When I did it with my dad, we when to Woolworth's and bought of pair of own-brand Winfield's which, if you ran fast enough – and it was muddy – looked almost like adidas boots from a distance.

At last, something good from France that doesn't feature a vocoder.

Celebrities. They're everywhere. Packing out Desert Island Discs, emoting on the interview shows, attached like a lucky charm to every programme proposal. Don't you sometimes think, 'What do actors and singers have to say that's so special?' There are times when you wish Celebrity Culture could be replaced by Clerical Culture, or Science Culture or I don't know, Poet Culture. In Shelley's time, poets were the "unacknowledged legislators of the world", but now it's the celebs who rule the airwaves. Given, though, that we must exist in Celebrity Culture, thank heaven for celebrities like Bob Geldof and Michael Sheen.

With the royal nuptials fast approaching, Gillian Orr picks a dozen classic wedding songs – but will they make next Friday's playlist?

Fans need not worry unduly: Panda Bear's claim that this follow-up to 2007's Person Pitch would be less sampler-based, and that the influence of Nirvana and The White Stripes had inspired him to make music "with a heavy focus on guitar and rhythm", proves almost entirely unfounded on Tomboy, which involves few obvious guitar riffs but plenty of drifting sound-washes, found-sound collaging, loops and heavily reverbed high vocals, in his usual manner.

Era-defining rock from a deadly duo

Sally Bercow

Not sure what music to buy as a present? Andy Gill helps you decide with his guide to some of this year's best albums

Mature is for cheeses. His new band do deranged gonzo garage rock and hypnotic voodoo blues

Divine show from Jones the Voice

The Salvation Army hasn't inspired too many hits – "Banner Man" by Blue Mink being perhaps the most obvious. The White Stripes' highest chart entry takes its title from how the infant Jack White heard the organisation's name.

The Black Keys, it seems, are currently everyone's favourite blue-eyed blues band, occupying the spot previously occupied by The White Stripes, until Jack White dived into prog-rock and Goth diversification with The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather respectively. And unlike most white boys trespassing on blues territory, this duo even seem to have won over the hearts of their black peers – which is just as well, since few young black Americans appear inclined to pursue the blues path themselves. Damon Dash picked them to provide the grooves over which his hip-hop chums rapped for the Blakroc project, on which Pharoahe Monche and RZA conceded, in a textbook back-handed compliment, "fuck the white boys, The Black Keys got so much soul."