Mumford and Sons

Mumford and Sons 
could ditch the banjos for some synthesizers on their next album, according to front man Marcus Mumford.Download

The London-based band have enjoyed huge success in 2012 thanks to their Number One second album 'Babel', which saw the band hone their now trademark folk-rock sound.

However, lead singer Marcus Mumford has told Style Magazine that the band plan on changing things up on their third album, and revealed that they are considering going in a new electronic direction.

He said: "We've always done what feels good, rather than what we've thought long and hard about, and we'll do whatever feels soulful next, whether that's with an electric guitar or a synthesizer."NME

"It's dangerous for us to talk about what we've been discussing for the third album, but we do have greater ambitions not to just stay within certain sonic confines," added band member Ben Lovett. "We're not going to be the band that stands for folk music or organic music."

Lawson

 Lawson
 Download lead singer Andy Brown has confessed that it was an "absolute honour" to work with the likes of Robbie Williams and Paul McCartney on The Justice Collective's charity song 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother', and thinks the track deserves to be Christmas number one.
The 'Taking Over Me' star told Capital FM that the song, a cover of The Hollies' track of the same name, is "incredible" and was thrilled to be singing with some if his idols.
"I'm just delighted to be involved. I mean I'm singing alongside some of my idols like Paul McCartney and Robbie Williams," he said. "The song's incredible itself, 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother', it's got a great meaning behind the song and I really think it deserves to be Christmas number one this year."
The star also opens the entire track, singing the first line and called it a "dream come true" to receive such an honour considering his background.
He added: "I mean the fact that I'm opening it is just an absolute honour and a dream come true for me being a Liverpool fan and also born and raised in Liverpool."

Coldplay's

 Coldplay's
performance at Capital FM's Summertime Ball in London has been crowned Wembley Stadium's best moment of 2012.Download

The band topped a Facebook poll conducted by the stadium, which also saw Justin Bieber's Summertime Ball performance come third. Capfm

Coldplay also beat an Olympic Team GB goal and an FA Cup Final wonder save to top the survey with 71% of the vote.
The group delighted the 80,000-strong sold-out crowd with a performance of hits spanning their career, as well as songs from their recent album 'Mylo Xyloto'.

To celebrate Coldplay’s achievement, Wembley Stadium is gifting them a personalised commemorative stone immortalising their Summertime Ball performance, which will appear on Wembley Way alongside other legends such as Sir Geoff Hurst.
Coldplay were among a host of stars who played the Summertime Ball in London this summer:

Gangnam Style

Gangnam Style 
has racked up an incredible one billion YouTube views, becoming the first clip ever to reach the milestone.Downnload
The K-Pop phenomenon by PSY has been the unlikeliest hit of 2012, and has already broken several records.
In October, Gangnam Style became the first South Korean track to top the Official UK Singles Chart, and within six months of its July release, the track has hit No 1 in over 34 countries.
Back in November, the video overtook Justin Bieber's Baby to become the most-viewed clip in YouTube history, and following an online campaign to push that number into ten figures, the pop track surpassed one billion views earlier today.MTV
The success of the now infamous Gangnam Style dance has seen the likes of The Hoff, Heidi Klum and even Madonna joining in.
PSY is estimated to have made £5 million from sales and downloads of the single, as well as live gigs, and, according to The Sun, the Korean rapper is estimated to have made more than £150,000 from the YouTube views alone.

Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber
 has been accused of "animal cruelty" after giving his hamster to a fan reports Hollywood Life.Download

The pop singer has set his hamster, PAC, on a "short path to its doom" according to the by the California Hamster Association, due to the distress the sudden change of environment will have caused.

The 18-year-old brought the hamster home in October this year. PAC has his own Twitter account, @PacBieber, where he tweeted: "Please don't hate on my new owner. She's taking really good care of me! :)"

The girl in question is fan Victoria Blair, who says she "has some haters now," but believes Justin chose her "for a reason." Bieber has yet to comment, and it is not yet known why he gave the pet away.NME

Bieber was also in the news this month following the arrest of two men who attempted to murder and castrate him after a concert. The men, Mark Staake and his nephew Tanner Ruane from New Mexico, were hired by prison inmate Dana Martin, who is currently serving two life sentences for the rape and murder of a 15 year old girl. Martin subsequently turned the assassins in for reasons unknown

jack White

 Jack White
  is reflecting on the unwitting chain of events that led him to make SFTW’s album of the year.Download

He explains that he had no specific intention to make the magnificent Blunderbuss, an eclectic work of sustained power that positively bursts with fresh ideas.
It’s the first album to bear his name and represents a massive moment in the stellar career of its creator.
“I found myself in a process where I didn’t really know what these songs were,” he says.
“They could have been anything. ‘Is this a Raconteurs song? Or maybe I’ll bring this to The Dead Weather. Or maybe I’ll just put out a 45 (vinyl single) on Third Man (his record label)’.”
The mercurial Jack, it’s pretty safe to say, is the hardest working man in rock.
He’s a singer, guitarist, songwriter, pianist, drummer, member of two bands, chief creative force behind the sadly defunct White Stripes and producer of around 150 records at his Nashville studio.
“I’d been producing 45s for other people the last few years till finally I had a few songs going of my own,” he says.thesun
“Suddenly it seemed like, ‘Oh, I guess this is turning into something’.”
In typical Jack White style, he pushed himself to turn half-formed ideas into something genuinely worthwhile.
“I had to figure out ways to stop it becoming the easy way out,” he tells me.
“I have an obsession with being hard on myself because I really need to feel proud of what I do.
“If I look back and see that I got the best engineers, that someone mixed the record for me, that it was just a bunch of people playing the parts, I couldn’t live with throwing my name on top of it.
“But now if someone says, ‘I really love that song, Jack’, I can enjoy the compliment because I know the conditions under which it was made.”
As the Blunderbuss songs took shape, Jack assembled some of Nashville’s finest musicians. Crucially for the dynamics of the record, many of them were women. “It only takes one girl in the room to change the entire scope of all the testosterone,” he laughs.
“A couple of years ago, I would have imagined playing most of the instruments myself but it was never the case working on these songs.
“I’d try to shake things up by saying, ‘What if we only have female musicians today?’
“This is by far the most people I’ve had play on one album, probably 20 altogether.”

Madonna

Madonna 

to play nice with her fans.Download

As rain beat down on the stage of the open-air Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile, on Wednesday, the pop queen berated a small crowd granted access to her sound check for smoking cigarettes in her vicinity.

It began when her white umbrella inverted -- drawing big laughs from the crowd -- whereupon the singer, wrapped in a hooded black coat, abruptly stopped a performance of "Human Nature."

"There are people smoking right now," she said. "No smoking. If you're going to smoke cigarettes, I'm not doing a show. You don't care about me, I don't care about you. All right? Are we going to play that game? I'm not kidding. I can't sing if you smoke."Billboard

"Entiendes?" she asked the Spanish-speaking crowd.

"You're looking right at me and smoking cigarettes, like I'm a stupid f---ing idiot," Madonna said, then stormed off the stage. Video of her rant was uploaded to YouTube but subsequently removed.

It's not the first time she's antagonized her fans on the MDNA Tour. At her Miami date, she kept the audience waiting for more than three hours before taking the stage.