1. Patti Smith and the Kronos Quartet accepted the 2011 Polar Music Prize at a ceremony in Stockholm yesterday. The annual award — which is Sweden’s highest music honor — was founded by Stig Anderson (aka ABBA’s manager), back in 1989. [via BBC]

2. Hopping on board the ’90s nostalgia bandwagon, ABC is taking on a new comedy from writers Jennifer Crittenden (Seinfeld) and Gabrielle Allan (Scrubs) that will “revolve around a ‘super cool’ 1990s all-girl band who, after 20 years of bad blood, tries to reunite though they’re no longer girls and no longer cool.” Hmm… [via THR]

3. Did you realize that Lady Gaga was wearing a prosthetic penis at the VMAs? [via Vulture]

4. “With Fleetwood Mac, there’s a lot of landmines out there politically and it’s hard to get everybody on the same page at the same time – but I think this might be one of those years where everyone will want to do the same thing.” – Lindsey Buckingham tells Rolling Stone that Fleetwood Mac will return next year

5. Here’s an even better look at Henry Cavill in his Superman costume from the set of Man of Steel. It’s much more alien-like than previous incarnations of the famed suit.

Bonus Buzz: Terrifying Images From “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”

1. Now that Hugh Grant has passed on the part, it’s almost 100% confirmed that Ashton Kutcher will be taking over for Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men. And according to a source, the way his character will be introduced won’t feel forced: “It’s really funny. People are going to love it.” [via THR]

2. Mark Wahlberg will reunite with director David O. Russell (The Fighter) for his forthcoming adaptation of Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel The Silver Lining Playbook, which tells the story of a former high school history teacher who is released into the custody of his mom after a four-year stint in a mental institution. Sounds promising! [via Vulture]

3. Check out the second promo for Season 4 of True Blood here. While it reveal absolutely nothing (other than Joe Manganiello’s werewolf abs), it’s a good reminder that June 26 can’t come soon enough.

4. Stevie Nicks has revealed that Fleetwood Mac will tour again in 2012. “When [my new] album and Lindsey’s album come to a stop then Fleetwood Mac will gather again and we’ll either make another record or we won’t and we’ll just go on tour.” Maybe seeing them live will help us purge that recent episode of Glee from our collective memory. [via NME]

5. “As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.” – Bob Dylan responds in a rare post on his website to reports of censorship in China

Bonus link: Watch Nick Offerman eat a Ron Swanson Turkey Burger

Fresh off an absurdly controversial 90-minute episode that included the songs of Lady Gaga and a gay-bullying story line, Glee is poised to take on a true classic: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. And, as usual, the show has already posted the covers from the episode. The clips we liked — April (Kristin Chenoweth) and Will’s wispy “Dreams” and Rachel’s energetic “Go Your Own Way” — are after the jump. Oh, and we also included our favorite cover of “Gold Dust Woman,” because Glee managed to omit the best song on Rumours. You can click over to Oh No They Didn’t should you want to hear New Directions’ gratingly sugary take on “Don’t Stop,” Finn’s passable “I Don’t Wanna Know,” Artie’s throwaway “Never Going Back Again,” and Santana’s coffee-bar “Songbird.”

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Poor Titus Andronicus. They were all excited to go on tour with The Pogues, but apparently the experience has left a sour taste – singer Patrick Stickles told Spinner this week, “I hated the tour. It made me furious throughout. I didn’t think that we were treated at all with the respect that we deserved, not even the respect as saying, ‘We’re an important punk band,’ but respect that we’re human beings.” Still, for all that their support slot turned out to be a huge let-down, at least they didn’t get beaten up, or get chased out of the country, or end up stuck inside a giant lemon. Here we “celebrate” ten of rock ’n’ roll’s most hilariously disastrous concert tours.

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1. NBC is currently casting a new Project Runway-style reality fashion program, and the prize is pretty major — the winner will launch their own line in a major retail store across the country. [via CocoPerez]

2. We’re not sure how to feel about the news that Glee is doing an episode based on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album; given the way that they fumbled the >Rocky Horror episode, it seems like the ’70s might not be their best decade. [via Vulture]

3. Watch a video of Jack White’s surprise parking lot performance at SXSW; he was in Austin to promote the maiden voyage of the Third Man Records Rolling Record Store, which is part record store, part recording studio. [via NPR]

4. Refusing to let a $430,000 defamation lawsuit get her down, Courtney Love has reportedly returned to Twitter under a new handle — @cloverxxxlove — and with a new target of disdain — Chelsea Handler. [via Gawker]

5. The Unsound Festival comes to New York City April 6 – 10 in various venues around Manhattan and Brooklyn. The lineup includes Emeralds, Julianna Barwick, Blondes, Arp, Harald Grosskopf, Kode9, Lone, Ben Frost, Laurel Halo, Pink Skull, Tin Man and Oni Ayhun, among others. [via Pitchfork]

Bonus link: Fake Irish Blessing

Rootsy California singer/songwriter Lissie caught the public ear with her heartfelt covers of Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi, and Metallica, but her debut album shows she’s just as captivating with her own songs.

Catching a Tiger features a lively blend of rock, country, and classic pop, often reminiscent of Stevie Nicks-fronted Fleetwood Mac, and always anchored by Lissie’s stunningly soulful vocals. The sensibilities are retro, to be sure, equally mining ’70s and ’80s West Coast tropes — but always with enough sincerity to leave little doubt about Lissie’s earth-bound authenticity.

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Nearly everyone is inspired by music. We listen to it while we work, dine, and make love. Eric White has found a way to celebrate the sounds he treasures by re-imagining the album covers of his favorite rock and pop musicians, applying his pop-surrealist style of painting to such classic record covers as Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Read More »

[Via BuzzFeed]

So, part of us feels maybe a little bad that LiLo got dumped [Ed. note: Really?], but mostly this quote from Stevie Nicks makes us cackle like the Mean Girls we know we all are at heart. From an interview with the Fleetwood Mac frontwoman in the NY Times:

“Lindsay Lohan hopes to buy the rights to her life story and to play her on film. Unmoved, Ms. Nicks responded: ‘Over my dead body. She needs to stop doing drugs and get a grip. Then maybe we’ll talk.’”

Zing! But really, Linds should listen up. This is coming from someone who has also been through hell and back struggling with addiction.

Welcome to Unpopular Opinions, a weekly column written by Flavorpill’s resident music curmudgeon and esoteric record-bin enthusiast, the Beard. His opinions do not reflect those of Flavorpill, Flavorwire, or any of their affiliates. Enjoy.

It might make me unpopular, but I think that… despite her recent rise to B-grade celebrity status, Rilo Kiley frontwoman and solo singer Jenny Lewis should have stopped making records in 2004. What better way to protect the L.A. daughter’s brilliant indie-pop past than taking her name off Rilo Kiley’s 2007’s Under the Blacklight (the most stunning example ever of thoughtless style’s diminishing effect on substance)?

On the record, Lewis replaced her everygirl approachability with forced attempts at sexiness and, even worse, seedy porn-star serenading. It’s no so much that she sold out or that she doesn’t have a right to strut her stuff, more that she reached inadvisedly (not to mention insincerely) beyond her bounds. Critics leveled plenty of all-too-kind Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac comparisons, but the fact remains: Lewis is no Stevie Nicks, Blacklight‘s slickness was insipid, the song quality suffered, and the supposedly-similar back-story (internal band drama between former lovers) was a real stretch.

Of course, her solo career is another thing entirely – it’s actually hurting the indie-music industry…

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