Kiss’ new album Monster features a song called “Freak” that band co-founder Gene Simmons says connected with Lady Gaga, starting a chain of events that nearly led to a duet.

Longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain says Journey’s music has an innocence, an essential lack of cynicism, that helps it to resonate across the generations.

Aerosmith is in the run up a long-awaited new studio album, and then a world tour in 2013. After that, fans have to wonder if they can stick together. After all: Steven Tyler says he’ll then start work on a solo project.

I’m not sure Ben Gibbard, recording his first-ever solo album away from Death Cab for Cutie, has ever sounded more alone. And in that scary freedom, in that essential stillness, he experiments in ways we haven’t heard before.

If it’s an even-numbered year, it’s a safe bet that guitarist Torben Waldorff will have a new album out, and it’s a similarly sound assumption that such a record will be well-conceived, mellifluous, and briskly performed.

During the 1970s, Jackson Browne had staked out a great reputation for himself as one of the elite poets of rock. His often introspective (some would say self-absorbed) songwriting propelled him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The temptation, with a child prodigy, is to cut him some slack. Lost in the wonder of miniature virtuosity, we tend to forgive the small slip up, the easy cliche. No such accommodations are needed for Esteban Castro