"What am I gonna sing?" Erykah Badu asked the audience with a smile and a shrug. The challenge facing the performer: transforming one of her barely-still-classifiable-as-neo-soul songs into a country take.

There's a pivotal scene in Walk the Line when Sun records founder Sam Phillips dares Johnny Cash to sing one song that people would always remember, one that "would let God know how [he] felt about [his] time here on Earth." But what if Phillips dared Cash to sing 10 or even 12?

Is synergy the new trend in metal? Arguable kings of the genre, Mastodon, have joined with Dethklok -- the real-life version of the animated band from the Adult Swim show Metalocalypse -- as co-headliners on a 34-city tour sponsored by the offbeat TV network.

When actor Ryan Gosling brought his band, Dead Man’s Bones, to Boston's Middle East Club for the opening of its first-ever tour Wednesday night, the place was sold out and every song was whooped, hollered, and ecstatically applauded by the crowd, even though the album dropped just last week. Sycophantic celeb-loving? Or respect for Gosling’s musicianship? Bit of both, seemed like.

Monsters of Folk -- the indie supergroup featuring M. Ward, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis -- gave the crowd at Vancouver's Commodore ballroom their money's worth with an epic two-and-a-half-hour set on the opening night of their U.S. tour.

Lenny Kravitz came to the Fillmore in New York City Sunday night to blow out the birthday candles for Let Love Rule, the breakthrough debut album he released 20 years ago.