It's only been about a week since Mariah Carey's first single from her forthcoming album, The Emancipation of Mimi, leaked on the Internet, and now a second song from the album is making the rounds as well. Carey's song "Tonight," featuring Nelly and Pharrell Williams, is spreading on fan sites and message boards, with fans debating how the first song, "Say Something" (with Snoop and Pharrell), and this one stack up. "Tonight" features Carey crooning in an extended, whispered falsetto, with Nelly singing hook lines like, "It's all going down tonight" and "To the floor, everybody to the floor." ...

Michael Jackson's team lost one battle and won another in court on Monday (November 29). While the judge rejected the singer's request to have a psychologist examine his accuser, the defense may still get its hands on employment, banking, military, psychiatric and medical records involving the alleged victim's family, including the gynecological records of the boy's sister and mother. Judge Rodney Melville said that the defense could seek the records, but ordered them to notify the people referenced in those records, and gave those people five days to challenge the records' release. Melville also granted the defense's request to release grand-jury transcripts. ...

Coldplay's third album, the follow-up to 2002's A Rush of Blood to the Head, is due in March. The as-yet-untitled LP features the production work of Ken Nelson, who helmed the band's previous two albums. ... Items from Beyoncé, Madonna, Dave Matthews, Aerosmith and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are on the block for the annual Hope for the Holidays online charity auction. Proceeds from the eBay auction, which runs through December 9, will benefit MusiCares, a nonprofit organization that provides financial and medical assistance to members of the music community. ...

Last year around this time, Britney Spears busied herself posing bottomless and topless for magazines like Esquire and Rolling Stone, but now that she's a married woman, she's re-imagining herself as a happy housewife for Redbook. Spears will be the magazine's January cover girl; the story inside promises to reveal Britney's take on "in-laws, stepkids, [and] keeping post-honeymoon sex hot." Of course, Britney's name can no longer appear in print without the word "baby" right behind it, and Redbook follows suit by touting the potential for Spears-Federline offspring sooner rather than later. ... Gwen Stefani plays a queen of sorts in her video for "What You Waiting For?," but she's going to get to hang with real royalty when she performs for the Prince of Wales at this year's Royal Variety Performance, which will take place at the London Coliseum on December 14. Joining her on the bill will be Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John and Liza Minnelli. ...

It might take years for Christina Aguilera fans to get a refund if they bought VIP tickets for her summer tour through her now-defunct fan club, FansRule, if they haven't gotten them already through their credit-card companies. FansRule's proposition for over $1 million in financing was turned down in bankruptcy court, and resolution of the company's liquidation could run up to three years. Aguilera's lawyer, however, is hoping the process can be settled within a year. FansRule still owes about $320,000 to Christina fans. ... The parents of Jessica Michalik, the 16-year-old fan who was killed in the pit while Limp Bizkit were performing at the Sydney, Australia, stop of the 2001 Big Day Out festival, have started legal proceedings against the band, the promoters and the security company that worked the show. A 2002 legal investigation found the band to be not responsible for the girl's death. ...

You don't know what it's like to be a misfit until you walk a mile in their shoes. Horror punks the Misfits are the latest group to put out a line of footwear. In conjunction with Select Distribution and Vision Street Wear, the new merch, available through the band's Web site (www.misfits.com), also includes skateboard decks and wheels. ... Brit-rock past and present met over the weekend when the Libertines' Pete Doherty joined former Blur guitarist Graham Coxon onstage in London for a cover of the Libertines' "Time for Heroes." Coxon was performing to support his solo album Happiness in Magazines. ...

If your idea of a great New Year's Eve includes monsters, Japanimation and a visit from the chicken-bucket-wearing ex-guitarist of Guns N' Roses, New York's Irving Plaza is the place to be. Funk/electronica band Particle will headline an evening that includes appearances by monster-mayhem wrestling group Kaiju Big Battel, Buckethead and Japanese punk group Peelander-Z. ... Somnambular trio Low are turning up the volume -- well, a little anyhow. The Minnesota group has enlisted Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann for its seventh full-length album, The Great Destroyer. The 13-track disc is due January 25. ...

11.24.2004

Britney Spears is getting ready to be a mom. In a Thanksgiving letter posted on her fan site dedicated to her own mother, she wrote about how she can't wait to have children. "A lot of people think you should wait till you're older to have kids," she wrote. "I've had a career since I was 16, have traveled around the world and back and even kissed Madonna! The only thing I haven't done so far is experience the closest thing to God and that's having a baby." Spears wrote that she believes her children should be her full-time job, and she doesn't want to rely upon nannies. "Spending time at home over the past few months, I have felt richer than I ever did working all the time," she wrote. "My soul feels rich and that doesn't have anything to do with money or material things. To feel content, I just need a roof over my head and to be surrounded by the people I love." She's also learning to cook because "cooking is kind of like motherhood. To be really good at it, you don't need instructions." ...

If Spears wants to be a good mom, she'll think twice before buying any daughter of hers the Hilary Duff nail-polish set. A consumer group called the U.S. Public Interest Research Group issued its annual "Trouble in Toyland" list on Tuesday, warning that, among other toys that pose hidden hazards to kids, the Hilary Duff Twinkle Toes Pedicure set from Townley Cosmetics is potentially toxic, because it contains xylene, a highly flammable, colorless, sweet-smelling liquid that occurs naturally in petroleum but can cause headaches, dizziness, confusion, stomach discomfort and even unconsciousness and/or death at very high levels. ... Lindsay Lohan is now the face for Dooney and Burke's new Heart and Charm handbag collections. She's offering a chance to win one of the handbags and a $500 shopping spree on her Web site. ...

Though Gwen Stefani had planned to promote her debut solo album, Love, Angel, Music, Baby, Wednesday by appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," she's canceled those TV spots due to illness. She plans to reschedule her appearances when she's better, according to her Web site. ... How do you know you're a rock star? When you're onstage rocking and you have somebody to towel off your bald head when it gets too sweaty. Fat Joe showed off his star status as part of the Atlantic Records Joint Chiefs concert Tuesday night at the Apollo Theater in New York. Besides bringing out the whole Terror Squad, Joe surprised the audience by calling on Ja Rule and Jadakiss for "New York." Joe's labelmates Fabolous, T.I., Trick Daddy and Juvenile also had their own sets. Proceeds went to the Takalani Home for Children and the Hope Leadership Academy in Harlem. ...

Recording has begun on Limp Bizkit's next album, the follow-up to last year's Results May Vary. According to a post on the band's official Web site, Fred Durst described the album as being "so f---ing heavy it hurts." ... Now that Brandon Boyd no longer has a date with a judge in his future, Incubus are free to work on two soundtracks in the new year. The first is for the action film "Stealth," while the second is a score for a documentary about surfboard shaper Al Merrick. ...

Marilyn Manson has played many roles throughout his career, but he may have stepped into his most unlikely shoes on Monday, when he became a professor for a day at Temple University. Manson taught the school's Art and Society class for the day as part of MTVU's "Stand-In" series, which will air on December 6. ... Federal investigations into alleged indecency on Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony's radio shows were settled on Tuesday, when Viacom agreed to pay $3.5 million and begin delays in live programming to prevent further violations. The agreement cancels investigations into close to 50 radio and TV shows broadcast across the country that featured allegedly indecent content. The agreement gives Viacom five days to pay the fine. Viacom is the parent company of MTV. ...

Prince Paul has begun work on a solo album to follow up 2003's Politics of the Business. He's also assembling an EP/DVD called The Art of Picking Up Women with the group the Dix, due in January, and putting together a retrospective of unreleased material. ... The Killers, Snow Patrol and Phantom Planet are among the artists who've recorded acoustic sets available for download exclusively at Connect, Sony's online music store. Currently, there are 17 artists in the "Connect Sets" series, and any track costs 99 cents to download. ... Just days after the tour to support More Adventurous ended, Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis got to work on her first solo album. The singer plans to drop the album next summer on Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst's Team Love imprint. ...