Though much of the buzz (for better or worse) for the last few days has been for the emotionally charged audition of Chris Medina back in Milwaukee, after spending two days in Nashville -- only the second time the show has made it to Music City -- judge Steven Tyler proclaimed he thinks they may have found “the one.”

Quite a promising statement for such an early phase of the competition (there is still a few more rounds of auditions before Hollywood Week), despite it coming from one of rock’s elder statesmen, who’s undoubtedly seen his fair share of talented vocalists on the road.

The judges made one thing clear when they arrived to the famed Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry: They were hoping to find someone to fill Carrie Underwood’s multiplatinum heels. 

“Cause when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you / You're gonna believe them / And when you're 15, don't forget to look before you fall / I've found time can heal most anything / And you just might find who you're supposed to be / I didn't know who I was supposed to be at 15” – Taylor Swift, “Fifteen”

There is something about youth that has the American Idol judges desperate to dole out golden tickets.

Call it the Justin Bieber effect, call it cuteness, you might even call it pity, but the judges' affinity for teens –- specifically 15-year-olds (the show's new lowered minimum age) -- reached a fever pitch when the show ventured to Milwaukee for a round of tryouts.

As host Ryan Seacrest pointed out, every single 15-year-old that auditioned in Milwaukee received that coveted golden pass to Hollywood.

With viewers being treated to a operatic tribute to Bieber’s hit, “Baby,” Seacrest acknowledged that the pint-sized star's lightning-quick rise was a main motivator for the show to lower the age limit from 16 to 15. This would undoubtedly usher in an influx of Beiber-like prodigies, and Seacrest said, “They've certainly delivered so far on the road."

But what exactly constitutes delivered?

Though Bieber has enjoyed unparalleled success in a strugglingmusic industry, he built up a hefty fan base with an abundance of popular YouTube videos, which gave him a foundation of fans to pull from when it came time for his debut. "Idol," however, provides little backstory for each contestant during the audition rounds, choosing to focus on tear-jerkers. 

Fresh from his stint behind bars, Lil Wayne is ready to hit the road.

The pint-sized powerhouse is prepping a North American excursion, dubbed the “I Am Music II Tour,” a sequel to the hugely successful 2008 trek.

Wayne’s tour will hit arenas in 25 cities, starting March 18 in Buffalo, N.Y. 

The multiplatinum and Grammy award winning rapper will be joined by protégé Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Travis Barker and Mix Master Mike.
 
He is back on the charts after releasing “6 Foot 7 Foot,” the first single off his highly anticipated album  “Tha Carter IV,” scheduled for a spring release. The thumping track, produced by Bangladesh (Wayne's "A Milli"), boasts an oddly perfect Harry Belafonte sample and debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Tha Carter IV” is the sequel to the multiplatinum 2008 album “Tha Carter III,”  which logged more than 1 million in sales in its first week of release -- and the follow-up to last year's "I Am Not a Human Being," which he dropped while serving time on a 2007 gun charge at Rikers Island.

Tickets for the tour will be available through Live Nation.com starting the weekend of Feb. 4.

Check out the dates after the jump:

Janet Jackson is quickly becoming the hottest ticket of the year.

Her “Number Ones: Up Close and Personal Tour” is now extending its run in Los Angeles to a third date. 

After tickets to the April 14 Gibson Amphitheatre sold out in less than 10 minutes, Jackson added an additional performance for April 15 -- which quickly sold out, as well.

Jackson and Live Nation have now added an additional Gibson Amphitheatre performance for Saturday, April 16.

The 35-city tour has also sold out multiple nights in New York, Toronto, Chicago, Washington,  D.C., and Atlantic City, N.J.,  as well as single nights in Atlanta and Santa Barbara. Her website sold more than 96% of the presale tickets for the North American tour on the first day of presales.  

Additional dates have also been added in Chicago, Toronto, New York, Washington, D.C.,  and San Francisco.

For this trek, Jackson has called on her fans to vote for the 35 cities (one for each of her 35 No. 1 hits) that would constitute the itinerary, with dates in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila being the first to be announced.

"These concerts will be different from anything I have ever done. I will be as up close and personal as possible," Jackson said in a statement. "These concerts are not about special effects. This is a love affair between me and those of you who have supported me and my work for all these years. I'll be singing and dancing from my heart. The music will all be songs that you've made number ones for me. Let's go!”

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy
twitter.com/GerrickKennedy

Photo: Janet Jackson performs at the "American Idol" grand finale at the Nokia Theatre on May 26. Credit: Vince Bucci / Fox

Led Zeppelin fans with an insatiable appetite for trivia -- like the location of the photo shoot for the cover of the 1973 disc “Houses of the Holy" or the number of different LP sleeves that were issued for the group's 1979 opus “In Through the Out Door” -- can get their Zeppelin fix and more in a new iPhone/iPad app.

“This Day in Led Zeppelin,” released Monday, follows the popular “This Day in Music” app -- which is a companion to the website and book of the same name.

The Zeppelin app boasts an exhaustive 1,000-plus pages worth of tidbits about the band.

“I had the idea of making individual apps for some of the biggest acts in the world, and thought the best one to start with would be Zeppelin, because of their iconic status,” said Neil Cossar of This Day in Music, in a statement about the app.

Pop & Hiss lends an ear to the tunes that play out on "American Idol" this season.

Anyone with a keen ear to music knows it doesn’t take much to become enthralled by the breadth of musicianship that pours through New Orleans, where American Idol set up camp for last night's show. Whether it’s the sound of brass brands oozing from Congo Square or the gritty Southern rap cultivated in rough housing districts from Juvenile, Lil Wayne, Soulja Slim and Jay Electronica, the Big Easy provides ready-made inspiration for the crop of hopefuls trying to impress the judge’s panel.  

And that's to say nothing of the sounds of the more traditional jazz, folk, soul, funk and gospel that's ingrained in the city's identity, one where statesmen such as Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Aaron Neville and Harry Connick Jr. continue to be key fixtures. The music of the town even took the starring role in "The Wire" creator David Simon’s freshman series “Treme.”

Kanye West still isn’t in everyone’s good graces -- to say the least.

After The Times revealed that the rapper would be headlining the final night of the 12th Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, you could almost hear the boos and groans emitting from some of the bitter comments that poured in from our readers.

Coachella fans have always closely scrutinized the lineup they await so anxiously  -- and why shouldn’t they? They drop major money to attend the three-day festival (weekend passes are $269, plus surcharges, and camping passes are $75).

But the addition of West to a lineup that also includes Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Duran Duran, the Black Keys and the Strokes could be a non-starter for most, judging by the complaints.

“Great lineup this year.....but Kanye West is a definite deal killer for me, so me and my girlfriend won't be going for the first time in 4 years,” reader cabeachguy wrote, while reader oldskool57 thought it was a “real disappointment that loudmouth Kanye West is gonna' be there. What a goof that dude is.”

Pop & Hiss lends an ear to the tunes that play out on "American Idol" this season.

Sandwiched between the tear-jerky backstories, song butchering and Jennifer Lopez gawking, there was still time for a few songs to be belted out (for better or worse) on the highly anticipated -– and hyped -- premiere of the 10th season of “American Idol.”

With the addition of a new panel of judges, including superstars Lopez and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, more business-like hurdles for the contestants and the lowering of the age limit from 16 to 15 -– surely the result of the Justin Bieber zeitgeist –- the lingering question of what would hopefuls sing in a bid to secure the coveted golden ticket to Hollywood yielded a variety of answers.

Teenagers took center stage of the first night of auditions, which occurred in a state responsible for making Snooki and The Situation household names, New Jersey. 

“Idol” has always attracted teens full of unbridled enthusiasm ready to belt out a tune often bigger than themselves. Ten seasons later, this hasn’t changed.

Despite a year rife with ubiquitous pop melodies and hooks that could make for a standout showing –- Rihanna’s bitter chorus of “Love the Way You Lie,” the instant stickiness of Cee Lo Green's “Forget You,” Katy Perry’s surprising “Teenage Dream” and the harmony of Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are” quickly come to mind –- the teens dug deeper into the American songbook than perhaps necessary. And many leaned on the Beatles for source material.

Katy Perry’s much-hyped Facebook announcement is what was expected: She's gearing up to hit the road this summer.

The multiple Grammy nominee took to “Facebook Live,” the official streaming channel for the social network site, at their Palo Alto headquarters to announce her upcoming “California Dreams 2011” world tour Wednesday afternoon.

For openers, Perry said she will be joined by Robyn as well as Marina and the Diamonds on select dates in the U.S., and Yelle and Calvin Harris will support her on the U.K. leg of the trek, which will draw on material from her hit-filled sophomore disc, "Teenage Dream."

“It’s going to be super girl power. If you come to the tour, you’ll probably start menstruating,” she joked on the webcast. “It’s going to be amazing. I really believe in this tour.”

The 41-city North American leg of the tour launches Jun. 7 in Atlanta and wraps in August with a pair of dates in Perry’s hometown, Santa Barbara.

She said she plans on interacting with fans through social media networks throughout the tour. Using Facebook Places/Deals, fans will be able to check into the venues each night in a bid to score meet-and-greet access to the singer.  They will also be able to submit their own photos of the show via Twitter, which will be incorporated into the live show and also live on her website. 

Her tour will make a stop in Los Angeles on Aug. 5 when she will play the Nokia Theatre in L.A. Live. Presale tickets for the show go on sale on Friday with information on her website.

Check out the dates after the jump.

It's no secret that this writer has an inexplicable appreciation for Jennifer Lopez.

But after a few, well, not-so-hot moments in her mostly hit-filled music career, including 2007’s poorly-recieved “Brave” and and her departure from longtime label Epic, Jenny from the Block has spent the first few weeks of 2011 back in the spotlight.

Her debut as a new judge on “American Idol” is only a few days away, and her new L'Oreal commercial premiered during Sunday's Golden Globes telecast.

So it should come as no surprise that this weekend also saw the leak of her new single, “On the Floor,” featuring Pitbull.

The RedOne-produced track isn’t quite as inventive as the pop gems he crafts with muse Lady Gaga -– of course, he’s likely saving his most epic cuts for her --  but the thumping track is vintage J.Lo.

"On the Floor" is a sweat-inducing, sticky dance floor track with heavy synths and that ubiquitous European edge that makes the single ripe for club DJs and house remixers. (Heck, she basically pleads for the track to burn up dance floors in "Brazil, Morocco, London to Ibiza/Straight to L.A. New York/Vegas to Africa.") [Updated at 5:45 p.m.: Adding to the global feel that RedOne is known for, the song seems to borrow a few elements of Kaoma's 1989 hit "Lambada."] 

Listeners haven’t heard this dance-electro-pop side of Lopez since 1999’s “Waiting for Tonight”;  much of her back catalog flirts with more gritty urban-pop sounds.

Grammy-nominated producers discuss their lives, careers and pop music in general at a roundtable event. 

In 2010, the songs were ubiquitous, even if the music producers who helped create them were less well-known: Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance,” Eminem's “Love the Way You Lie,” Cee Lo Green's “[Forget] You” and B.o.B.'s “Nothin' on You” and “Airplanes” blanketed airwaves and filled earbuds with indelible hooks and melodies. 

But those hooks and melodies took work. Though they may drift out of the car stereo effortlessly, much sweat equity was spent crafting them. No one understands that process better than the music producers, whose job it is to turn an idea into a song. If the timing's right, the song hits. 

In advance of the Grammy Awards, which will be held Feb. 13 in downtown Los Angeles, three of today's hottest hitmakers, RedOne (Lady Gaga, Enrique Iglesias), Alex Da Kid (Eminem, B.o.B.) and Ari Levine of the Smeezingtons (Cee Lo, Bruno Mars) sat down with Times pop music critic Ann Powers for the first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable, an intimate conversation with artists who helped shape 2010's pop-music landscape.

On Saturday evening in front of a sold-out crowd, Powers led a freewheeling conversation that sought to put into words the magic that turns a bunch of notes on paper (or, these days, a hard drive) into a hit song.

“I think the most important thing is having a vision. Being able to see things before other people can see it,” Alexander Grant — better known as Alex Da Kid — told the audience inside the Grammy Museum's Clive Davis Theater. “Most of the songs you're working on, they won't even come out for three or four months at least, maybe longer, so you have to be able to think what's going to be a hit record in six months.”

Nadir Khayat, the Moroccan-born producer known as RedOne, knows something about foresight. His best known collaborator, and muse, is Lady Gaga.

“I just saw the vision,” he said of Gaga. “I just saw this girl that could be this [huge] thing. We went to the studio and talked about Queen, Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and I'm thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, she knows music,'” Khayat said. “She was inspired. I've always thought of music as one, it's a universal language. That's what we did with the sound of Lady Gaga.”

Janet Jackson fans really couldn’t wait to see the pop diva.

After tickets to the April 14 Los Angeles date of her newly announced "Number Ones, Up Close and Personal Tour" went on sale at 10 a.m. Friday morning, they sold out in less than 10 minutes, according to a spokesman for Live Nation.

To try to keep up with the demand, Jackson and Live Nation have added an additional Gibson Amphitheatre performance for Friday, April 15. 

Jackson previously made news when she broke Beyonce’s attendance record when headlining the 2010 Essence Music Festival. After selling out the Louisiana Superdome -- where the annual festival is held -- Jackson reportedly commanded the first-ever waiting list for the Festival with additional seats erected and sold behind the stage.

The "Number Ones, Up Close and Personal Tour" is her first tour since 2008’s brief "Rock Witchu Tour," which suffered numerous canceled dates due to poor ticket sales.

For this trek, Jackson called on her fans to vote for the 35 cities (one for each of her 35 No. 1 hits) that would constitute the itinerary, with dates in Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila being the first to be announced.

"These concerts will be different from anything I have ever done. I will be as up close and personal as possible," Jackson said in a statement. "These concerts are not about special effects. This is a love affair between me and those of you who have supported me and my work for all these years. I'll be singing and dancing from my heart. The music will all be songs that you've made number ones for me. Let's go!”

Tickets for her second L.A. date are on sale through Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

— Gerrick D. Kennedy
twitter.com/GerrickKennedy

Photo: Janet Jackson performs on the finale of "American Idol." Credit: Courtesy of Fox