The Recording Academy has chosen Barbra Streisand as its MusiCares Person of the Year in conjunction with the 2011 Grammy Awards, and will salute her musical and philanthropic achievements Feb. 11 with an all-star fundraising dinner and concert featuring Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Barry Manilow, Diana Krall, Kristin Chenoweth and others.

Along with such pop, jazz and Broadway veterans, the event also will bring in a new generation of singers with an appearance by cast members from Fox TV’s hit series “Glee,” including Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison and Darren Criss. Eight-time Grammy winner Streisand also will perform at the close of the program.

Previous MusiCares honorees include Bennett, Wonder, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, Brian Wilson, Bono, Bonnie Raitt, Luciano Pavarotti and Neil Young.  Proceeds from the annual event benefit various MusiCares programs for musicians in need.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Barbra Streisand singing at the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony in 2001. Credit: Los Angeles Times 

Personal Playlist is a new Pop & Hiss series in which personalities in and out of the pop world share their recent music picks.

Adam Anders is cursed with the toughest gig in television: harmoniously weaving pop cuts from the likes of Barbra Streisand, Journey, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé through Broadway gems from “Chicago,” “Les Miserables” and “A Chorus Line.” As “Glee's” music producer, Anders is immersed with the demands of the Fox juggernaut (he recently completed upward of 50 songs in 30 days). One has to wonder if he has any non-“Glee” tracks on his radar. 

“Here's where it gets tricky. If I tell you what I'm listening to then you'll know what's coming on the show,” he said, laughing. The song that's driving me crazy is [Katy Perry's] ‘Teenage Dream.' I think it's amazing. It's pop at its best. I go from that to Sinatra. We're all over the place on the show.”

Anders, who's also digging Florence + the Machine and Muse, said it was trying to impress another band while working with an upcoming guest star that had him the most stressed.

“[Gwyneth Paltrow] is doing a mash-up of ‘Singing in the Rain' and ‘Umbrella.' It's actually my favorite mash-up. I told Gwyneth I was obsessed with it knowing that Chris Martin was going to hear it,” he said. “I love him and Coldplay.”

Though his Personal Playlist is inundated with ‘Glee' workings, there is one nostalgic album that always rates for Anders.

“Oh geez ... it's Kenny Rogers' ‘The Gambler.' It was the first album I saved up to buy as a kid.”

— Gerrick D. Kennedy

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Photo: Adam Anders. Credit: Ari Michelson

With the Fox hit reaching a high-water mark in scope and popularity, the producers face tough choices in moving the show beyond the novelty stage in its second season.

If a musical is ever made about Ryan Murphy and his amazing Technicolor cast creating "Glee," the big climax at the end of the first act should correspond to this particular moment in time.

The show has reached a peak, in terms of popularity and artistic ambition. In the last two weeks it's tackled two of the most controversial subjects of our time: religion and Britney Spears. The ratings are through the roof, the iTunes downloads just keep coming, and celebrities such as Amy Adams, Javier Bardem and future guest star Gwyneth Paltrow have all publicly expressed their enthusiasm for "Glee."

Like Rachel Berry (played by actress Lea Michele), the show's would-be Streisand who, musically at any rate, is the central character in this ensemble show, "Glee" is also wildly ambitious and earnest about what the lively arts can accomplish. If Murphy and his team had done nothing more than create a viable television series employing the structure of musical theater, that would have been enough; it's never really happened before in prime time. ("Cop Rock," no; and "The Singing Detective" hailed from the tony BBC.)

But "Glee" has gone further, using the softening agents of song and schticky humor to take a strongly left-leaning stance on issues including teen pregnancy, abstinence, gay visibility and the rights of the disabled. Grabbing huge audiences with these plotlines — not to mention its fundamental role as a cheerleader (pun intended!) for arts in the schools — it's a potent pop-cultural force in opposition to the rightward push of that other pop phenomenon of the moment, the Tea Party movement.

Move over Beatles, and make way for the cast of “Glee.” The hit TV show has now produced more songs that have charted on the Billboard Hot 100 than the Fab Four throughout its career.

The Beatles placed 71 titles in the Hot 100 from their first appearance in 1964 with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” through “Real Love” in 1996. But it’s only taken the karaoke-minded cast members of “Glee” a bit more than 16 months to put 75 songs onto the same chart.

Because of the sheer quantity of “Glee” releases -- five or six songs are typically made available for downloading after each week’s episode -- the number of potential charting songs from the show has rapidly outstripped releases by conventional bands or solo acts.

That doesn’t, however, mean the “Glee” singers have surpassed the Beatles’ sales. In the era of eroding record sales, it often takes far lower sales figures to make the Hot 100 today than it did in decades past.  Total download sales of the “Glee” titles are at 11.5 million, according to Billboard.