So Barry Obama's big benefit shindig coming up next week in California features musical endorsements from Ne-Yo (yay!), the Goo Goo Dolls (uh), Nicole Scherzinger (ack), and will.i.am (dear lord no). Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton has recently ditched Celine Dion's "You And I" (holy shit) as her campaign song in favor of Big Head Todd And The Monsters' "Blue Sky" (could be worse, right?). Forgetting their opinions about, like, stuff salient to running a country, this does not particularly fill us with hope for the future. (Even the Republicans are showing better taste this time out; for instance, did you know Mitt Romney's campaign tune is "I Get Around"
*?) So we put it to you, a year or so early, to decide who you would vote for based solely on these less than stellar musical track records.
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Idolator
Alas, I'm not talking about Annie Lennox. In an effort to bring what a Fox exec calls more "girl power" to the show, the judges' table for the next season of American Idol will now have a Coke cup for songwriter Kara DioGuardi, who's shared writing credits on songs including Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" and Kelly Clarkson's "Walk Away" and collaborated with Stewart on the pseudo-retro project Platinum Weird. DioGuardi, who Idol head honcho Simon Fuller called "a smart, sassy lady," is being billed as the show's fourth judge, which I guess means either that the judges' table will be widened or Paula Abdul will get some time off to "rest" now and again. (One producer claims that Idol was always supposed to have four judges, although it seems strange to me that it took the executives this long to find someone who wanted the gig.) A few highlights of DioGuardi's career after the jump.
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Not to ruin your morning, but there was one sentence from the L.A. Times article about the forthcoming Celine Dion/Ben Moody collaboration that seemed to be worth highlighting. "One, a cover of Heart's 'Alone,' gets a slightly creepy makeover from tinkling pianos and enveloping strings, suggesting that Dion's intentions when she gets you alone may not be as wholesome as planned." First of all, covering anything from Heart's Capitol years seems somewhat unwelcome, but not nearly as disconcerting as the idea of being alone with Celine and her "unwholesome" intentions. [
Sacramento King-slash-MC Ron Artest revealed his sensitive side in an interview with 
