Guess who's getting Grammy nominations?

As the music industry descends upon Nashville today for the Country Music Assn. Awards, the Recording Academy sent a subtle reminder that its Grammy Awards are just around the corner. The first crop of artists performing at the Dec. 2 Grammy nomination prime-time special, the double explanation-pointed "The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown to Music's Biggest Night," have been revealed.

Television regulars the Black Eyed Peas, R&B veteran Maxwell and adult country duo Sugarland will all appear on the CBS special, which will air live for the East Coast at 9 p.m. Traditionally, artists who appear at the unveiling of the Grammy nominations are guaranteed a nod or two, but the Recording Academy broke from such a predictable mold last year.

By the numbers: U2's 360 concert at the Rose Bowl and that giant screen

U2 put on one heckuva performance at the Rose  Bowl Sunday night, but it was hard to ignore the elephant in the room.

There was one aspect of the production that literally overshadowed Bono's salience and kept the crowds talking for hours into the night -- that huge screen!

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: U2 360 tour: Stadium in the round

Willie Williams, the designer of the round screen, told The Times that the scale is "absolutely the least interesting thing about it."

We're not so sure about that.

Pop & Hiss caught up with Barco, the company that manufactured the massive LED screen that, international music sensations aside, is practically the centerpiece of the 360 Tour. We gathered some statistics on the production that will probably blow your mind.

Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson dominate American Music Awards nominations [UPDATED]

A fast-rising country superstar and a fallen pop icon dominate the nominees for the 2009 American Music Awards. Taylor Swift, who was the bestselling artist of 2008, leads all nominees for the fan-voted gala with six, including recognition in the artist of the year field. Yet in major categories she'll be up against sentimental favorite Michael Jackson, who has dominated sales and headlines since his death June 25.

Jackson received five nominations, including artist of the year, favorite pop/rock album, favorite soul/R&B artist and favorite soul/R&B album. Unlike the industry-voted Grammy Awards, the American Music Awards base their nominations on sales and radio data from Nielsen. Expect the American Music Awards to play out as a tribute of sorts to Jackson, allowing his 2003 greatest hits package "Number Ones" to score a nod for favorite album, where it will compete against Lady Gaga's "The Fame" and Swift's "Fearless."

The American Music Awards will air live for the East Coast from downtown's Nokia Theatre on ABC at 8 p.m. Nov. 22. The awards are determined by onling voting from fans.

After Jackson's death, his "Number Ones" surged to the top of the charts. It sold more than 440,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, in the 10 days following the star's death. It may very well end up as 2009's top-selling album. Jackson was featured heavily on the first-ever American Music Awards broadcast in 1974, and has a total of 20 American Music Awards trophies as a solo artist, including one for artist of the century, according to an AMA spokeswoman.

In 2009, SoundScan reports that Jackson's "Number Ones" has moved a total of 1.9 million copies. Swift's "Fearless" ranks as the year's second-best selling album thus far, having sold 1.8 million copies.

Swift remains on track for a blessed award season. After securing an entertainer of the year nomination at the Country Music Awards, Swift snared American Music Award nominations in major country and pop categories. In addition to artist of the year and favorite album, she's up for favorite country female artist, as well as favorite pop/rock female artist.

LOLcats Now Haz Music Reviews, Part 2: Beyonce, Jay-Z and Black Eyed Peas

The LOLcats have some pretty polarized views on pop music, as you can see by the LOLcat music reviews we posted Wednesday.

The cats are back today, once again pairing some cute pictures and choice words for three of the biggest acts in hip-hop and R&B.

Kristyn Pomranz and Katherine Steinberg, who penned "I Can Has Cheezburger: The MusicLOL!," an off-Broadway production based on the popular blog about silly kitties with misspelled captions, constructed these pictures as a Pop & Hiss exclusive.

This time, we get to learn what your pets think of Beyoncé, hubby Jay-Z and R&B-dance-sensation Black Eyed Peas.

We can has musik revyooz.

Beyoncé

She's a chart-topper, spotlight-owner and Hamburger Helper maker. Her third studio album, "I Am... Sasha Fierce," spurred a number of massive hits, including "Single Ladies" and "If I Were a Boy." Of the album's concept, Ann Powers wrote, "Beyoncé meant to represent herself as a split personality, tender and open on the one hand, indomitable and rather scary on the other."

Here's what we said about her summer performance at the Honda Center: "There’s no incongruity in a superstar – even one who preaches sisterhood – commanding center stage. And in Beyoncé’s form of womanism, everyone is advanced when one woman hits her personal best."

The cats like her too.

Click "continue reading" for more cat pictures.

N.E.R.D. makes like Black Eyed Peas and adds female member

Up until 2003, Los Angeles band the Black Eyed Peas was a fledgling hip-hop act best known for its impressive dance moves and feel-good beats.

But with the addition of Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, BEP transformed into a sleek pop hit machine, churning out a seemingly endless stream of hit singles, which culminated with a record-breaking run at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this year with “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feeling.”

Although there’s no indication that the Black Eyed Peas' female-powered success was any influence, N.E.R.D., the pop-rock outfit fronted by superstar producers the Neptunes, has followed suit by introducing a woman into its fold.

Who cares about 'My Generation' anymore?

The 1960s: We just can't get away from them.

As the muddy dust of Woodstock nostalgia settles -- taking with it the whining protests of sensitive little-sibling Gen Xers -- the baby boom is immediately reasserting its pop cultural might, this time in a much more effective way. The marketing campaign for "The Beatles: Rock Band" game moves forward hour by hour, with today's song list announcement stoking an appetite already primed by major media attention, and the already unveiled chart allowing users to check that their fake instruments will work with the highly compatible game. (Sorry, would-be Ringos in possession of "Rock Revolution" drums, you will be purchasing a new set.)

Between the attention given rock's most fondly remembered musical gathering and the careful campaign to remind everyone of what Fab Four still matters the most, any hope non-boomers had that they'd finally moved to pop's center seemed dashed.

Yet the truth is, it's getting hard to argue that any generation dominates pop. A nationwide telephone survey by the Pew Research Center's Demographic and Social Trends project, timed to coincide with the Woodstock birthday, found that while some differences remain between elders and youth, in general they're not a source of antagonism. Furthermore, rock was found to be the dominant music of both generations. President Obama may symbolize the rise of the hip hop nation -- a view that Hua Hsu effectively put forth in his Atlantic magazine piece, The End of White America?, earlier this year -- but it's well known that Obama has Springsteen and Bob Dylan on his iPod.

So what does it mean that 24-year-old New Jersey police Officer Kristie Buble didn't recognize Dylan when she picked him up as a possible vagrant during a pre-show stroll in the rain last month? Nothing, perhaps, beyond the fact that even iconic faces age and change. But that small incident also raises a thought about the changing relevance of the generational ideal.

Black Eyed Peas' 'The E.N.D.' has a smashing beginning, but the people want Drake

Local hip-hop outfit the Black Eyed Peas score a rare feat on this week's pop chart, becoming one of the few mainstream acts to experience a first-week sales increase over its last album. The group's fifth full-length release, "The E.N.D." (Interscope), became its first to debut at No. 1, selling 304,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan numbers released on Billboard. 

In 2005, the Black Eyed Peas bowed at No. 2 with "Monkey Business," which sold 291,000 copies in its first week and went on to sell 4.19 million. This year alone has seen such popular artists as U2, Kelly Clarkson and Eminem fail to live up to the sales numbers they set earlier in their careers.  

"The E.N.D." came with a lengthy setup, which included an appearance on "American Idol," and the March release of the single "Boom Boom Pow." The cut has topped Billboard's Hot 100 for 10 weeks, and has sold 2.8 million downloads. 

The song is still generating heat. According to data provided by BigChampagne Media Measurement, "Boom Boom Pow" ranked in YouTube's top-five streams in the last week, generating more than 1.6 million views. It's iTunes' No. 2 song, topped by another track from "The E.N.D.," "I Gotta Feeling." 

Album review: Black Eyed Peas' 'The E.N.D.'

The Los Angeles-based quartet Black Eyed Peas is possibly the greatest bubble gum group of the Extreme Ice Fruit Explosion era. Following in the path forged by the Monkees, the Archies and the Spice Girls, the Peas present themselves as a cast of zany characters whose music is, on one level, like a child's game, and on another, as calculatedly smart and seductive as test-marketed pop gets.

The titles of the Peas' biggest hits tell the story: the giggle-inducing pun of "Don't Phunk With My Heart," the cheerily crude anatomical gesture of "My Humps" and now the Imax-ready sound effects burst of the chart-topping "Boom Boom Pow." Crass, good-hearted, funny, unfailingly loud scavengers of every shiny thing lying on pop's cross-cultural dance floor, the Peas present themselves as juvenile, but there's a lot going on behind the mugging.

"The E.N.D.," the group's fifth studio album and the third since the singer Stacy Ferguson (better known as Fergie) joined and took it from the earnest hip-hop underground to the glamorous, necessarily compromised pop mainstream, is more accomplished and more confounding than any of the foursome's previous efforts. It's likely to dominate radio and the Internet this summer, its sharp flavors simultaneously driving listeners nuts and drawing them back.

Will.i.am., the Peas' lead rapper and main idea man, has said that he doesn't envision "The E.N.D." (the acronym is for "The Energy Never Dies," a nod to quantum physics that's further explained by a robotically voiced introduction to the opening track) as a regular album. Instead, it's a template, designed to be constantly reworked through remixes, both in the recording studio and by DJs on the dance floor. Indeed, this collection has none of the attributes that make listeners love albums: no narrative arc, no ebb and flow, no break from the in-your-face beats and high-fructose hooks.

Live: The Dead at the Forum and KIIS-FM’s Wango Tango at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine

It’s a day of tie dye and top 40 as the faithful descend upon the two L.A.-area arenas.

Jerry Garcia might have died 15 years ago, but ambling through the parking lot of the Forum on Saturday night, you'd have been hard pressed to know he's gone. Two hours prior to the Dead's first L.A. show in more than a half-a-decade, the sun-scorched asphalt was already swarming with people. The scene was a cross between a Renaissance Faire, a Bedouin crossing and the world's most pot-addled family reunion.

Limousines ferrying baby boomers idled next to withered Winnebagos still following a band that first formed nearly 45 summers ago. Rusting school buses cloaked in rainbow Day-Glo paint were packed to the gills with AARP-aged hippies - the strains of "Scarlet Begonias" mingling with the smoke from dirty windows.

Not so far away, at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, a very different kind of arena show was underway: KIIS-FM's Wango Tango, a top-40 blowout featuring Lady GaGa, Kelly Clarkson and the Black Eyed Peas, in addition to a host of other radio-friendly favorites, attended by hordes of screaming teenage girls.

The weekend concerts illustrated two opposing approaches to being a devoted music fan in today's pop culture landscape: Either embrace every genre and artist with the same open-minded ardor or single-mindedly invest all your energies into the one performer, group or style that defines you.

L.A. gets its U2 date: Oct. 25

U2 will perform in the Los Angeles area on Oct. 25, bringing its massive Live Nation-produced trek to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Tickets for the in-the-round tour, dubbed "U2 360," will go on sale April 6.

A press release promises that 85% of the tickets will be priced at less than $95, not including surcharges (expect about $18 to be added to the price of the ticket, based on Ticketmaster searches of U2 dates that are not sold out). At least 10,000 seats in the 90,000-plus capacity venue will carry an initial price of $30.

Opening for U2 will be locals the Black Eyed Peas, who are set to release a new album this summer. The pairing may inspire a collaboration, as the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am worked with U2 on the new album's "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight."

The North American leg of the tour, in support of U2's "No Line on the Horizon," opens with a two-night stand in Chicago beginning Sept. 12. The album debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts after selling 484,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. After three weeks on the charts, it currently rests at No. 2.

-- Todd Martens

Photo: EPA