Lady Gaga gets adventurously intimate, wrastles with Madonna on 'SNL'

Lady Gaga brought the expected weird fashion to "Saturday Night Live." Watching the artist attempt to sit at a piano while outfitted in an array of circular metal rings -- all spinning around the Lady Gaga axis -- was a hoot, and an early comedic standout in "Saturday Night Live's" young season. But there was one bit of window dressing Lady Gaga could have done without: Madonna.

The artist formerly known as the Material Girl popped up in an early skit for a brief exchange of put-downs with the current pop fave. Perhaps a symbol of passing of the pop diva torch, or perhaps some sort of mocking her 2003 MTV Video Music Awards pairing with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, which was then meant to serve as some sort of passing of the pop diva torch, Madonna looked uncomfortable, and not quite sure of why she was tussling with Lady Gaga. It all felt a bit hastily thrown together, and little more than an excuse to show two pop stars in a cat fight.

Not to mention -- Madonna doesn't need to stump to these kind of promotional appearances. Even with a greatest hits collection released to stores last week, let's let Lady Gaga have her moment, or at least give Madonna something better to say than, "Guess what, I'm totally taller than you."

Or perhaps we should just give credit where credit is due.

An anatomy of Susan Boyle's 'Wild Horses' cover

In last night's finale performance on "America's Got Talent," Susan Boyle, the breakout star of the program's British analogue, wowed the three judges -- the hodgepodge council of Sharon Osbourne, David Hasselhoff and Piers Morgan -- and the already cheering media with her version of the Rolling Stones' "Wild Horses." In particular, Boyle's lifting of the chorus to a higher octave catches the ear, underscoring the desperation of the original and transforming it from resignation into one last aching plea.

But it turns out we've seen this particular hoofprint before. A quick tour of "Wild Horses" covers by lady musicians on YouTube shows that this soaring high read of the song's refrain has been rendered by no less than the Sundays' ethereal-voiced Harriet Wheeler, soulful songstress Alicia Keys in her duet with Adam Levine and populist cowgirl Sheryl Crow. Each has their own twist outside the octave change -- in the Keys/Levine version, Keys leads with fragments of Stevie Wonder's "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" and gives some of the lyrics a more wry, bluesy reading.

Covers are a delicate matter that can challenge any artist. How much DNA to keep of the original? How much of your own style can you stamp without obliterating the creator? In Boyle's case, did she simply imitate other covers of the original? It seems like Boyle sewed together a lovely quilt from what's already out there -- or a Frankenstein baby, albeit a cuddly one.

In a landscape where Keys is Clive Davis' mentee, and Boyle is Simon Cowell's, this may be a sure sign that we are in an Orwellian "American X-Factor's Got Talent So You Can Dance" entertainment universe where original artistic thinking is not encouraged. Instead, we get the replica of the replicas. Break on out, Ms. Boyle. You don't need Big Brothers or Big Sisters.

-- Ann Powers and Margaret Wappler

Photo: Trae Patton / NBC Universal

They love Strait, and let it show

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson and others honor the country music hit maker, and it all makes for good TV.

Honoring elders always has been a cornerstone of country music, a trait that makes for good TV in "George Strait: ACM Artist of the Decade All-Star Concert," airing tonight on CBS.

The two-hour program, filmed last month in Las Vegas the night after the Academy of Country Music's latest awards ceremony, is packed with current country stars who were in town for that event, among them Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson, Keith Urban, Brooks & Dunn, Miranda Lambert and Toby Keith.

They even roped in Jamie Foxx, introduced as "a man who has won absolutely no Academy of Country Music awards," but who turns out to have been a Strait fan as a kid growing up in Texas.

"Black fans too, George; you got black fans too," Foxx says, addressing the evening's honoree in the side-stage box from which he and his family watch the parade of artists who sing his songs. "I'm from a good old town called Terrell, Texas. . . . You came to Terrell, Texas, one time when I was 14 years old, and I told everybody, I don't care what side of the tracks I gotta go over, I'm going on the other side of the tracks to see George Strait.' I took a big risk that night."

Strait was chosen in part because of his unmatched  to- tal of 57 No. 1 country singles dating back nearly three decades.

The show also includes brief musical salutes to each of the four other acts the ACM similarly recognized: Marty Robbins (1960s), Loretta Lynn (1970s), Alabama (1980s) and Garth Brooks (1990s).

Brooks turns up at the end, not to sing, but to hand Strait his trophy.

Joey + Rory: 'Can You Duet' finalists live their songs

Here’s the difference -- well, one difference -- between L.A. and Nashville.

The other day I met with Joey + Rory, the husband-wife country duo, the morning after their show at Largo at the Coronet. We were talking over breakfast about their unexpected rise on the CMT reality series “Can You Duet” last season, and about some of the limitations such shows place on the contestants, especially those who are true musicians.

In their case, singer Joey Martin once had a record deal with Sony Nashville, although nothing was ever released. She shelved her dream of being a country singing star and opened a restaurant south of Nashville, which she still runs with her sister-in-law. Rory Feek, her husband of seven years, has been earning a solid living as a songwriter -- he wrote the clever “Some Beach” that became a hit in 2004 for Blake Shelton, and "I Will," Jimmy Wayne's new single -- but never thought of himself as a performer.

They’d never considered themselves a team, until an acquaintance who’d been involved with “Can You Duet” suggested that they’d be good candidates for a show whose goal was to launch the next Judds, Brooks & Dunn or Sugarland. As it happened, Naomi Judd was one of the judges.

Country stars salute George Strait as ACM's 'Artist of the Decade'

George Strait sat by and watched a new generation of country musicians take top honors Sunday night at the 44th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, but Monday night was all his as most of those performers tipped their hats to the veteran Texas troubadour, singled out as the ACM’s "Artist of the Decade."

Strait, his wife, Norma, and son George Jr. watched from a booth set up at the side of the stage for nearly three hours as a parade of stars including Keith Urban, Taylor Swift, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and even Jamie Foxx expressed their admiration for Strait’s nearly three decades of country hits. The event was taped and will be edited down to two hours for airing May 27 as a CBS-TV special.

Joan Baez talks 'American Idol': 'You really can't stop watching it once you start'

Nobody's yet invited Joan Baez to be a voice coach on "American Idol," but one of the most celebrated singers of the last half century does have a word or two about the show. And as it happens, she sees it fairly regularly when she's hanging out with her son and his family up in the Bay Area.

"My daughter-in-law loves that show," she told me during our recent chat in conjunction with her UCLA Live show tonight at Royce Hall.  "It's sort of funny ... but you really can't stop watching it once you start."

The woman who first brought many of Bob Dylan's songs to a broader audience with her otherworldly soprano finds it both impressive and unsettling how so many contestants follow the Whitney Houston-Mariah Carey model of twisting and turning notes all across their vocal ranges.

Tavis Smiley's interview with Q-Tip runs tonight

On the L.A. media blog LA Observed, Kevin Roderick pointed out that Tavis Smiley's recent interview with eternal Beach Boy Brian Wilson was "hard to watch" and possibly the roughest pairing he'd ever seen. I took a gander at the footage and I didn't think it was that bad but it doesn't compare to the free flow that he had with, say, Joni Mitchell, who comes off as a better raconteur than Wilson these days (perhaps Wilson's stories work better in print), especially after her interviewer got her tongue loosened with several doses of golly-gee praise.

Tonight's show brings another pairing that's hard to judge from the two-minute-plus preview clip. On one hand, Q-Tip, whose brilliant solo album lighted up my ears last year, comes off as a soft-spoken guy and that's a personality type that doesn't usually command viewers to keep watching. But, on the other hand, he's got stories galore, like how he was dumped unceremoniously from Arista for not being commercial enough. Who knows whether he'll dig so blatantly into the past though; he seems to avoid such specifics in this clip. Either way, I'm tuning in, if only to keep staring at Q-Tip's fabulous party shirt.

In other Smiley news, the PBS host will be interviewing Ashford and Simpson Friday night. The husband-wife duo recently recorded an update to their 1980s hit, an homage to the president they've dubbed "Solid as Barack." Why didn't I think of that?

-- Margaret Wappler

"Tavis Smiley" on KCET, 7 and 11 tonight. With Q-Tip and Danny Glover.

Will new WB webisode series 'Rockville, CA' officially ruin Echo Park forever?

If you've ever made the Logan's Run of bars, clubs and cafes on Sunset Boulevard between Alvarado Street and Elysian Park Avenue, and thought it would make for a fine television show, you are hereby deemed hopeless and should be exiled to Brentwood. However, you also are prescient. Such a show is about to become the fictional "The Hills" of Echo Park (don't act like you're somehow above it, you be-moustached kids), and good lord, do they have their ducks in a row on guest appearances.

If there's one thing that young, monied aspirant artists and musicians need, it's to have their own cultural signifiers repeated back to them through dramatic media, so Pop & Hiss would like to welcome the WB's new Web series "Rockville, CA," its creator Josh Schwartz ("The O.C.," "Gossip Girl") and music supervisor du jour Alexandra Patsavas with a round of $2.50 Barragan's margaritas.