Bitch Craft

oday, via Entertainment Weekly, drag legend, singer, songwriter and performer Alaska Thunderfuck announces the premiere recording of "DRAG: The Musical."

The story behind Smalls Change (Meditations Upon Ageing) goes like this: Derek Smalls, the bass player for metal relics Spinal Tap, mustered the wherewithal to craft a grand, star-studded final statement at the age of 77. By having his creation Derek Smalls go solo, Harry Shearer gets to sidestep the difficultly of mounting an actual Spinal Tap reunion and also craft a nearly bulletproof project: if the album is bad, well, that's just part of the joke, because solo albums by bassists are almost always bad.

Cinderella belonged to the hair metal scene of the late '80s but they never quite seemed to be part of it. Unlike the legions of Aerosmith disciples, they actually bothered to dig back further than Toys in the Attic, developing serious roots in blues and boogie – or perhaps it's more accurate to say this grounding in old-time rock & roll was all due to Tom Keifer, the band's singer/songwriter and frontman.

Elton John One of the greatest stars of the rock & roll era, Elton John exploded like a supernova in the early 1970s and sustained a career that kept him at the top of the charts for the next five decades. He had a Billboard Top 40 hit single every year between 1970 and 1996, a sign that he knew how to both change with the times and mold the times to fit him. John's earliest records were part of the moody, introspective post-'60s singer/songwriter movement, but once he had a hit with "Your Song," the pianist revealed he could also craft Beatles-like pop and pound out rockers with equal aplomb. As "Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock," "Daniel," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," and "Bennie and the Jets" – songs John wrote with his lifelong collaborator Bernie Taupin – climbed into the Top Ten on either side of the Atlantic, John was inescapable during the first half of the '70s. His versatility, combined with his effortless melodic skills, and flamboyant stage shows, became his calling cards, sustaining him through shifts in fame and fortune.