Wedding Song

MILTON — When Pauline Carter-Wells first started singing, she was so nervous she’d make her listeners turn around. She still gets stage fright, but she can look at her audience head-on now — even when they fill Fenway Park. And no one but her husband — Milton Police Chief Richard Wells — could tell she had the jitters last month when she belted out the national anthem to a sold-out Red Sox crowd. “Lucky for me, they asked me to come in for a sound check at 11 a.m. — it really took the edge off for me to sing to an empty Fenway Park,’’ she said.

MILTON — When Pauline Carter-Wells first started singing, she was so nervous she’d make her listeners turn around. She still gets stage fright, but she can look at her audience head-on now — even when they fill Fenway Park. And no one but her husband — Milton Police Chief Richard Wells — could tell she had the jitters last month when she belted out the national anthem to a sold-out Red Sox crowd. “Lucky for me, they asked me to come in for a sound check at 11 a.m. — it really took the edge off for me to sing to an empty Fenway Park,’’ she said.

Rhonda Vincent Good Thing Going (Rounder) The glamorization of Rhonda Vincent continues, but thankfully it hasn't affected her music. She appears on the cover of her new record as a bombshell in a low-cut, blue-sequined dress, but the music is still straight from the Appalachian mountaintops. Vincent is an outstanding bluegrass singer, not as well known as Alison Krauss, but she'll likely gain on Krauss with this superb new effort. For the first time, Vincent wrote or cowrote five of the songs, from the signature statement "Good Thing Going" (about having a great career and a great...

LOWELL - The boys in Panic at the Disco are true showmen. They have to be in order to perform songs from their two divergent studio albums with seamless style. Sure, the masses were at Tsongas Arena Wednesday night to hear the band's "TRL"-friendly hits - namely "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," from 2005's theatrical emo disc "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" - but they didn't seem to mind when the sharp-dressed men from Las Vegas ventured into the straightforward '60s-style rock songs from this year's "Pretty.

CAMBRIDGE -- A few eyebrows were raised when Idina Menzel stepped onto the small Regattabar stage last night. In a pair of low-slung jeans, sporting a casual black T-shirt and ponytail, Menzel hardly looked like a typical jazz singer. That's because she's not a typical jazz singer. She's not a typical anything. For 90 minutes, Menzel demonstrated not just her vocal prowess, but also her storytelling skills, wit, and knack for musical improv. And none of it had anything to do with jazz.

LOWELL - The boys in Panic at the Disco are true showmen. They have to be in order to perform songs from their two divergent studio albums with seamless style. Sure, the masses were at Tsongas Arena Wednesday night to hear the band's "TRL"-friendly hits - namely "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," from 2005's theatrical emo disc "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" - but they didn't seem to mind when the sharp-dressed men from Las Vegas ventured into the straightforward '60s-style rock songs from this year's "Pretty.

Dennis landscaper Chris Lambton and his new wife, Peyton Wright , spent the first Friday morning after their wedding in the offices at The Globe. There was no time for a honeymoon for the couple, who met after appearing as contestants on "The Bachelorette" and "The Bachelor" (he was a runner-up when Williamstown's Ali Fedotowsky chose Roberto Martinez ; Wright was rejected by former Bachelor Andy Baldwin ). They went straight from wrapping the first season of their HGTV show, "Going Yard," to their wedding in Charleston, S.C., and then flew...

The release of a song cycle based on Greek myth will not lose Patricia Barber her reputation as a jazz intellectual. "Mythologies" (Blue Note), which the Chicago singer and pianist won a Guggenheim fellowship to research and record, adapts Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and is undeniably heady stuff. But it's also genuinely liberal in its interpretations of the stories and its overall musical sensibility, making it not just one of the year's most enjoyable releases but also one of the most thought-provoking.

The sense of déjà vu is overwhelming. Surely you have seen that beach, that reef, that waterway before, yet this is your first trip to the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. Ah, but you have been to the movies. That's where you have seen those sites. From "White Heat" in 1933 to " Komodo vs. Cobra" in 2005, Kauai has been the setting for more than 75 films and television series. Among them: "Jurassic Park," "Fantasy Island," "Blue Hawaii," "Gilligan's Island," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Thorn Birds," "Donovan's Reef," and "South Pacific.

On those supremely special, all-too-rare occasions when it happens, a genuine, organic musical phenomenon is a beauty to behold. Take the case of the Cat Empire, a young, artistically omnivorous, and thoroughly uncategorizable sextet steeped in ska, salsa, hip-hop, and funk (with nary a guitar in sight) whose albums weren't even released in this country until last week. But Sunday night, a mere five days after the band's latest disc, "Two Shoes," was given a Stateside issue by the New York independent label Velour, a throng of fans who...

Rhonda Vincent Good Thing Going (Rounder) The glamorization of Rhonda Vincent continues, but thankfully it hasn't affected her music. She appears on the cover of her new record as a bombshell in a low-cut, blue-sequined dress, but the music is still straight from the Appalachian mountaintops. Vincent is an outstanding bluegrass singer, not as well known as Alison Krauss, but she'll likely gain on Krauss with this superb new effort. For the first time, Vincent wrote or cowrote five of the songs, from the signature statement "Good Thing Going" (about having a great career and a great...

CAMBRIDGE -- A few eyebrows were raised when Idina Menzel stepped onto the small Regattabar stage last night. In a pair of low-slung jeans, sporting a casual black T-shirt and ponytail, Menzel hardly looked like a typical jazz singer. That's because she's not a typical jazz singer. She's not a typical anything. For 90 minutes, Menzel demonstrated not just her vocal prowess, but also her storytelling skills, wit, and knack for musical improv. And none of it had anything to do with jazz.

LOS ANGELES - A whiteboard hangs on the wall of the tiny Hollywood studio used by the Smeezingtons, Bruno Mars's production and songwriting team. It's filled with doodles, including a picture of Alf and a joking note that producer-engineer Ari Levine "hangs out with Jamaican drug lords on the reg. " Mars, just back from a tour, plinks away at a newly purchased Korg keyboard while Levine and singer-songwriter Philip Lawrence perch on couches. Levine's dog Rambo snores noisily on the floor.