"I can feel your halo, halo, halo, I can see your halo, halo, halo, I can feel your halo, halo, halo, I can see your halo, halo, halo."

Artist: Beyonce

Song: Halo
Album: I Am… Sasha Fierce
Produced by: Evan "Kidd" Bogart, Beyonce and Ryan Tedder

Beyonce breaks down the walls around her heart over thumps, claps and synths.

OR

"Why does love always feel like a battlefield, a battlefield, a battlefield?"

Artist: Jordin Sparks
Song: Battlefield
Album: Battlefield
Produced by: The Runaways and Ryan Tedder

A misunderstanding leads to a war in Jordin Sparks' bombastic single.

• Kanye West follows last year's chart-topping Graduation with his fourth album, 808s & Heartbreak. The album is a "meditation on realness as it's been defined by materialism and machismo in the hip-hop world, and by love and sorrow in the larger one," according to the Los Angeles Times. The Guardian UK compares it to Radiohead's Kid A and applauds Kanye for "finishing the work begun by producers Timbaland and Pharrell Williams in drawing on areas of black music thought sissy by rap's still macho core audience."
• R&B diva Beyonce drops I Am... Sasha Fierce, featuring Beyonce on the first disc and her alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, on the second CD. Entertainment Weekly thinks the move "ultimately seems like a marketing gimmick." Beyonce's alter-ego leaves Vibe magazine puzzled: "It’s unclear when multi-faceted became multiple personality disorder … but this double CD raises some interesting questions. For instance, how can a sexy singer who makes sexy up-tempo tracks have an alter ego that also makes sexy, up-tempo tracks?"
• Ludacris is back with his seventh release, Theater Of The Mind. "Though he's acting more than rapping, Luda wants to prove Hollywood hasn't softened his skills," writes Rolling Stone, which gives Ludacris three and a half stars for being a "fine horn-dog comedian." Prefix mag has nothing but good things to say: "Ludacris has never recorded a verse that could legitimately be called 'wack' and Theater of the Mind keeps that record intact."
• After 15 years without a new album, L.A. metal rockers Guns N' Roses release the long-awaited Chinese Democracy. Is it worth the wait? "The answer has to be no, of course not, how could it be? That said, it's an exhilarating album," writes The Boston Globe. Webzine Popmatters sums it up with one question: "[W]hen you’re standing in front of that drinking hole jukebox a decade from now and you’re deciding whether to spend your last quarter on Appetite for Destruction's 'Sweet Child O’ Mine' or Democracy's 'Madagascar,' which one are you inevitably going to choose?"
• Las Vegas rock band The Killers return to the fray with Day & Age. Paste magazine says although it "may occasionally miss the mark," the group's third studio release is "the sophomore album they should’ve made two years ago." Spin magazine agrees: "[B]y becoming more comfortable with their glitzy roots, they've actually found the pulse of something more authentic. After all, you can't take the Vegas out of the showmen."