"I've never heard a Jay-Z song."

- Miley Cyrus, whose hit song "Party in the USA" is partly about listening to Jay-Z.

Demi Lovato isn't an actress. She just plays one on TV.

Although the 16-year-old stars in Disney's Sonny With A Chance and appeared in Camp Rock, Lovato maintains acting is "like a hobby." And with good reason: the singer-songwriter made her musical breakthrough last year with Don't Forget, an album packed with bubblegum pop-rock like La La Land and Get Back (both co-written by Jonas Brothers). Critics compared the young Mexican-American to tween superstar Miley Cyrus and the Jonases. The album climbed as high as number two on the Billboard chart.

Lovato, who plays both piano and guitar, is once again being compared to Cyrus on her latest, Here We Go Again. Released earlier this month, the album has already spawned two hits: the Jonas Brothers-meets-Paramore title track and the delicate ballad Catch Me, a wistful song that hints the cute brunette would much rather be the next Kelly Clarkson than the next Hannah Montana. Lovato says her grown-up sound – she collaborated with John Mayer on one track – is just a reflection of real life: "I’ve just become a happier person over the last few months, because my life has hit this place where it’s very comfortable."

• Lloyd "isn't your average R&B smoothie — he's much hornier," writes Rolling Stone. Billboard says the New Orleans R&B singer has "come a long way" on his new album, Lessons in Love, but The New York Times is disappointed: "Unlike its predecessor, which gave Lloyd’s tender alto room to breathe, much of the production here is gooey and distracting, too dense for Lloyd to make a dent in."
• Miley Cyrus sheds her Hannah Montana alter-ego on Breakout, an album that "finds the Disney Channel star returning to her factory setting of trying to please most of the people most of the time, without completely obscuring her own songwriting voice," according to The Boston Globe. "Though she's only 15, Miley's voice is rich and expressive as she dumps the same guy a dozen songs in a row," deadpans The Village Voice.
• Rage Against The Machine vocalist Zach De La Rocha teams up with ex-Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore to form One Day As A Lion. The duo's self-titled EP is a "five-tracker with bite, with venom; it’s a reminder that while de la Rocha might age like the rest of us, the fires in his belly haven’t come close to being doused by mundane revivals of his most famous group’s mosh-happy hits," gushes Drowned in Sound. Webzine Stereogum notes that it "falls squarely within the realm de la expectation: still that ratatating delivery, still those allusions to class struggles, politics, and religion, etc."
• Florida indie dance combo The Black Kids release their debut, Partie Traumatic, "the type of record that claims not even the Apocalypse can stop the party," according Slant magazine. "[T]eenage yearning couldn’t hope for a much better vehicle than their pouting power pop," proclaims The Phoenix. "Flanked by his sister and friends, Reggie Youngblood sings catchy tunes about dancing and desire with a yelp that suggests … the Cure's goth godfather Robert Smith," observes Spin magazine.