​Today Amnesty International releases Chimes Of Freedom, a really, really huge compilation of bob Dylan covers by artists both canonized and obscure. Trying to analyze such a huge undertaking can only be done in one way: Mathematically.

Amount of music in this collection: 73 songs on four CDs, totaling 313 minutes and 24 seconds. (You get three additional songs if you buy it digitally, for an additional eight minutes' worth of music.)

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​Here is a fun sentence to type: Miley Cyrus released a video in support of Occupy Wall Street! The clip, posted Saturday, pairs a remix of her 2010 song "Liberty Walk" with footage from the Occupy protests, and is so incongruous that when I first saw it I spent about five minutes verifying that it was an official Miley production. If the song hadn't gotten such wide coverage, I'm not sure I'd still be able to say with complete certainty that the former Disney Channel star was responsible for it. The clip looks like a tribute video (fan-made clips that take, say, a Taylor Swift song and put it over footage from Twilight or Glee to emphasize the deep emotional relationships between the characters); it even opens with the suspiciously iMovie-looking white-text-on-black-screen epigraph "This is dedicated to the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in..."

In truth, it's not so out of character. Cyrus is a longtime vlogger, and her ability to use new media in an accessible, authentic-seeming way has been a huge boon to her popularity. But for those more used to the image of Miley Cyrus as a slick, corporate pop star, the apparent sincerity and homegrown flavor of the video were hard to process.

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​Imagine if People named an actor "Sexiest [Gender] Alive" months before he or she had released a hit movie or TV show. It's not unthinkable, certainly—think back to the '90s and the Julia Ormonds and Skeet Ulrichs who scored Next Big Thing magazine covers before face-planting in a flop movie—but it's damned unlikely. Usually chart-topping, newsstand-blanketing fame comes after the public has gone gaga for the emerging star's wares.

In music, it's a lot easier to be a best-seller without blanketing the airwaves. Generations of quirky rock acts, from Jethro Tull in the '70s to the Arcade Fire in 2010, have topped the Billboard album chart without even scraping the Hot 100. But pop, R&B and hip-hop acts generally live and die by the single; hit songs lead to hit albums, full stop.

Nicki Minaj spans all of these genres; she's a new queen of hip-hop who sings like an R&B diva and aspires to pop domination. If anyone should need a big radio hit to become a best-selling star, it's her. So it's a total head-scratcher that only this week, Minaj scores her first Top 10 pop hit—a year after she dropped her first major-label single, and more than four months after Pink Friday topped the album chart.

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Last night, the Canadian industry savior and haircut titan Justin Bieber overcame a cold and a guest appearance from Sean Kingston to sell out Madison Square Garden. The performance was being taped for an upcoming 3D biopic, and thus Bieber brought out the big guns: Boyz II Men. (Usher, Jaden Smith, and Ludacris were also in the building.) But the evening's reported highlight? A duet with 17-year-old Miley Cyrus, who just happened to have separated from her boyfriend last week. Together, they sang "Overboard," a song Bieber initially recorded with his opening act, Jessica Jarrell. At the time, the substitution of Cyrus for Jarrell seems to have played well with the crowd--listen to those screams!--but Bieber nation is a notoriously protective bunch (see: Kim Kardashian), and the backlash against Cyrus online was swift, immediate, and fearsome. Watch your back, Miley:

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​--Them Crooked Vultures surprised fans by playing Belgium's Pukkelpop music festival yesterday (check out fan reports here). The band played the second stage between sets by Beirut and Wilco. The night before, the Dave Grohl/Josh Homme/John Paul Jones supergroup played their second gig at a small venue in Amsterdam. Video footage of that show has surfaced, and the band seems to be living up to its almost-impossible-to-meet expectations. Them Crooked Vultures are rumored to be making surprise appearances at the Reading and Leeds festivals overseas in the next couple weeks.

--Billy Ray Cyrus is defending daughter Miley's "stripper-pole" performance at the MTV Teen Choice Awards on August 10th. Performing "Party in the USA" Cyrus emerged from a makeshift trailer wearing short shorts, high leather boots, and a bra, basically. (Yes, it feels incredibly pervy to write this.) She danced on an ice cream stand with a pole on top. Her father told Access Hollywood: "You know what? I just think that Miley loves entertaining people. I always tell her to love what you're doing and stay focused for the love of the art and not worry so much about opinion." This would be an appropriate response if he were a dad talking about his daughters' embarrassing performance at a school talent show.

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