Which Gallagher brother is a bigger prat... on Twitter?

If you're on the Internet you might have heard of Klout, a pseudo-scientific way for measuring the slippery ideal of "online influence." Taking into consideration a variety of factors, it has (despite its often being utterly gameable and as a result off the mark) turned into a way for people online to judge not just each other, but themselves.

Today a variation on Klout, Klouchebag, launched to further fill in the picture drawn by Klout's algorithms. Dubbing itself "the standard for measuring asshattery online" and putting itself (or, well, its code) on the lookout for people engaging in jerky behavior in the 140-character wild, it judges users' Twitter feeds on four metrics—"Anger," "Retweet Abuse," "Social Apps," and "English Misuse"—and then figures out just how much of an annoying prat they are accordingly. (Your correspondent's score of 57 causes her to fall in the "bit of a douchebag" range.) This new, exciting measurement of the always-rampant scourge of online idiocy caused us to wonder: Which musicians with prominent social-media presences are, in actuality, the worst—or at least, worse than their chief rivals using a semi-scientific method? A couple of head-to-head matchups after the jump.

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As part of this year's larger reduction in genre-specific awards, 2012 will see the country portion of the Grammys streamlined to just four categories: Best Solo Performance (which swallows Male and Female Vocal Performance), Best Duo/Group Performance (which swallows Best Duo/Group Vocal Performance and Instrumental Performance and Best Collaboration with Vocals), and Best Album and Best Song (which have been around since the beginning). This year, the last of those categories mixes old and new, split (along gender lines, as it turns out) between Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, and Martina McBride, who between them racked up 13 Female Vocal Performance nominations and four wins, and Jason Aldean and Blake Shelton, both up for the first time. Full breakdown below.

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Tell your children not to walk Wye Oak's way.

2011 was a year of looking back relentlessly, whether you were awash in Remember The '90s nostalgia or getting down at a New Kids On The Block show or watching Lady Gaga try to bring back the variety-hour era with her whacked-out Thanksgiving special. So it's not too surprising that there was a bounty of covers—whether as part of all-tribute-set live shows or attempts to goose sites' online traffic or just for, you know, fun—for the Sound of the City braintrust to choose from when putting together this list. Pop on pop, country on Gaga, and reggae on Seattle below.

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The Album of the Year nominees, as presented by Katy Perry.

Last night's Grammy nominations show was full of pomp, eyeliner, and people on Twitter becoming very confused. Here's the complete list of nominees; below, 20 questions that we're still wrestling with some 14 hours after the broadcast signed off.

1. "Super Bass": Robbed or totally robbed?

2. Now that Rihanna is officially an Album Artist thanks to her Album of the Year nod for Loud, are critics going to rush to reevaluate Talk That Talk before they file their Best Of '11 lists?

3. A song from freakin' Family Guy gets a nod in the Best Song Written For Visual Media category but the Lonely Island's "Jack Sparrow" doesn't? Come on.

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photo via @aprilrueb

Taylor Swift w/ NeedToBreathe, Danny Gokey
Madison Square Garden
Tuesday, November 22

Better than: Singing along alone in the office.

Taylor Swift closed her Fearless tour before a sold-out football stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where she performed her encore under artificial rain and gave Justin Bieber a big hug backstage. This might be new information to some of you, but to the majority of last night's sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd, it was old news. And besides, who could dwell on the past when Swift was about to close out another tour, this one even bigger than the last. Most crowds would wonder about the setlist and stage routines, but those whose familiar, flashing signs gave away the fact that they already saw the tour when it rolled through Newark over the summer (guilty as charged, minus the sign) had more important questions to consider. What would be different? Would she reference the evening showers before singing "meet me in the pouring rain"? Who will the special guest be? Will it be Bieber? Oh, please could it be Bieber.

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As you might have heard, Taylor Swift has been crossing the country touring behind 2010's Speak Now and performing a new cover song, often with a surprise guest, at each city along the way, leaving in a trail of camera phone YouTube videos and exclamation point-filled tweets in her wake. In Atlanta she played "Yeah" with Usher and "Live Your Life" with T.I.; in Nashville she played "That's What You Get" with Hayley Williams and "Just to See You Smile" with Tim McGraw; and when we saw her at Newark's Prudential Arena back in July she played a solo cover of Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." Tonight and tomorrow, Swift concludes the tour with two shows at a sold-out Madison Square Garden; if we're lucky, two of the following four possible guests will join her on stage.

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via ABC

Justin Bieber at last year's American Music Awards.

Welcome to Sound of the City's liveblog of the 2011 American Music Awards, the annual salute to the most popular popular music that exists in the American wild this year. While Lady Gaga and Adele and Beyoncé are absent, this year's show apparently has one performance that will cost $500,000 to pull off, as well as a David Guetta/Nicki Minaj outing that is heavy—heavy in the weight sense, not in the "societal import" sense because c'mon we're talking about King Of Eurogloss David Guetta here—and appearances by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy (sigh) Perry, Kelly Clarkson, and other notables from the Hot 100. Come join us for the next three hours, won't you?

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Early this year, Never Say Never took us backstage as teenpop heartthrob Justin Bieber worked his way to a sold-out Madison Square Garden tour finale, juxtaposing current success with clips of baby Bieber playing drums, doing cute things, and wowing crowds at Ontario open mics. Journey to Fearless (out this Tuesday) is, more or less, Taylor Swift's straight-to-DVD response, and while Swift never flips her hair at the camera, moving in slow motion and across all three dimensions, both the songs and the graphics improve upon those in the Bieber original. (Note, for instance, the shot of her hugging bff and "Fifteen" inspiration Abigail in an Avatar-style forest while digital rain falls and the song plays). Below are the top five most joyous, inspiring, or heartwarming moments from the DVD's two hours and 20 minutes of interviews, live performances, and archive footage. (If for some reason you're worried about spoilers, there might be a few.)

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Taylor Swift w/NeedToBreathe, Danny Gokey
Prudential Center
Tuesday, July 19

Better than: Bottling up your emotions.

Before Taylor Swift took the stage last night, I was looking around the Prudential Center, marveling once again at the craftwork on display during an arena show. In contrast to Katy Perry's Etsified crowd last month, the Taylor fans were all about showing their fandom by deploying light—glowsticks, oaktag signs proclaiming love for Taylor that were outfitted with Christmas-light marquees, a few fans who were outfitted in lights in such a way that made me wonder how they felt about Daft Punk. It was impressive (especially the army of young women in shirts spelling out "T-SWIFT" that were further personalized with their individual favorite songs).

While scanning the arena, I noticed a balcony suspended from the rafters. "Oh, she'll probably use that for 'Love Story,'" said my Taylor-fan companion when I pointed it out to him. Ah, yes, the sweet song of Swift's where Romeo & Juliet is given a happy ending.

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via @Z100NewYork

Backstage, will.i.am looked sad. But dry.

The Black Eyed Peas & Friends
The Great Lawn, Central Park
Thursday, June 9

Better than: Sitting in Central Park and waiting for nothing to happen before the heat broke.

The confusion started at around 5:15 p.m. last night, when NY1's Pat Kiernan tweeted that the Black Eyed Peas show in Central Park—an hours-long, sponsor-spangled extravaganza benefiting the Robin Hood Foundation that was to be preceded by appearances by the likes of Zach Braff and Tony Bennett, and was rumored to feature a Taylor Swift cameo—had been delayed because of the thunderstorms rumbling into the New York metropolitan area. It was like a bizarro snow-day announcement, with the wry Canadian newscaster breaking the news that things were too wet and wild out there in the early evening on the Internet instead of in the early morning on TV, and coming as it did on a day when the mercury was causing people to drop Do The Right Thing references instead of complaints about how their radiators weren't working. Twitpics of people being herded out of the park and told to come back later started percolating out, and eventually things became official: The gates would open at 7:30 and the show would start at 8:30, because the worst of the storms would have passed by then.

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