Linkin Park, oh, I suppose I've missed you. But what I've missed is your earnest boy-band-with-a-backing-bass sound, the uber-dramatic bridges and crescendos of synthesizers. What I didn't miss was your attempts to be Coldplay. I have seen Coldplay, Linkin Park, and you are no Coldplay.

What I see here is lead singer Chester Bennington (seriously -- CHESTER), singing about the world. The world is apparently bad. You can tell, because he turns on the TV and watches the news. Which is full of violence. So he laces up his manly manly construction boots and leaves the house to walk around the riot raging right outside his door.

And he walks around and sings for a while, while cops point their guns and rioters run amok... Really, it's a pretty boring riot as far as riots go. Eventually, a car gets set on fire, and Chester sings some more about how the world is sad and bad and all that... And then the video ends.

Some might interpret this video as having a very nihilistic message, but it's a video about hope, really. Hope that if you stand near a burning car to sing about how the world sucks, the car's fuel line won't ignite and set you on fire. We all gotta hope for something, I suppose.

As a profoundly embarrassed "Gimme More" apologist (I think it's a good song, okay?!), all of the recent Britney Spears kerfuffle has me feeling awfully torn. After all, I like the song. But everything that's happened in relation to the release of said song is more than a little disappointing.

And I'm including the official music video on that list. It's not just that there's something profoundly creepy about blonde Britney Spears sitting at a bar and getting turned on by watching brunette Britney Spears shake her moneymaker. It's also the seedy club, the uninspired pole-dancing, the weird fake arm tattoo... Oh, good grief, she literally rubs up against the wall for the part where she says she's up against the wall. Boo-urns.

In short -- oh, dear. I'm still a fan, Brit-Brit. But if you could put a little more effort in, that'd be great. We're all saying give us more, at this point.

Is Amy Winehouse pulling a Britney Spears? The "Rehab" singer's performance at the MOBO awards may not have been quite the trainwreck that Spears's VMA debacle was, but it was certainly enough to raise some eyebrows.

Winehouse wasn't exactly helped any by the tacky she's-a-fuckup-but-we-love-her-anyway intro, but her glassy-eyed confusion during "Tears Dry on Their Own" and her mumble-mouthed incoherence on "Me and Mr. Jones" were what really sealed the deal. Also not helping subdue the chatter were the leaked reports of her backstage rider demands: two bottles each of Jack Daniels, Rioja, and Champagne, a large bottle of vodka, and two 24 bottle cases of Heineken.

Here's the thing, though: I'm all for spotting a celeb meltdown in the making, but, well, that's how Amy Winehouse always looks when she performs. I, personally, have never seen her clear-eyed or witnessed a performance where I could understand a damn word she was singing. She was already, at best, a bleary-eyed mushmouth, and at worst a woman in a steady drug-addled holding pattern. So I honestly don't know if she's really doing any worse than before.

Which begs the question: How do you know if someone's in a downward spiral if their normal standard of behavior is so far off from, well, normal?

By now, most people (or most who'd care, anyway) have heard about the tumble down the stairs Beyonce took at her concert in Orlando on Tuesday. And judging by the number of views on the many videos of the incident -- presumably all posted by the "fans" Beyonce specifically asked not to post the thing -- pretty much everyone who cares has seen it as well.

Seriously. More than a million people have let their fingers do the clicking to watch Beyonce fall down. (I have, too, but that's my job.) If there's one thing that netizens like, it's watching people fall down. That little bit of social observation aside, allow me to say ...

This fall is spectacular.

Beyonce actually manages to fall on her ass, bounce off, and rebound onto her face. Then she gets up and jumps right back into the number. Officially, I'm appalled and concerned, but since her reps have put out the word that she's fine, I can also be impressed as hell. Damn.

It's impossible to tell at this early stage whether Saturday's Live Earth concert mega-event will have the intended effect upon the planet's CO2 emissions. In fact, it seems to have already done substantive harm to the environment. And with 150 artists performing at eleven different venues, there's another kind of pollution generated as well -- the Internet video kind.

Honestly, It's a bit hard to know where to start. But Spinal Tap performed, and then they were interviewed, and that's the greatest thing ever. There's Chris Rock dropping a bad Paris Hilton joke and a F-bomb, to which the BBC reacts by leisurely cutting back to the studio fifteen seconds later. Shakira shook her hips in Germany, and if you've never seen Shakira shake her hips, then you've never seen Shakespeare the way it's meant to be done. And there are very few men in suits who can rock a mike like The Beastie Boys.

But my favorite video definitely has to be Madonna's feisty performance of "La Isla Bonita," as accompanied by two gypsy fiddlers and a pack of rambunctious dancers. Thanks to the blood red lighting scheme, there's a distinctly post-apocalyptic air to Madonna's whole set, but perhaps that's appropriate. Live Earth was a lot of things, but world-saving was not one of them.