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In their new book, Annoying: The Science Of What Bugs Us, NPR Science Correspondent Joe Palca and Science Friday's Flora Lichtman set out to examine why certain things — and people — drive us bananas.

Fats Waller sang, emceed, told jokes, wrote hits, and played mean piano. Decades later, a fellow jazz pianist tries to capture his life-of-the-party spirit with drastically new versions of his tunes.

It's easy to feel the romance in the musical relationship between Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst, who've become musical embodiments of how loving couples make it work.

On her first studio album since 2008, the 74-year-old firebrand's voice remains relevant, full of spit and vinegar and fun.

What happens when a veteran L.A. soul and jazz instrumentalist discovers the music of Ethiopia? The answer: a world of influence and possibility.

Rock critic Ken Tucker says that Beyonce's new album, titled 4, is something of a risk – it's not merely a collection of new songs, but a personal reassessment of the kind of pop star she wants to be.

Elvis Presley is constantly being discovered by new generations, and by older fans in new stages of life. Critic Milo Miles talks about the surprise rewards he found while listening to the new reissue Elvis Is Back! — and during his first visit to Graceland in Memphis.

Long Lost Suitcase is not just Jones' story, but also the story of America's musical roots spreading to reach the whole planet, generation by generation.

More than three decades after Pancho & Lefty, the country titans pair up again, this time for an album that puts eclecticism front and center.

Many jazz standards are themselves about making lists. Here are five of them, including Louis Armstrong's take on "Let's Do It," Johnny Hartman's version of "These Foolish Things" and a classic reading of Jobim's "Waters of March."

Many in Africa say that their homeland is reggae's, too, despite the genre's development in late-'60s Jamaica. Regardless of lore, reggae has since taken on a new shape in Africa, expanding beyond Caribbean-based manifestations. Here are five examples of a modern African sound.

Broadway musicals of the 1960s were surprisingly good at explaining complicated economic matters. Before tourists took over the Great White Way, the "tired businessman" was the target audience. These four songs are particularly illustrative of the kind of vaudeville mixed with corporate-speak that the businessman favored.

The Aces' full-length debut is a pop confectionery, and fit to be blasted from car stereos, but there's substance to its sweetness

Hear the fruits of a record-canvassing mission co-piloted by Madlib.

Ever try to remember the nooks and crannies of your childhood home? This Chicago composer took it one step further.

Thirty years after his breakthrough hit "The Way It Is," the singer-keyboardist once again hits the sweet spot between joyful improv and immaculate songcraft.

Three Israeli sisters celebrate — and utterly transform — a trove of Arab-language folk songs that they inherited as Yemenite Jews, by tweaking them with electronic touches.

Cantrell, who was born in Tennessee, is one of the stylists who defined Americana music as we now know it when she first emerged in 2000. But she's an urbanite, too, interested in expressing how the simple life gets thornier when your country dreams must adapt to the possibilities and problems of life in a metropolis.

From sorrow, the music builds to a climax of intensity, and finally reaches serene acceptance. Commentator Rob Kapilow conducts a guided tour of Barber's best-known piece.

The Canadian singer grew up watching old movies and musicals in London, Ontario. She took those influences and turned them into an album that sounds both old-fashioned and timeless. Its title is The Cricket's Orchestra.