(Credit: Mark Seliger/Rolling Stone Magazine)

Rolling Stone Magazine has unveiled the Rihanna-fied cover of their next issue. For the cover shot, Rihanna sports her red hair look du jour (WOW!) and a pair of very skimpy jean shorts (DOUBLE WOW!!!). Look for the issue, in both physical and digital copy, on Friday.

Got something to say about Rihanna’s outfit? Tell us in the comments.

Vic Chesnutt, discovered by REM’s Michael Stipe and regarded with respect by many of the biggest names in the music industry, passed on on Christmas Day from a drug overdose. It isn’t yet known if it was accidental or deliberate.

(From the full article at RollingStone.com)Neutral Milk Hotel’s reclusive Jeff Mangum released a statement that reads, “In 1991 I moved to Athens, Georgia in search of God, but what I discovered instead was Vic Chesnutt. Hearing his music completely transformed the way I thought about writing songs, and I will forever be in his debt.”

Reuters reported today:

The news about the singer’s condition first spread through the Internet on Wednesday through Twitter posts by former Throwing Muses singer Kristin Hersh, who has collaborated with Chesnutt.

“(H)e’s gone…so much to go away in a moment,” she wrote in a subsequent series of messages. “(H)e was supposed to go to *my* funeral, damn it.”

According to MTV: “He put out a total of 13 records over his career (including two in 2009), though he is probably best known for the 1998 compilation Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation, a benefit CD that saw artists like Garbage, Live, Soul Asylum and Madonna covering Chesnutt’s tunes. The album was a benefit for the Sweet Relief Fund, which sought to provide health care to musicians who needed it…”

Learn more about Vic Chesnutt on his official site, www.vicchesnutt.com.

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Billboard’s got some amazing year-end round-ups right now, and looking at them inspired us to see what else was out there. It turned out that everyone is doing it, so why shouldn’t we? In the spirit of comprehensive coverage, here are the Top 10 Top 10s for music in 2009:

1. Billboard’s round-up of round-ups. Charts, stories, trends, and more. Billboard’s got lists galore!
2. Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2009 and Top 100 Tracks of 2009. There are more than 10 items on each list, but they’re definitely in the spirit.
3. Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Songs of 2009. Another longer-than-ten list, but this one has players for each song, so you can listen while you reminisce.
4. MTV asked Lady Gaga for her tops of 2009. MTV has a bunch of other great year/decade-end wrap ups, but their report on Lady Gaga’s faves for 2009 is the one that makes our list.
5. VH1′s Best of 2009 catch-all. So maybe nobody limits their lists to 10 anymore, but who cares? VH1 has become the go-to for retrospective lists, so how could we exclude them from ours?

Did we miss anything? Which lists make your best-of?