Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of the New York Times. He played jazz flute and piano, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in music. In the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy!, and in the 1980s an associate editor at Rolling Stone and the music editor at The Village Voice. He started contributing to the Times in 1982. He currently reviews popular music in the arts section of the New York Times.

Daniel Lanois ( /lænˈwɑː/ lan-WAH; born September 19, 1951 in Hull, Quebec) is a Canadian record producer, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He has released a number of albums of his own work and has produced albums for a wide variety of artists, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Brandon Flowers and Ron Sexsmith. Lanois is best known for his work with Brian Eno, the pair collaborating on a number of projects together and producing several platinum albums for U2, including The Joshua Tree. Three albums produced or co-produced by Lanois have won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and four others received nominations.

Lanois started his production career when he was 17, working in his own studio with his brother Bob Lanois in the basement of their mother's Ancaster, Ontario home, recording local artists including Simply Saucer. Later Daniel started Grant Avenue Studios in an old house he purchased in Hamilton, Ontario. He worked with a number of local bands, including Martha and the Muffins (for whom his sister Jocelyne played bass), Ray Materick, as well as the Canadian children's singer Raffi.

Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla (born 19 August 1951) is an Argentine musician, film composer and producer. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006.

Santaolalla was born in El Palomar, Argentina. His professional music career began in 1967, when he co-founded the group Arco Iris, an Argentine band that pioneered the fusion of rock and Latin American folk as part of 'rock nacional'. The band adopted the lifestyle of a yogic commune guided by former model Danais Wynnycka (known as Dana) and her partner, musician Ara Tokatlian. The band had a few hits, such as Mañanas Campestres ("Country Mornings"), and made inroads into different forms of expression (notably a ballet piece for Oscar Aráiz), but Santaolalla felt constricted by the strict requirements of Dana's teachings, which prohibited meat, alcohol and drugs. He left the group in 1975.

A year later, he assembled Soluna, in which he played alongside teenage pianist and singer Alejandro Lerner and his then-girlfriend Monica Campins. Together they recorded just one album (Energía Natural, 1977). Santaolalla left for Los Angeles, where he adopted a rock and roll sound and made the rounds with his band Wet Picnic, together with ex-Crucis member Anibal Kerpel. He briefly returned to Argentina in 1981, to produce Leon Gieco's Pensar en Nada and record his first solo album.

Sheryl Suzanne Crow (born February 11, 1962) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop. She has won nine Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

She has performed with The Rolling Stones and has sung duets with Mick Jagger,Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Luciano Pavarotti, John Mellencamp, Kid Rock, Michelle Branch, and Sting among others. She has performed backing vocals for Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Don Henley and Belinda Carlisle. She also sang as part of the back up vocals for the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary celebrating Dylan's 30 years as a recording artist. Crow has released seven studio albums, two compilations, and a live album, and has contributed to film soundtracks. She has sold 16 million albums in the United States and 35 million albums worldwide and her newest album, 100 Miles from Memphis, was released on July 20, 2010. Recently she appeared on NBC's 30 Rock, ABC's GCB and Cougar Town, Disney Channel's Hannah Montana Forever, and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Joni Mitchell, CC (born Roberta Joan Anderson; November 7, 1943) is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto. In 1965 she moved to the United States and, touring constantly, began to be recognized when her original songs ("Urge for Going," "Chelsea Morning," "Both Sides, Now," "The Circle Game") were covered by notable folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her own debut album in 1968. Settling in Southern California, Mitchell and her popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock" helped define an era and a generation. Her more starkly personal 1971 recording Blue has been called one of the best albums ever made. Musically restless, Mitchell switched labels and began moving toward jazz rhythms by way of lush pop textures on 1974's Court and Spark, her best-selling LP, featuring her radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris."