West Africa produced many outstanding releases during the noughties, but the Malian singer's stark and haunting album was the most remarkable

By normal industry standards, waiting until you're 53 to make the best album of your career is perhaps leaving it a bit late. But then not much about Salif Keita's story is normal.

Was it a blessing or a curse for this Malian teenager – already singled out for being albino, and of royal descent – to find that he had one of the most remarkable voices anybody in the neighbourhood had ever heard? On the one hand, it set him apart and ahead of the competition to be invited to sing with two leading west African bands during the 1970s. On the other, it led to expectations that perhaps Keita could be something more than the most famous singer in west Africa – what about conquering the rest of the world? In 1987, the album Soro, expensively and elaborately produced in Paris, announced Keita's arrival in the English-speaking world.

For the following 15 years, it was almost as if he wilfully defied the hopes and expectations of those who had supported him, insisting on electric guitarists and synthesiser players in his recordings and for his live shows, despite entreaties that his music should sound less like Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and more Malian.

Finally, astonishingly, in 2002 Keita relented and delivered the album Moffou, which was exactly what his fans had been praying for. First impressions were that this change of tack was mostly acoustic, but there are many subtle interventions of electric guitar and electronic effects. Moffou might feel like a natural, spontaneous recording, but clearly a lot of thought went in at every stage, from songwriting to arrangements and post-production – and, of course, the singing. If the plan was to deliver a classic album, it succeeded.

One of Keita's distinctive qualities as a songwriter is to set his own voice against female vocalists, and virtually every track here showcases this skill, starting with Yamore, a duet with the Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora. The combination of the two voices seemed counterintuitive, with Keita being typically extravagant and Évora being laidback. But it works brilliantly, and behind them both, those gorgeous backing vocals answer and comment.

Two other tracks stand out as the high points of a consistently lovely record. On Moussolou, Keita's tribute to women, his gentle vocal is carried along by rippling guitars and percussion. On the haunting Baba, a traditional instrument plays an echoing melody in the background.

Moffou signalled what was to become a hugely successful 10 years for Malian music – in fact, the decade would end with a raft of pop and indie acts looking to the country for inspiration. West Africa provided several outstanding albums during the noughties, but most musicians would surely salute Keita's album as the pinnacle.

Buy this Sunday's Observer for the full top 50 countdown, plus an interview with the winner

This south London singer's perky pop-soul tunes suggest that she may be an Amy, Adele or Duffy for 2010, but not without strong competition

Hometown: Norbury, London.

The lineup: Rox (vocals).

The background: We keep thinking we've heard all the major female contenders for 2010, but as Todd Rundgren once sang, "There's always more". And they all seem poised to succeed. Trouble is, Ellie Goulding in the UK and Sky Ferreira in the States, the two female performers most likely to next year, are operating in quite different areas, whereas Rox, Rough Trade's latest signing and a 22-year-old from south London, has staked a claim to the densely populated pop-soul terrain already occupied by newbie Clare Maguire as well as the original retro-soul girls Amy, Adele and Duffy. It's actually not a million miles away, either, from the showier Paloma Faith while her chirrupy delivery reminds us of the girl group/indie-soul stylings of Remi Nicole whose recent second album didn't even see a release. But she does what she does – sing and write perky pop-soul tunes – pretty well. Whether or not she does it sufficiently differently is another matter, so unless the Big Three radically change direction (and rumour has it that Adele is working with someone quite unexpected on her second album) Rox is going to have tough competition with her 2010 debut album, from both within and outside Rough Trade, who also happen to manage Duffy.

The half-Persian/half-Jamaican singer-songwriter is a priority for Rough Trade, though, and they've been working hard to build a reputation for her. Rox has already performed at this year's Reading festival (with Wiley) and the BBC's Electric Proms (with Nitin Sawhney) and her finger-snapping single I Don't Believe has been used to soundtrack a Rimmel TV ad. She also stood in for Amy Winehouse, singing Valerie at a Mark Ronson show, and she performed two tracks on Later With Jools Holland last week (we remember VV Brown was on similarly early in her career – hmm …). She describes her songs as "like the written pages in my diary – personal, honest, and all the subjects and words are real". The biggest influence on her lyrics is "love, tragedy and all that other good stuff that makes art enjoyable", while musically she draws on gospel, country and R&B, and artists as varied as Alanis Morissette ("for the teenage angst") to Eva Cassidy ("she kept me in touch with my emotional side").

Of the tracks we've heard, I Don't Believe and My Baby Left Me are the most instantly infectious and squarely in the 60s soul pastiche camp, while Rocksteady is as the title suggests a Lovers Rock homage (delivered straighter than that other new girl, Coco Sumner, does reggae). Her new single No Going Back is gospel-tinged Motown-esque soul-pop. Vocally, although mightily efficient, she's not as extraordinary as some. We mean that both ways – she hasn't quite found her "voice" yet. She could have written her songs for any number of female singers. Then again, she could be a bit of a Corinne Bailey Rae, who seemed lightweight at the start but whose second album is currently being hailed as a masterpiece. Rox may not have anything truly original to say right now, and she may not do so for some time, but she would appear to be an artist who is perhaps worth sticking with over the distance. Meanwhile, we'd suggest pushing her in the direction of a UK Erykah Badu ...

The buzz: "Stunningly soulful."

The truth: We wouldn't wish Corinne Bailey Rae's annus horribilis on anyone, but we can't help thinking Rox will need to live a little before she produces anything truly great.

Most likely to: Marry Andre 3000.

Least likely to: Use L'Oreal.

What to buy: No Going Back is released by Rough Trade on 7 December.

File next to: Adele, Amy, Corinne Bailey Rae, Paloma Faith.

Links: myspace.com/roxmusik

Tomorrow's new band: Alex Gardner.

Observer Music Monthly starts the countdown to the best album of the decade with this melancholic masterclass from dubstep's dark knight

In an era when musicians revealed their private lives to the public via MySpace and Twitter, when even the biggest stars were stripped of enigma by the paparazzi or in the pages of Heat, the idea of anonymity suddenly seemed powerful, if you knew how to use it. So when electronic music prodigy Burial released his self-titled debut album in 2006, declining even to identify himself, let alone submit to photographs and interviews, it certainly lent his soulful take on the era's key sub-genre – dubstep – extra mystique. By the time its successor, 2007's Untrue, won a Mercury prize nomination, and Burial was being hyped as the next Aphex Twin – a whiz kid from the margins set to impact on the mainstream – the myth was powerful enough for one tabloid to start a campaign to name him.

In the end, Burial saved them the bother by quickly "outing" himself as William Bevan, a young south Londoner reared on 1990s drum'n'bass and garage. Untrue married the former's sense of scale with the latter's fleetness of foot, adding a sadness that was unique to Bevan. It was soaked in a particularly urban melancholy: the 3am blues of In McDonald's was instantly recognisable to anyone who's ever been stuck in a fast food outlet in the early hours with only a styrofoam cup of coffee for warmth. While other dubstep artists grew colder and more alienated, Bevan outstripped his peers by heading in the opposite direction, conjuring emotion from disembodied female vocal samples and old videogames. These were explicit links between rave's past and its thriving offspring in the present, who were still plugging away in the underground, occasionally yielding up something truly special.

Buy this Sunday's Observer for the full top 50 countdown, plus an interview with the winner.

West Africa produced many outstanding releases during the noughties, but the Malian singer's stark and haunting album was the most remarkable

By normal industry standards, waiting until you're 53 to make the best album of your career is perhaps leaving it a bit late. But then not much about Salif Keita's story is normal.

Was it a blessing or a curse for this Malian teenager – already singled out for being albino, and of royal descent – to find that he had one of the most remarkable voices anybody in the neighbourhood had ever heard? On the one hand, it set him apart and ahead of the competition to be invited to sing with two leading west African bands during the 1970s. On the other, it led to expectations that perhaps Keita could be something more than the most famous singer in west Africa – what about conquering the rest of the world? In 1987, the album Soro, expensively and elaborately produced in Paris, announced Keita's arrival in the English-speaking world.

For the following 15 years, it was almost as if he wilfully defied the hopes and expectations of those who had supported him, insisting on electric guitarists and synthesiser players in his recordings and for his live shows, despite entreaties that his music should sound less like Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel and more Malian.

Finally, astonishingly, in 2002 Keita relented and delivered the album Moffou, which was exactly what his fans had been praying for. First impressions were that this change of tack was mostly acoustic, but there are many subtle interventions of electric guitar and electronic effects. It might feel like a natural, spontaneous recording, but clearly a lot of thought went into it at every stage, from the songwriting to the arrangements and the post-production – and, of course, the singing. If the plan was to deliver a classic album, it succeeded.

One of Keita's distinctive qualities as a songwriter is to set his own voice against female vocalists, and virtually every track here showcases this skill, starting with Yamore, a duet with the Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora. The combination of the two voices seemed counterintuitive, with Keita being typically extravagant and Évora being laidback. But it works brilliantly, and behind them both, those gorgeous backing vocals answer and comment.

Two other tracks stand out as the pinnacles of a consistently lovely record. On Moussolou, Keita's tribute to women, his gentle vocal is carried along by rippling guitars and percussion. On the haunting Baba, a traditional instrument plays an echoing melody in the background.

Moffou signalled what was to become a hugely successful 10 years for Malian music – in fact, the decade would end with a raft of pop and indie acts looking to the country for inspiration. West Africa provided several outstanding albums during the noughties, but most musicians would surely tip their hat to Keita's album as being the pinnacle.

Royal Opera House, London

Composers' attitudes to their own works are often curious. Tchaikovsky believed The Tsarina's Slippers (Cherevichki in Russian; more correctly "little boots" in English) was his finest opera. Posterity has questioned his judgment and will probably continue to do so in the wake of this expensive-looking production that combines the forces of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet. It doesn't, by any means, make a case for the work as a lost masterpiece.

Tchaikovsky's source was Nikolai Gogol's story Christmas Eve, about Oxana, a wilful Ukrainian girl who agrees to marry her blacksmith boyfriend Vakula if he gets her some of Catherine the Great's footwear. In order to do so, Vakula forces into his service a none-too-bright devil, who is one of the several would-be lovers of his witchy mother Solokha. Their phantasmagoric Christmas Eve journey allows Tchaikovsky to contrast folksy Ukrainean vigour with rarefied 18th-century St Petersburg, as well as painting a rather questionable portrait of a unified Russian empire, blithely preparing for the festive season.

The material is uneven, though. The dances are delightful, while Vakula's moments of doubt permit Tchaikovsky to examine male vulnerability, where he is, of course, supreme. The rest of it, however, is charming if insubstantial. Tchaikovsky, who could turn against his own music if he considered it too self-revealing, probably adored Cherevichki because it is safe and a bit anonymous.

Francesca Zambello's big, gaudy staging plays at times to the opera's weaknesses by emphasising spectacle at the expense of character. There are dancing bears and whirling Cossacks. Catherine's court spills across the stage from beneath the skirts of a huge gilded statue of the Empress. Choreographer Alastair Marriott serves up mock Petipa in St Petersburg and an elegant divertissement, reminiscent of Ashton's Ondine, for the water nymphs who distract Vakula on his journey.

Musically, things could be tighter. The opera needs a stronger conductor than the rather routine Alexander Polianichko. Both Maxim Mikhailov's devil and Larissa Diadkova's lubricious Solokha were having problems with their high notes on opening night, while Olga Guryakova's Oxana was unremittingly loud. On the other hand, Vsevolod Grivnov is a fabulous Vakula, convincing you that he has the soul of a poet in the body of a nerd. And the great Sergei Leiferkus makes a brief but show-stealing appearance as His Excellency, Catherine's nameless lover.

Until 8 December. Box office: 020-7304 4000.

• This article was amended on Monday 23 November 2009. The original stated that the devil's role was taken by Vladimir Matorin. This has been corrected.

Bono and co are slated to play the Pyramid stage's top slot for the festival's 40th anniversary

U2 will headline next year's Glastonbury festival, it was confirmed today. Bono and co have been slated for the Pyramid stage's top spot on Friday 25 June, in what will be their first ever appearance at the festival. Organiser Michael Eavis had promised something special for Glastonbury's 40th anniversary, and in booking a band who have been rumoured to headline every year since the mid 1980s, he's done just that.

"The 26-year-old rumour has finally come true," Eavis said. "At last, the biggest band in the world are going to play the best festival in the world! Nothing could be better for our 40th anniversary party. And there are even more surprises in the pipeline."

Eavis added: "We've been trying for years ... and now we've finally made it happen. I'm sure they will pull out all the stops to make next year's Glastonbury the most memorable ever."

U2 will fly to the UK to play the Somerset festival in the middle of their North American tour.

Earlier this year, Bono told BBC Radio 1 that U2 had not been confirmed to play the festival in 2010, but was sure they would play Glastonbury at some point. "I know lots of people who love music want us to. It's something we're working up our whole life to do."

Tickets for next year's Glastonbury sold out in October after organisers decided to release them early – a scheme that proved successful last year. The festival will take place between Friday 25 and Sunday 27 June 2010. So far, no other headliners have been confirmed. The Guardian is the official media sponsor of Glastonbury festival.

From Hip Hop Weekly to the Source, urban music magazines offer a mixed approach to covering rap's inner conflicts

What was I thinking? After two and a half years of striving to inspire a heated debate with an outmoded combination of impassioned polemic and old-school Bernstein and Woodward-style investigative journalism, last month's bulging crop of enraged responses confirmed that all you need to do to really get the wires humming is casually drop in a dismissive aside about Interpol or Spoon. But how best to pass the time until next month's no-stone-unturned analysis of the terrifying possibility that neither Broken Social Scene nor the Bowerbirds are currently among the world's top 10 rock bands? A spot-check on the current state of Anglo-American urban music magazine publishing seems the only realistic way forward.

On the middle-shelf of a small newsagents in Hackney's once bustling Dalston Lane, there lurks what seems to be the entire UK stock of a publication called Hip Hop Weekly. This disturbingly entertaining magazine views the triumphs and tribulations of all your favourite rap stars (and a few you've never heard of) through the same filter of amoral obsequiousness that Hello! used to – and, for all I know, still does – apply to the social lives of minor European royals. Thus paparazzi shots of Yung Joc's birthday bash at Velvet Room in Atlanta ("Shawty Lo never misses an industry event") nestle comfortably alongside "Beach Bodies" Eve and Beyoncé.

Yet the proceedings are given a distinctly surreal edge by the way hip-hop's darker realities are addressed in precisely the same breathlessly admiring voice with which Hip Hop Weekly introduces this season's fashion must-haves – that $570 pair of Miu Miu glitter slingbacks, for example, or the Stella McCartney patent rivet detail clutch (a snip at $725). One page it's "Shady Dudes: Drake and Trey Songz rock their sunglasses", the next it's "DG Yola begins jail sentence for shooting cousin" or "C-Murder Sentenced to Life" ("When his retrial began," asks the concerned interviewer, "was he optimistic that he would be vindicated?").

The strangest thing about such glaring disjunctions is that they are actually totally appropriate to the mixed messages encoded within rap's unfolding spectacle. And for anyone with even the slightest interest in finding out how Joe Budden's latest internet beef ended in real-life drama, Hip Hop Weekly is as essential as reading is likely to get (those not within striking distance of Dalston Lane can click here for a free sample)

The Source, on the other hand – even "under new management", as it is – seems to be struggling to come up with a consistent approach to rap's inner conflicts. A heartfelt editorial tries to convince us that "it kind of feels like 1988 outside, like the days when hip-hop was about talking about something, when studied masters taught eager listeners how to get their hustle on". But such earnest hopes are quickly (albeit amusingly) undermined by "Baby Mama Drama", a page-long celebration of the relative earning potentials of such former rap muses as TI's Lashonda Dixon and Jeezy's Tynesha Dykes: apparently "sometimes it's cheaper to keep her".

The following eye-catching standfirst suggests that the Source is currently happiest when it's worthiest: "What happens when a rapper born in Peru and raised in New York City ventures into war-torn Afghanistan to start an orphanage? My name is Immortal Technique and this is my story, part two." But it's hard to have too much faith in a magazine that would allot four pages to an in-depth interview with Warner Music Group co-chairman Lyor Cohen, but only two to speak to the great Ghostface Killah (and one of those is taken up by an – admittedly excellent – photo of the Wu-Tang's finest wearing a highly desirable tangerine velour tracksuit).

Happily, Kevin Fairbanks's regrettably brief encounter with the man who would be Tony Starks still manages to pack a punch. Having worried for years if his fans would accept the distinct R&B-ward move he's making on forthcoming album, The Wizard of Poetry, Ghostface explains that he has now reached a stage in his career "where I've been around so long that I don't give a fuck if my fans respect it or not. The ones that don't respect it – this ain't for you then. I'll catch y'all … when I get back to talking that other stupid-ass shit".

Passing swiftly over a copy of XXL magazine with Jay-Z on the cover (editor Vanessa Satten has crawled so far up Hov's arse in her determination to secure the 24 pages of Rocawear adverts with which last month's issue opens that apparently you can still see the top of her head when he opens his mouth to speak), we find ourselves contemplating the place in the Borders magazine section where the specialist British black music titles used to be. Only a beleaguered-looking Echoes remains, and I'm not sure if an interview with Reggae Reggae sauce mogul Levi Roots represents the best strategy for securing this distinguished title's long-term future.

Online, though, things look a little brighter, with a surprisingly functional version of old rival Blues and Soul ("The official first stop for music writing, comment, integrity, opinion and listings," apparently) trumping Echoes' lamentably inadequate Maxwell interview with Pete Lewis's vastly superior career retrospective. And best (albeit saddest) of all – the finest journalistic catch in this month's transatlantic trawl – are the handful of prototype digital editions put together by the late-lamented Hip-Hop Connection, which gave up the physical ghost earlier this year, but still struggles on virtually. Compact and elegant PDFs are easily downloadable (well, the T La Rock one was, I could only get the cover of the much sought after MF Doom exclusive). Read them and weep, or, if you are a millionaire rap star, slip them £50k to get this beautifully designed vehicle back on the road.

The singer's management is reportedly preparing a plan to offer financial institutions a 50% stake in future releases

Robbie Williams may soon replace record executives with stockbrokers, selling a 50% stake in album, tour and merchandise profits. The singer's management is reportedly preparing a plan that would see financial institutions invest £50m toward Williams's musical future.

The former Take That star will soon complete his four-album, £55m deal with EMI – and he sees no need to renew it. Instead, manager Tim Clark told the Times, Williams hopes to find investors who will trade cash upfront for profits later, reaping the rewards of the 35-year-old's recently revivified career.

The plan is for an "all-rights deal", in which all of Williams's profits, from ringtones to concerts and baseball caps, would be channelled into one company – and then split among investors. EMI allegedly profited on its £55m investment, so why not a bank, hedge fund or Russian oil billionaire? The deal may even include proceeds from a Take That reunion with Williams: "They are all getting on extremely well and I'm sure something would come out of it," Clark said.

It seems that everything a record label does, a group of investors can do better. "You can just buy the services you need, whether it is CD distribution or marketing," Clark said. Fourteen years into his solo career, with 48m albums sold, Williams doesn't need the same sort of help that many younger artists do. Indeed, major acts, from David Bowie to Public Enemy, have tried similar things – with varying degrees of success.

As Clark approaches potential investors, the main question will be about Williams's own potential. The record industry is not, after all, at its peak. Though Williams's new album, Reality Killed the Video Star, debuted at No 2, it was the first Williams album to miss the top spot – and its first-week sales were less than two-thirds of those for his last LP, 2005's Intensive Care. (They were, however, an improvement on sales from 2006's Rudebox.) While previous Williams albums have sold about seven million copies worldwide, his manager said, "the internet means that the days when you could get that kind of figure are gone".

However, Clark admitted that Williams may yet sign a conventional record deal.

A Canadian man claims that he was drunk when he shoved the former Oasis guitarist at a concert in Toronto in 2008

A Canadian man has admitted shoving Noel Gallagher at an Oasis concert in Toronto in September 2008, claiming he was drunk at the time. Daniel Sullivan pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm but said he has no recollection of how he mounted the stage.

According to attorney Ruth Neilson, Sullivan made his way on to the main stage at Toronto Island's Virgin Music festival, "ran past the electrical cords ... past the drum kit and lunged toward Noel Gallagher, shoving him violently from behind with great force". The former Oasis guitarist fell on to a speaker, fracturing three ribs. "Sullivan almost made it to Liam Gallagher, but was tackled by security and was taken to the ground," Neilson said.

Noel Gallagher said that he felt "winded" after the attack, but was fit enough to carry on – and Oasis completed the last 20 minutes of their concert. Though the band eventually cancelled five gigs, it wasn't until Gallagher went for a CT scan in London two weeks later that doctors discovered he had fractured his ninth, tenth and eleventh ribs. It took eight months before the singer felt normal again, according to court documents.

"It appears no one attempted to prevent Sullivan from gaining access to the stage until he was tackled by Oasis," Neilson said. The 48-year-old resident of Pickering, Ontario only "remembers attempting to climb over the fence", but not the sequence of events that led to him assaulting one of the world's biggest rock stars. "He was held backstage for police," Neilson said. "Police reported that Sullivan was resisting, struggling and screaming as he was arrested. Officers tried to calm him down."

Judge Richard Schneider scheduled a sentencing for 5 February 2010.