It’s hard to believe that only 31 months ago, Lady Gaga was an underground electro-pop artist struggling to get her songs played on American radio. She sang about losing her phone and turning her shirt inside out, and she seemed destined to be the type of artist celebrated by the blogosphere but ignored by mainstream pop (an American Robyn). She’s since become the most important pop star on the planet, and today, released one of the most anticipated records of the 21st century.

The promotion Born This Way has received is unrivaled by any album in recent memory, thanks to Gaga hyping it long before we even knew what it would be called (She said she wrote the “core of it” more than a year ago). She went as far as to call it the “greatest album of this decade,” fueling the anticipation, and showcasing a hubris we’ve come to expect from the likes of Kanye West and pre-fatherhood Brandon Flowers. While self-promotion is an essential skill for every pop star, Gaga’s unprecedented plugging threatened to backfire – the entire project buckling under the weight of  unrealistic expectations and self-importance – unless she delivered the groundbreaking opus she promised.

Artists like the Dixie Chicks, Green Day and Madonna sang about their opposition of President George W. Bush and the Iraq War during the ’00s, but without a draft, their music lacked the same fire of the anti-war rock of the Vietnam era.

With my iTunes on shuffle, I read the latest issue of Newsweek, a rush released edition on the death of Osama bin Laden. Out of the countless hours’ worth of music in my library, it was quite the coincidence when songs from Green Day’s American Idiot, Madonna’s American Life and Bloc Party’s Weekend In The City all played, and I couldn’t help but reflect on the impact the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the War on Terror and the Iraq War had on the music of the ’00s.

Chart Watch is 17 Tracks’ weekly look at the happenings on the Billboard Hot 100 with chart expert Hunter Schwarz.

Katy Perry clenches the No. 1  spot for a fifth non-consecutive week with “E.T.” featuring Kanye West, and it’s become painfully obvious that Perry’s fourth Teenage Dream chart topping single is not a flash-in-the-pan.

“E.T.” is coming off its best sales week ever two weeks ago (344,000) and is down slightly this week with figures slightly north of 300,000.  In total, “E.T.” is on track to be the top-selling song of 2011 to date. Its 2.48 million sales are hot on the tail of Cee Lo Green’s 2.49 million sales of “F**k You.” Sales of “E.T.” are on par with last summer’s smash “California Gurls” feat. Snoop Dogg, and they might even eclipse her ode to the Golden State, becoming her best-selling single ever.

British pop star Cheryl Cole will join Simon Cowell on the American X Factor, but what does that mean for her former chart topping and critic charming group Girls Aloud?

British recording artist and U.K. X Factor judge Cheryl Cole has been announced as the third judge on the American edition of X Factor alongside Simon Cowell and record executive L.A. Reid.

It’s doubtless that many people will assume they know who Cheryl Cole is upon hearing her name. She’s the one who dated Lance Armstrong and sang that one song about soaking up the sun, right? Wrong. You’re thinking Sheryl Crow. Although both ladies make music and are known for their high profile relationships and subsequent breakups with professional athletes, the similarities end there.

Cheryl Cole rose to fame in 2002 at the age of 19 as a contestant on the reality singing competition Popstars: The Rivals. The show whittled down contestants to form two groups, the boy band One True Voice, and the girl group Girls Aloud, who competed on the British charts for the coveted Christmas No. 1 spot. One True Voice released a predictable and boring reality show single, while Girls Aloud dropped the most inventive reality show coronation song ever – “Sound of the Underground.”

The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll is 17 Track’s attempt to squeeze more than sixty years of music onto a mixtape.There are many ways to tell a story, and the story of rock ‘n’ roll is one that has been told many times in many ways. It’s messy, complicated and difficult to follow in some parts, and the entire history of it could fill volumes. But what if you didn’t have volumes? What if you only had a blank CD-R and you had to tell the story through songs? Each song in this list represents a moment or movement in the development of popular music. It’s not a list of the best, most important or most influential songs, it’s exactly what it professes to be – a history.

The second song, Bill Haley and the Comet’s “Rock Around The Clock,” tells the story of rock ‘n’ roll reaching the mainstream, and the challenges it faced along the way.