This hugely entertaining first instalment of a three-part investigation into what makes pop songs tick took as its theme "The Ballad", perhaps the most bomb-proof of pop's traditional forms. Mind you, the programme's definition of a ballad was pretty loose. For instance, I would say Sting's "Every Breath You Take" is merely medium-paced rather than a ballad. I'd just file Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" under "Pop Song".

The story goes that Eddie Vedder first picked up a ukulele in Hawaii in the mid-Nineties, since when the instrument has become his constant travelling companion and a handy songwriting tool. A whole album's worth of songs written on the funny little stringed thing might sound like he's pushing his luck, but in the event it's an effective way of presenting a simpler, more introspective side of Vedder, a million miles from the roar and bluster of Pearl Jam.

Last week Villager-in-Chief Conor J O’Brien was awarded an Ivor Novello award (Best Song Musically and Lyrically, in case you’re curious) for the title track of his Mercury Prize-nominated debut album Becoming a Jackal. Several questions arise from this fact (one of them being: do they have an award for Best Song Musically but not Lyrically?), but the most pressing is this: just how many more gongs will O'Brien win before the decade is out?

The former Bee Gee Robin Gibb unveiled a plaque at the London home of Dusty Springfield a couple of weeks ago. At the ceremony he commented, “There’s been no one to match her. This includes the United States as well – they can’t come close to her. Today they just pose as singers.” Last October, Sir Elton John was at it too: “Songwriters today are pretty awful, which is why everything sounds the same. Contemporary pop isn’t very inspiring." Come off it, you two, great new music is out there. It’s constantly coming into view.

This is Earle's first collection of new material since 2007's Washington Square Serenade, since when he has made a disappointing tribute album to Townes van Zandt, taken a role as a street musician in HBO's New Orleans series Treme, and written a novel, also called I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive. Signs are he may be spreading himself too thin, because this new disc is best described as patchy, and is unlikely to end up as anybody's favourite-ever Earle album.

Of all the unlikely musical pairings in recent times, Jesca Hoop and Guy Garvey deserve special mention. The genial Elbow frontman, all northern charm and indie anthems, is like a favourite bitter. Hoop, on the other hand, former nanny to Tom Waits's children, is more like something Lewis Carroll's Alice might have drunk. Since she moved from California to Manchester, Garvey has been mentoring Hoop, and appeared on her best-known song.

Beards, beards, beards: at the Roundhouse, they seemed to be everywhere, sprouting from the chins of hundreds of chaps in the audience. Perhaps, though, I was just looking out for them, what with the luxuriant growth on the face of the man they had all come to see: Iron & Wine, the artist otherwise known as Sam Beam, singer, songwriter and former film studies professor from the American south-east.

Tom Waits is releasing his poem, Seeds on Hard Ground, in a limited-edition "chap book" format (a chap book being a pocket-sized booklet popular in the 17th and 18th centuries). It will be available exclusively through his website in a collaboration with ANTI- Records, with the aim of raising funds for homeless services in his region of northern California and bringing attention to a growing homelessness problem in today's difficult economic circumstances. The poem is available to read in its entirety here.

It's a season of retrospection for Bruce Springsteen. New light has been thrown on his pivotal 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town with the release of The Promise, a double CD of out-takes and unreleased songs, alongside an expanded box set of CDs and DVDs telling the Darkness story in sound and vision. A version of Thom Zimny's documentary about the making of the album, included in the boxed release, was shown in Imagine on BBC One.

Talking to Jude Kelly at the Royal Festival Hall last night, Stephen Sondheim gave a glimpse into his own theory of lyrical composition by contrasting Noël Coward (whom "I intensely dislike") and Cole Porter.