In honor of the 20th anniversary of U2’s Achtung Baby LP, Q Magazine has compiled a forthcoming covers album set to include new recordings by Jack White, Patti Smith, Damien Rice, and others to be announced. Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival, where U2 are premiering a new Davis Guggenheim-directed film about the band titled From the Sky Down, Bono revealed news of the tribute record (via Rolling Stone):

Jack White does “Love Is Blindness,” Depeche Mode do “So Cruel,” Patti Smith did “Until the End of the World,” Damien Rice does “One.” It just goes on. And it’s strange, because when I hear the album, when U2 do it, all I hear is what’s wrong with it. But when I heard all these artists doing it, I thought, “It’s really good.”

The list of notable LPs set for next year (Fiona, PJ, Jason, Chan, etc.) grows longer as stadium-filling acts like the Beastie Boys, R.E.M., and U2 have all revealed new album plans for the first half of 2011 in recent days. Let’s round ‘em up…

We heard Damien Rice perform “What If I’m Wrong?,” the theme tune to When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun, not to mention his first new songs in years, back in February, but now we have a new official release and studio debut from his post-Lisa Hannigan singing partner, Julia Dubsky, as well. One look at the album’s cover art, and it’s no wonder this somewhat obscure soundtrack has remained under the radar since dropping in early March…

Rice, the Swell Season’s Glen Hansard, Shane MacGowan, Sinead O’Connor, the late Liam Clancy, and others have contributed to Welcome Home: Music of Ireland, the soundtrack to a PBS special about contemporary Irish music, which featured interviews with director Jim Sheridan, U2’s Bono and Adam Clayton, Pete Seeger, a few of the aforementioned artists, and Liam Clancy’s final U.S. television appearance.

Though Julia Dubsky has some pretty big shoes to fill in the Rice duet department, I can’t deny that she pulled through brilliantly in this mix. Stream Rice’s new song, “Under The Tongue” (a response to “Teeth”?), below:

U2 announced support acts for this summer’s North American 360° stadium tour on their official site moments ago, and though a few of their future openers are somewhat obvious picks (Lenny Kravitz, The Fray), one name jumped out at me: Interpol.

We knew that Paul Banks, Carlos D, and company have been prepping that 4th Interpol album for release early this year, but this is a somewhat surprising choice by U2 nonetheless. (Perhaps both bands will go orchestral for the gigs.)

Interpol will open for U2 at 6 dates on the 360° tour in Minneapolis, East Lansing, Toronto, Chicago, Miami and Philadelphia, while The Fray and Kravitz will open at 3 shows each. Check out the full tour schedule at Slicing Up Eyeballs.

There were many interesting musical moments during tonight’s “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon—which would be pretty hard to miss if you flipped through the channels during primetime television in the past couple hours. Though the program has only just begun here on the West Coast, we watched the stream on YouTube and want to encourage all those in our timezone to tune in asap to watch some great artists for a great a cause.

Sure, the most anticipated performance of the night was perhaps U2, Jay-Z, and Rihanna’s unveiling of their new song “Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour),” but we were more into Bruce Springsteen’s take on “We Shall Overcome,” as well as Neil Young (who just played “Long May You Run” for Conan O’Brien’s final Tonight Show) and Dave Matthews’ cover of Hank Williams classic “Alone and Forsaken.”

iTunes will offer all of tonight’s performances on Monday for the Hope for Haiti Now charity compilation at itunes.com/haiti, but until then, you can watch the Young/Matthews performance here or below, The Boss below or thataway, or check out the new Jay-Z/U2/Rihanna song here.

Most importantly, though, please donate here for the Haiti relief effort if you are able.

I’ll admit to being a Bono apologist from time to time, but the one-year anniversary of his column in the NY Times’ Op-Ed section is approaching and I can’t help but point out the U2 singer’s somewhat lackluster offering. This time around, he opens by decrying the glut of year-end lists of late.

“Even in these self-restrained pages,” writes Bono Vox, “it has been impossible to avoid the end-of-the-decade accountings of the 10 best such-and-suches and the 10 worst fill-in-the-blanks.”

What follows is his own list of “10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting,” including a forewarning to music pirates, the automobile “bling bling” culture, and some good ole Middle East meddling.

There might be more there, but I honestly didn’t make it all the way through.

Poor Adam Clayton. Not poor in the financial sense, of course, but the one time he makes headlines over Bono and the Edge and it’s over legal/financial hassles. Irish Times reports that the U2 bassist is accusing his former assistant and housekeeper, Carol Hawkins, of spending €1.8 million of his money on a New York City apartment and other assorted items (“a syndicate which maintained horses,” etc.).

The unauthorized purchases in question were made using the Irish rock star’s debit and credit cards, Clayton alleges, and while Hawkins admits to having secretly charged the cards for personal use, she is contesting the total amount stolen.

Fortunately, at this point U2 probably have their own in-house legal department for this sort of stuff.