If ABBA and the Spice Girls can get their own Broadway musical, that’s more than enough reason for a Ray Charles musical. As a staple and innovator for Soul music, Ray Charles has grabbed our hearts through his various hit songs such as “Georgia On My Mind” and “Hit The Road Jack” but this theatrical piece on the musician’s life is asking us to unchain his heart.

Unchain My Heart, the musical celebrating Ray Charles’ life, is coming to Broadway this November and according to the Associated Press, preview performances start as early as October 8.

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Here are some of the top news that took place in the music world this weekend:

• I hate to start on such a sad note, but Grammy winning keyboardist Larry Knetchel died on Thursday at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital. According to Yahoo news, it was of an apparent heart attack. He was 69 years old. (YahooNews)
• Pete Doherty had his sound cut off during his performance as headliner at the V Festival Stafford. According to NME, Doherty and his band had the sound pulled on them during their final song, a cover of The Beatles‘ version of ‘Twist And Shout. More details available. (NME)
• More V Festival News: Rockers The Killers closed opening night; Lily Allen got the crowd going, and fresh off of having the number one album in the UK, Calvin Harris thanked his fans. (NME)
• MySpace, the social networking site, bought Web music iLike.  iLike is best known as a popular social music discovery service on Facebook, MySpace’s competition when it comes to social networking. Read more details about the deal. (Budapest Business Journal) (Financial Times)
• Big Boi of the Grammy winning rap duo Outkast, says his solo album is done and ready to be released. He has been having some records label issues of late. He left Jive in June for an apparent deal with Def Jam but is hush-hush about the details. (PasteMagazine)

The BRIT Awards, the UK’s version of our Grammys (only more xenophobic with separate categories for the British and for foreigners) were held yesterday in London. Also unlike the Grammys, the BRIT Awards do not give out lifetime achievement awards in the form of making one person the winner of every single big category for that one year (i.e. Robert Plant, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Steely Dan, Santana, etc.), they like to spread them out. Duffy was this year’s big winner, picking up three major awards. The Pet Shop Boys won the official lifetime achievement award. Surprisingly the UK’s own, Coldplay walked away empty handed. Who would have thought?

Check out the full list of winners below:

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