News Roundup: Neil Young, Carrie Underwood, My Morning Jacket, Aerosmith

My Morning Jacket will be featured in the November 22 episode of American Dad! The episode, dubbed “My Morning Straitjacket,” will feature six My Morning Jacket songs and an appearance from comedian and fellow bearded guy Zach Galifianakis. This is not the first time the MMJ boys have appeared in film — they previously portrayed the “Freebird”-loving Ruckus in Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown.

Carrie Underwood clinched the top spot in the Billboard 200 this week with Play On, her second number 1 debut, following her 2007 sophomore album, Carnival Ride. With 318,000 copies sold, Play On had the largest sales week for an album by a woman in 2009, and the second-best sales week for a country release, behind Rascal Flatts’ Unstoppable.

Underwood co-wrote seven of the 13 songs on the album (for her first album, 2005’s Some Hearts, she co-wrote one). “This one, I had a lot more time to do a lot more writing, and I feel like I’m a lot more comfortable in myself as a writer,” Underwood, 26, tells the Oklahoman. “That just happens — the more you do it, the better, the easier it gets, I suppose.”

Neil Young will be honored as the 2010 MusicCare’s Person of the Year on January 29 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Among the bands who will pay tribute to the songwriting legend are Wilco, Dave Matthews, Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Mellencamp, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Other guests scheduled to perform include Jackson Browne, Norah Jones, James Taylor, Sheryl Crow, k.d. lang, Emmylou Harris, Ozomatli, Josh Groban and Everest. Young, the co-founder of Farm Aid, is being honored for both his music and charitable efforts.

Aerosmith may not be so broken up after all. After scaring the hard rock faithful with rumors of the band’s demise, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry reunited last night at Perry’s gig with the Joe Perry Project at New York’s Fillmore at Irving Plaza. “I just want New York to know, I am not leaving Aerosmith,” said Tyler from the stage, before launching into “Walk This Way” with the band. “Joe Perry, you are a man of many colors. But I, motherf***er, am the rainbow!”