Pop's Royal Flush: 2012 looks set to be a vintage year on the music scene With the return of Simple Minds, a Green Day musical and a new album from Madonna, 2012 promises to be a memorable 12 months, writes Fiona Shepherd WHAT can we expect from the realm of rock and pop in the coming year? Don't ask U2 - they still haven't decided what they are doing with their three albums worth of material. At least Janelle Monae, with two albums in her back pocket, has specified she "will release them according to my soul clock." Muse have just one album in the works but, according to frontman Matt Bellamy, it's going to be a "Christian gangsta rap jazz odyssey, with some ambient rebellious dubstep and face melting metal flamenco cowboy psychedelia." More of the same old madness, then. What we can predict with more certainty is that Leonard Cohen will be releasing a new album called Old Ideas - those ideas being "love, sexuality, loss and death" - at the end of January, that both The Ting Tings and Santigold are finally set to follow up their successful debut albums, that Sinead O'Connor will be hoping to divert attention from her recent brief marital encounter with new album How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? and that the following musical happenings will be worth a look/listen. IF it's January, it must be Celtic Connections and yet again, this year's bill is reliably tasty and eclectic, pushing those connections as far as Detroit and New Orleans with performances by Motown diva Martha Reeves and the redoubtable southern soul man Aaron Neville. There are collaborations to spare - our pick being Robyn Hitchcock's Floating Palace project in partnership with KT Tunstall, Howe Gelb, Krystle Warren and Martin and Eliza Carthy - plus tributes to Sandy Denny, Woody Guthrie in his centenary year and an all-star line-up performing the songs of Gerry Rafferty. Then, in March, the Celtic Connections Big Top roadshow travels up to Skye. COMEBACK of the year was supposed to be Steps" for the taking until some Mancunian upstarts decided to bury their personal hatchets and deliver what the world was waiting for. The Stone Roses were the band of a generation so excitement surrounding their reunion is about more than nostalgia. For many, it's about recapturing a time in their lives. For some, it's about grabbing a piece of the action they were too young to get first time round. Can they deliver? We'll see when they follow their hometown Heaton Park shows (220,000 tickets sold in just over an hour) with a headline slot at T in the Park. AND now for something at the more boutique end of the nostalgia market... Simple Minds" greatest commercial success came when they embraced arena rock but these days they are more likely to be cited for the influential electronic sound of their first five albums - Life In A Day, Real to Real Cacophony, Empires and Dance, Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call and New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) - all of which are to be reissued as a box set in February with the inevitable bonus material. But the real bonus is that the band will mark this release on a European tour - 5x5 Live - with a set list comprising five songs from each album. No surprises that the Glasgow date, at Barrowland, has sold out already. IT'S been five years since Madonna last produced an album, long enough for Lady Gaga to make a convincing bid as pop's premier provocatress. We'll see if that role really has been usurped for good when Madonna returns with her 12th studio album in March, but she's already playing hardball with collaborators Nicki Minaj and MIA on forthcoming single Gimme All Your Luvin. FRENCH duo Air are the pair for all your dreamy ambient soundtrack needs. Last year they were commissioned to compose the score for a newly restored colourised print of Georges Melies" silent short film Le Voyage Dans La Lune and have since expanded their soundtrack to make a full album of the same name for release in February. ROCKET JUICE and the Moon are a new band with old faces, featuring serial collaborators Damon Albarn, Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, who has played with Albarn in The Good, The Bad and The Queen, and Red Hot Chili Peppers" bassist Flea, who has played with everyone. They made their live debut at the Cork Jazz Festival in October, but won't be touring in earnest until 2013. There will, however, be an album sometime this year which, judging by the live recordings on their website, will be an electro jazz-funk workout with dub, hip-hop and melancholic pop touches. Nice. GREEN DAY'S seventh album was conceived as a rock opera in the fine tradition of The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia but there was no predicting that American Idiot would chime with the disillusioned times as it did, becoming a major rock release of the 21st century. Two years ago, it was adapted as a Broadway stage musical, featuring music from the album and its follow up, 21st Century Breakdown. That production is now on a tour which reaches the UK in October and includes brief runs at The Playhouse in Edinburgh and Clyde Auditorium in Glasgow. WITH folk, jazz, opera, musicals and candid confessional ballads already part of his ambitious repertoire, the crown prince of playful pretension has announced that his forthcoming album will feature his poppiest, most danceable music to date. Wainwright has hired überproducer Mark Ronson to be his right hand guy on seventh album Out of the Game, due for release in May, and Ronson has hired members of Wilco and Back to Black's funk soul brothers The Dap-Kings to provide the backing for songs which are reportedly influenced by David Bowie, Queen and Elton John. Wainwright has described the results as "manly."