Whitney Houston, Billie Joe Armstrong and Britney Spears top this year's biggest music scandals

As Twitter feuds and nip slips set the bar for celebrity scandals ever-lower, it becomes increasingly difficult to sift through the social media sound and fury to pinpoint the breathtakingly bizarre and the shockingly sad stories to plague the entertainment industry.

On the whole, 2012 seemed like a fairly tame year, with most scandals limited to petty feuds and Twitter meltdowns. However, the handful of stories that broke through cast light on a dark and disturbing side of the music business that is rarely discussed on the record.