1.
Gwen Stefani
–
Gwen Renée Stefani is an American singer, songwriter, and fashion designer. During the bands hiatus, Stefani embarked on a pop career in 2004 by releasing her debut studio album Love. Inspired by pop music from the 1980s, the album was met both critical and commercial success. It spawned three successful singles, What You Waiting For. Rich Girl, and Hollaback Girl, the reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 while also becoming the first US download to sell one million copies. In 2006 Stefani released her studio album The Sweet Escape. The album produced two singles, Wind It Up and the albums title track The Sweet Escape. Her third solo album This Is What the Truth Feels Like was released in March 2016, Stefani has won three Grammy Awards. As a solo artist she has received accolades, including an American Music Award, Brit Award, World Music Award. In 2003, she debuted her clothing line L. A. M. B. and expanded her collection with the 2005 Harajuku Lovers line, drawing inspiration from Japanese culture, Stefani performs and makes public appearances with four back-up dancers known as the Harajuku Girls. She was married to British musician Gavin Rossdale from 2002 to 2015, Billboard magazine ranked Stefani the 54th most successful artist and 37th most successful Hot 100 artist of the 2000–09 decade. VH1 ranked her 13th on their 100 Greatest Women in Music list in 2012, including her work with No Doubt, Stefani has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. Stefani was born on October 3,1969, in Fullerton, California and she was named after a stewardess in the 1968 novel Airport, and her middle name, Renée, comes from The Four Tops 1968 cover of The Left Bankes 1966 song Walk Away Renée. Her father, Dennis Stefani, is Italian American and worked as a Yamaha marketing executive and her mother, Patti, worked as an accountant before becoming a housewife. Gwens parents were fans of music and exposed her to music by artists like Bob Dylan. She has two siblings, Jill and Todd, and an older brother named Eric. Eric was the keyboardist for No Doubt before leaving the band to pursue a career in animation on The Simpsons. Her brother Eric introduced Gwen to 2 Tone music by Madness and The Selecter and, in 1986, he invited her to provide vocals for No Doubt, finally, in 1991, the band was signed to Interscope Records
2.
Recording studio
–
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are designed by an acoustician or audio engineer to achieve optimum acoustic properties. The engineers and producers listen to the music and the recorded tracks on monitor speakers and/or headphones. Major recording studios typically have a range of large, heavy, Isolation booths are small sound-insulated rooms with doors, designed for instrumentalists. This equipment may interfere with the recording process, Recording studios are carefully designed around the principles of room acoustics to create a set of spaces with the acoustical properties required for recording sound with precision and accuracy. This will consist of both room treatment and soundproofing to prevent sound from leaving the property. Even though sound isolation is a key goal, the musicians, singers, audio engineers and record producers still need to be able to see other, to see cue gestures. As such, the room, isolation booths, vocal booths. Some smaller studios do not have instruments, and bands and artists are expected to bring their own instruments, having musical instruments and equipment in the studio creates additional costs for a studio, as pianos have to be tuned and instruments need to be maintained. However, it makes it convenient for recording artists, as they do not have to bring in large. As well, less costly studio time is spent moving in gear, drummers bring their own snare drum, cymbals and sticks/brushes. The types and brands of equipment owned by a studio depends on the styles of music for the bands. A studio that mainly records heavy metal music will be likely to have large, powerful guitar amp heads, in contrast, a studio which mainly records country bands will likely have a selection of small, vintage combo amps. A studio that records a lot of 1970s-style funk may have an electric piano. General purpose computers have rapidly assumed a role in the recording process. A computer thus outfitted is called a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW, other software applications include Ableton Live, Mixcraft, Cakewalk Sonar, ACID Pro, FL Studio, Adobe Audition, Auto-Tune, Audacity, and Ardour. While Apple Macintosh is used for most studio work, there is a breadth of available for Microsoft Windows. If no mixing console is used and all mixing is done using only a keyboard and mouse, the OTB is used when mixing with other hardware and not just the PC software
3.
London
–
London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
4.
Synth-pop
–
Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its emotional, at times operatic singers such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
5.
New wave music
–
New wave is a genre of rock music popular from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s with ties to 1970s punk rock. New wave moved away from smooth blues and rock and roll sounds to create pop music that incorporated electronic and experimental music, mod, initially new wave was similar to punk rock, before becoming a distinct genre. It subsequently engendered subgenres and fusions, including synth-pop, college rock, common characteristics of new wave music include the use of synthesizers and electronic productions, the importance of styling and the arts, as well as diversity. In the mid-1980s, differences between new wave and other genres began to blur. New wave has enjoyed resurgences since the 1990s, after a rising nostalgia for several new wave-influenced artists, subsequently, the genre influenced other genres. During the 2000s, a number of acts explored new wave and post-punk influences, such as the Strokes, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand and these acts were sometimes labeled new wave of new wave. The catch-all nature of new music has been a source of much confusion. The 1985 discography Whos New Wave in Music listed artists in over 130 separate categories, the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock calls the term virtually meaningless, while AllMusic mentions stylistic diversity. New wave first emerged as a genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground. It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express. In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLarens term new wave to designate music by bands not exactly punk, the term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the new wave. By the end of 1977, new wave had replaced punk as the definition for new music in the UK. As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement, its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental. At first, most U. S. writers exclusively used the new wave for British punk acts. Music historian Vernon Joynson claimed that new wave emerged in the UK in late 1976, in the U. S. the first new wavers were the not-so-punk acts associated with the New York club CBGB. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, referring to the first show of the band Television at his club in March 1974, said, furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed new wave. A1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, New wave is much more closely tied to punk and came and went more quickly in the United Kingdom than in the United States
6.
Alternative rock
–
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s and 2000s. In this instance, the word refers to the genres distinction from mainstream rock music. The terms original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by their debt to either the musical style or simply the independent. Ethos of punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music, Alternative rock is a broad umbrella term consisting of music that differs greatly in terms of its sound, its social context, and its regional roots. Most of these subgenres had achieved minor mainstream notice and a few bands representing them, such as Hüsker Dü, with the breakthrough of Nirvana and the popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream and many alternative bands became successful. By the end of the decade, alternative rocks mainstream prominence declined due to a number of events that caused grunge and Britpop to fade, emo attracted attention in the larger alternative rock world, and the term was applied to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts. Post-punk revival artists such as Modest Mouse and The Killers had commercial success in the early, before the term alternative rock came into common usage around 1990, the sort of music to which it refers was known by a variety of terms. In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups he was writing about, in 1979 Dallas radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled Rock and Roll Alternative. College rock was used in the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the radio circuit. In the United Kingdom, dozens of small do it yourself record labels emerged as a result of the punk subculture, according to the founder of one of these labels, Cherry Red, NME and Sounds magazines published charts based on small record stores called Alternative Charts. The first national chart based on distribution called the Indie Chart was published in January 1980, at the time, the term indie was used literally to describe independently distributed records. By 1985, indie had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, at first the term referred to intentionally non–mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave and high-energy dance anthems. The use of alternative gained further exposure due to the success of Lollapalooza, for which festival founder, in the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific. Defining music as alternative is often difficult because of two conflicting applications of the word, the name alternative rock essentially serves as an umbrella term for underground music that has emerged in the wake of punk rock since the mid-1980s. Alternative bands during the 1980s generally played in clubs, recorded for indie labels. Sounds range from the gloomy soundscapes of gothic rock to the guitars of indie pop to the dirty guitars of grunge to the 1960s/1970s revivalism of Britpop. This approach to lyrics developed as a reflection of the social and economic strains in the United States and United Kingdom of the 1980s, by 1984, a majority of groups signed to independent record labels mined from a variety of rock and particularly 1960s rock influences. This represented a break from the futuristic, hyper-rational post-punk years
7.
Music journalism
–
Music journalism is media criticism and reporting about popular music topics, including pop music, rock music, and related styles. Journalists began writing music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now thought of as classical music. An influential English 19th-century music critic, for example, was James William Davison of The Times, the composer Hector Berlioz also wrote reviews and criticisms for the Paris press of the 1830s and 1840s. The 1840s could be considered a point, in that music critics after the 1840s generally were not also practicing musicians. However, counterexamples include Alfred Brendel, Charles Rosen, Paul Hindemith, in the early 1980s, a decline in the quantity of classical criticism began occurring when classical-music criticism visibly started to disappear from the media. Also of concern in classical music journalism was how American reviewers can write about ethnic and folk music from other than their own, such as Indian ragas. The performers be treated as human beings and their music be treated as human activity rather than a mystical or mysterious phenomenon, the review should show an understanding of the musics cultural backgrounds and intentions. A key finding in a 2005 study of journalism in America was that the profile of the average classical music critic is a white, 52-year old male. Demographics indicated that the group was 74% male, 92% white, davis, one of the most respected voices of the craft, said he had been forced out after 26 years. Music writers only started treating pop and rock music seriously in 1964 after the breakthrough of the Beatles, one of the early music magazines in Britain, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how newspapers and magazines are continually hammering pop music. Melody Maker magazine advocated the new forms of pop music of the late 1960s, by 1999, the quality press was regularly carrying reviews of popular music gigs and albums, which had a key role in keeping pop in the public eye. As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of legitimating pop as an art form, as a result, in the world of pop music criticism, there has tended to be a quick turnover. In the realm of music, as in that of classical music. Frank Zappa declared that, Most rock journalism is people who cant write, interviewing people who cant talk, in the 2000s, online music bloggers began to supplement, and to some degree displace, music journalists in print media. In 2006, Martin Edlund of the New York Sun criticized the trend, arguing that while the Internet has democratized music criticism, slate magazine writer Jody Rosen discussed the 2000s-era trends in pop music criticism in his article The Perils of Poptimism. Rosen noted that much of the debate is centered on a perception that rock critics regard rock as normative … the standard state of popular music … to which everything else is compared. At a 2006 pop critic conference, attendees discussed their guilty pop pleasures, reconsidering musicians and genres which rock critics have dismissed as lightweight. Rosen stated that this new paradigm is called popism — or, more evocatively
8.
Budapest
–
Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary, one of the largest cities in the European Union and sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary. It has an area of 525 square kilometres and a population of about 1.8 million within the limits in 2016. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the Danube river with the unification of Buda and Óbuda on the west bank, the history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century and their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–1242. The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century, following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule, the region entered a new age of prosperity, and Budapest became a global city after its unification in 1873. It also became the co-capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a power that dissolved in 1918. Budapest was the point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, the Battle of Budapest in 1945. Budapest is an Alpha- global city, with strengths in arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts the Budapest Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks and it is the highest ranked Central and Eastern European city on Innovation Cities Top 100 index. Budapest attracts 4.4 million international tourists per year, making it the 25th most popular city in the world, further famous landmarks include Andrássy Avenue, St. It has around 80 geothermal springs, the worlds largest thermal water system, second largest synagogue. Budapest is home to the headquarters of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, the European Police College, over 40 colleges and universities are located in Budapest, including the Eötvös Loránd University, Central European University and Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Budapest is the combination of the city names Buda and Pest, One of the first documented occurrences of the combined name Buda-Pest was in 1831 in the book Világ, written by Count István Széchenyi. The origins of the names Buda and Pest are obscure, according to chronicles from the Middle Ages, the name Buda comes from the name of its founder, Bleda, brother of the Hunnic ruler Attila. The theory that Buda was named after a person is also supported by modern scholars, an alternative explanation suggests that Buda derives from the Slavic word вода, voda, a translation of the Latin name Aquincum, which was the main Roman settlement in the region. There are also theories about the origin of the name Pest. One of the states that the word Pest comes from the Roman times. According to another theory, Pest originates from the Slavic word for cave, or oven, the first settlement on the territory of Budapest was built by Celts before 1 AD
9.
Ballad
–
A ballad /ˈbæləd/ is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French chanson balladée or ballade, which were originally danced songs, Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and song of the British Isles from the later medieval period until the 19th century. They were widely used across Europe, and later in the Americas, Australia, Ballads are 13 lines with an ABABBCBC form, consisting of couplets of rhymed verse, each of 14 syllables. Many ballads were written and sold as single sheet broadsides, the form was often used by poets and composers from the 18th century onwards to produce lyrical ballads. In the later 19th century, the took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and is now often used for any love song. The ballad derives its name from medieval French dance songs or ballares, from which ballet is also derived, as a narrative song, their theme and function may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf. Musically they were influenced by the Minnesinger, the earliest example of a recognizable ballad in form in England is Judas in a 13th-century manuscript. This means that the two words, ballad and ballet, are derived from the French language. Ballads were originally written to accompany dances, and so were composed in couplets with refrains in alternate lines and these refrains would have been sung by the dancers in time with the dance. Most northern and west European ballads are written in ballad stanzas or quatrains of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, known as ballad meter. Usually, only the second and fourth line of a quatrain are rhymed, there is considerable variation on this pattern in almost every respect, including length, number of lines and rhyming scheme, making the strict definition of a ballad extremely difficult. Ballads usually use the dialect of the people and are heavily influenced by the region in which they originate. Scottish ballads in particular are distinctively un-English, even showing some pre-Christian influences in the inclusion of elements such as the fairies in the Scottish ballad Tam Lin. The ballads do not have any known author or correct version, instead, having passed down mainly by oral tradition since the Middle Ages. The ballads remained a tradition until the increased interest in folk songs in the 18th century led collectors such as Bishop Thomas Percy to publish volumes of popular ballads. In all traditions most ballads are narrative in nature, with a story, often concise, and rely on imagery, rather than description. Themes concerning rural laborers and their sexuality are common, and there are many ballads based on the Robin Hood legend. Another common feature of ballads is repetition, sometimes of fourth lines in succeeding stanzas, as a refrain, sometimes of third and fourth lines of a stanza and sometimes of entire stanzas
10.
Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper song)
–
Time After Time is a song by American singer-songwriter Cyndi Lauper. It was recorded by Lauper for her studio album, Shes So Unusual. The track was produced by Rick Chertoff and released as a single on January 27,1984 and it was the second single to be released from the album and became Laupers first #1 hit in the U. S. The song was written in the final stages, after Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, She Bop. The writing began with the title, which Lauper had seen in TV Guide magazine, Time After Time is composed of simple keyboard-synth chords, bright, jangly guitars, clock-ticking percussion, and elastic bassline, and lyrically is a love song of devotion. Most music critics gave the positive reviews, with most commending the song for being a solid and memorable love song. The song has been selected as one of the Best Love Songs of All Time by many outlets, including Rolling Stone, Nerve, MTV. Time After Time was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the 1985 edition. The song was a success on the charts, becoming her first number-one single on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 chart on June 9,1984, and remaining there for two weeks. Worldwide, the song is her most commercially successful single, after Girls Just Want to Have Fun, r&B singer Lil Mo also covered the song for her 2001 debut album Based on a True Story. An acoustic version was sung by Lauper with Sarah McLachlan on her 2005 album The Body Acoustic. Lauper has performed the live with Patti LaBelle twice in 1985 and 2004 and with Sarah McLachlan at the American Music Awards of 2005. While writing for her studio album, in the spring of 1983, Cyndi Lauper was introduced to American musician Rob Hyman, who was recommended by Rick Chertoff. Therefore, she and Hyman sat at a piano and started working on Time After Time, one of the first lines Rob wrote was suitcase of memories, which according to Lauper, struck her, claiming it was a wonderful line, while other lines came from Laupers life. The songs title was inspired after Lauper started writing for the song, thus, Lauper was looking in the TV Guide and saw a lot of movie titles, with the 1979 science fiction movie Time After Time being chosen. Although trying to remove the title later, Lauper claimed she couldnt take it out without the song falling apart, initially, Epic Records wanted Time After Time as the albums lead-single. However, Lauper claimed that releasing a ballad first defines an artist in a way, noting that she could have been known as a balladeer. Therefore, her manager Dave Wolf convinced that Girls Just Wanna Have Fun could be an anthem, Time After Time eventually became the albums second single, being released on January 27,1984
