1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
Olivia Newton-John
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Olivia Newton-John, AO, OBE is a British-Australian singer, songwriter and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five number-one and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles, eleven of her singles and fourteen of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA. She has sold an estimated 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the worlds best-selling artists of all time and she starred in Grease, which featured one of the most successful soundtracks in Hollywood history. Newton-John has been a long-time activist for environmental and animal rights issues, since surviving breast cancer in 1992, she has been an advocate for health awareness becoming involved with various charities, health products and fundraising efforts. Her business interests have included launching several product lines for Koala Blue and she is the mother of one daughter, Chloe Rose Lattanzi, with her first husband, actor Matt Lattanzi. Her second husband is John Easterling, Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, to Irene Helene, the eldest child of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born and Welsh father, Brinley Bryn Newton-John. Her mothers family had left Germany before World War II to avoid the Nazi regime and she is a third cousin of comedian Ben Elton. Her maternal great-grandfather was jurist Victor Ehrenberg and her matrilineal great-grandmothers father was jurist Rudolf von Jhering. Newton-John is the youngest of three children, following brother Hugh, a doctor, and sister Rona, an actress who was married to Grease co-star Jeff Conaway from 1980 until their divorce in 1985. Newton-Johns father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park who took Rudolf Hess into custody during the Second World War. In 1954, when she was six, Newton-Johns family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia and she attended Christ Church Grammar School, and then University High School, adjacent to Ormond College. At fourteen, Newton-John formed a short-lived all-girl group, Sol Four and she became a regular on local Australian radio and television shows including HSV-7s The Happy Show where she performed as Lovely Livvy. She also appeared on the Go Show where she met future partner, Pat Carroll. Newton-John was initially reluctant to use the prize she had won, a trip to Britain, Newton-John recorded her first single, Till You Say Youll Be Mine Forever, in Britain for Decca Records in 1966. While in Britain, Newton-John missed her then-boyfriend, Ian Turpie, with whom she had co-starred in the Australian telefilm, Newton-John repeatedly booked trips back to Australia that her mother subsequently cancelled. Newton-Johns outlook changed when Pat Carroll also moved to the UK, the two formed a duo called Pat and Olivia and toured nightclubs in Europe. After Carrolls visa expired forcing her to return to Australia, Newton-John remained in Britain to pursue solo work until 1975 and she became engaged to The Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch, but they never married. Newton-John was recruited for the group Toomorrow formed by American producer Don Kirshner, in 1970, the group starred in a science fiction musical film and recorded an accompanying soundtrack album both named after the group
3.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon
4.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
5.
John Denver
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He was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the decade and one of its best selling artists. By 1974, he was established as Americas best selling performer. After traveling and living in numerous locations while growing up in his military family, Denver recorded and released approximately 300 songs, about 200 of which he composed, with total record sales of over 33 million. He recorded and performed primarily with a guitar and sang about his joy in nature, his disdain for city life, his enthusiasm for music. Denver starred in films and several television specials in the 1970s and 1980s. He continued to record in the 1990s, also focusing on issues by lending vocal support to space exploration. He lived in Aspen, Colorado for much of his life and was known for his love of Colorado which he sang about numerous times, in 1974 Denver was named poet laureate of the state. The Colorado state legislature also adopted Rocky Mountain High as one of its two songs in 2007. Denver was a pilot and died at the age of 53 in a single-fatality crash of his personal experimental aircraft. Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. was born in Roswell, New Mexico, to Lt. Col. Henry John Deutschendorf, Sr. an Air Force officer, Henry Sr. was of German ancestry, and met and married his Oklahoma Sweetheart. Denvers Irish Catholic and German maternal grandmother was the one who imbued Denver with his love of music. In his autobiography, Take Me Home, Denver described his life as the eldest son of a family shaped by a father who could not show his love for his children. He is also the nephew of singer Dave Deutschendorf of The New Christy Minstrels, because Denvers father was in the military and his family moved often, it was difficult for him to make friends and fit in with other children of his own age. Constantly being the new kid was troubling for the introverted Denver, and he grew up feeling like he should be somewhere else. While living in Tucson, Arizona, Denver was a member of the Tucson Arizona Boys Chorus for two years, Denver was happy living in Tucson, but his father was transferred to Montgomery, Alabama, then in the midst of the Montgomery boycotts. The family later moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where Denver graduated from Arlington Heights High School, attending high school in Fort Worth was a distressing experience for the disenfranchised Denver. In his third year of school, he borrowed his fathers car and ran away to California to visit family friends. His father flew to California in a jet plane to retrieve him
6.
Dolly Parton
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After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Dolly Parton made her album debut in 1967, with her album Hello, Im Dolly. However, in the new millennium, Parton achieved commercial success again and has released albums on independent labels since 2000, including albums on her own label, Parton is the most honored female country performer of all time. Achieving 25 RIAA certified Gold, Platinum, and Multi-Platinum awards, she has had 25 songs reach No.1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist. She has 41 career top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, all-inclusive sales of singles, albums, hits collections, and digital downloads during her career have topped 100 million worldwide. Parton has received 46 Grammy nominations, in 1999, Parton was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. She has composed over 3,000 songs, notably I Will Always Love You, Jolene, Coat of Many Colors and she is also one of the few to have received at least one nomination from the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, and Emmy Awards. As an actress, she starred in such as 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone. Parton was born in Sevier County, Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of Robert Lee Parton, a farmer and construction worker, Partons middle name comes from her maternal great-great grandmother, Rebecca Whitted. She has described her family as being dirt poor, Partons father paid the doctor who helped deliver her with a bag of oatmeal. She outlined her familys poverty in her early songs Coat of Many Colors and they lived in a rustic, one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, just north of the Greenbrier Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains, a predominantly Pentecostal area. Music played an important role in her early life and she was brought up in the Church of God, the church her grandfather, Jake Robert Owens pastored. Her earliest public performances were in the church, beginning at age six, at seven, she started playing a homemade guitar. When she was eight years old, her uncle bought her first real guitar, Parton began performing as a child, singing on local radio and television programs in the East Tennessee area. By ten, she was appearing on The Cas Walker Show on both WIVK Radio and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, the day after she graduated from high school in 1964, she moved to Nashville. Her songs were recorded by other artists during this period, including Kitty Wells. She signed with Monument Records in 1965, at 19, where she was pitched as a bubblegum pop singer. She released a string of singles, but the one that charted, Happy, Happy Birthday Baby. Although she expressed a desire to record country material, Monument resisted, after her composition, Put It Off Until Tomorrow, as recorded by Bill Phillips, went to number six on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed her to record country
7.
Record producer
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A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
8.
Country pop
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Country pop is a subgenre of country music and pop music that was developed by members of the Country genre out of a desire to reach a larger, mainstream audience. It is a continuation of efforts that began in the late 1950s originally known as Nashville sound. By the mid-1970s, many artists were transitioning to the pop-country sound which led to some records charting high on mainstream top 40 as well as country Billboard charts. According to Bill Ivey, this genre originated in Nashville, Tennessee. He believes that the Nashville Sound often produced records that sounded more pop than country, after the removal of the fiddle, Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, and Eddy Arnold were among the most popular artists during this time. This was intended to have country singers gain more success in pop music, the first male artists to come out of this new genre were Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold, who both grew to have widespread acceptance among both country and pop music listeners. Both Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold had major influence on their RCA labelmate Elvis Presley, apparent not only in secular songs, the first female country singer to emerge from this new genre was Patsy Cline in the early 1960s. The example she created was followed by female country artists, such as Lynn Anderson, Crystal Gayle and Shania Twain. Country pop found its first widespread acceptance during the 1970s and it started when pop music singers, like Glen Campbell, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John and Anne Murray, began having hits on the country charts. Songs like Campbells Rhinestone Cowboy were among the biggest crossover hits in country music history and these pop-oriented singers thought that they could gain higher record sales and a larger audience if they crossed over into the country world. One of the artists who did this was Olivia Newton-John, who emerged from Australia in the mid-1970s, a group of artists, troubled by this trend, formed the Association of Country Entertainers in 1974. The debate raged into 1975, and reached its apex at that years Country Music Association Awards when reigning Entertainer of the Year Charlie Rich presented the award to his successor, as he read Denvers name, Rich set fire to the envelope with a cigarette lighter. The action was taken in some quarters as a protest against the pop style in country music. However, the ACE would only last two years, its two biggest backers, firm traditionalists George Jones and Tammy Wynette, faced a bitter divorce. In 1979 Barbara Mandrell had her highest crossover hit with her number 1 song I Dont Want to Be Right It charted number 31 on the Billboard Top 40, several of her other hits charted well on the adult contemporary charts and the Bubbling under 100 charts. Mandrell also did countrypolitan style music on her Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters show and she had R & B artists, pop artists and country artists featured every week. It was the last successful musical variety show on TV and she is also known for her Blue-Eyed Soul sound. She was given the nickname The Princess of Steel, for her ability at the steel guitar and she was one of country musics most successful crossover artists during the 1970s and 1980s
9.
Pop music
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Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid 1950s. The terms popular music and pop music are used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular. Pop and rock were synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they were used in opposition from each other. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other such as urban, dance, rock, Latin. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a format, as well as the common use of repeated choruses, melodic tunes. David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, according to Pete Seeger, pop music is professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music. Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music, the music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately, pop music continuously evolves along with the terms definition. The term pop song was first recorded as being used in 1926, Hatch and Millward indicate that many events in the history of recording in the 1920s can be seen as the birth of the modern pop music industry, including in country, blues and hillbilly music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music states that while pops earlier meaning meant concerts appealing to a wide audience. Since the late 1950s, however, pop has had the meaning of non-classical mus, usually in the form of songs, performed by such artists as the Beatles. Grove Music Online also states that, in the early 1960s pop music competed terminologically with beat music, while in the USA its coverage overlapped with that of rock and roll. From about 1967, the term was used in opposition to the term rock music. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral. It is not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward, and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative. It is, provided from on high rather than being made from below, pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged. The beat and the melodies tend to be simple, with limited harmonic accompaniment, the lyrics of modern pop songs typically focus on simple themes – often love and romantic relationships – although there are notable exceptions
10.
Physical (album)
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Physical is the ninth full-length studio album by British-Australian singer-songwriter Olivia Newton-John, released on 13 October 1981 by MCA Records. The album was produced and partly written by her record producer John Farrar. Recorded and mixed at David J. Holmans studio in Hollywood, California, Physical became one of Newton-Johns most controversial and sexual records, musically, the album features considerable use of synthesizers and explores lyrical themes such as love and relationships, sex, kinesthetics and environmental protection. Upon its release, the album received positive reviews from music critics. The album charted high in several countries, including the United States, Japan and Newton-Johns native Australia and it also ranks among the best-selling albums by Australian solo artists, selling more than ten million copies worldwide. The albums title track was a phenomenon, staying ten weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, at the time. The song and its video were controversial, having been banned or edited by several radio stations. The single was followed by Make a Move on Me, another top worldwide hit, Landslide, which failed to enter the majority of musical charts, had a music video featuring Newton-Johns boyfriend Matt Lattanzi, to whom she had dedicated the album. A video compilation, Olivia Physical, was produced, featuring videos of all songs from the album. The material was a commercial and critical success, and earned Newton-John a Grammy Award for Video of the Year, the album was promoted with Newton-Johns 1982 North American Physical Tour, performances from which a home video entitled Olivia in Concert was produced. The Physical era marked the height of Newton-Johns solo career, gaining her wide acclaim as one of the most successful artists of the early 1980s. In 1978, Newton-John starred as the lead, Sandy, in the musical film Grease. Before the film, Newton-John was known for pop and adult contemporary songs. Later that same year, Newton-John released the studio album Totally Hot, Physical was recorded and released in 1981, marking the longest gap between Newton-John studio albums at the time, from 1971 to 1978, she recorded at least one studio album per year. Newton-John feared that she could be overexposed with many works released in a short period, Physical followed Newton-Johns new image, perceived as a more sexualized and mature record. It also marked her first studio album without any country tracks, the new music style generated some criticism from the country-music community and Newton-Johns old fans, in a Billboard article, she said, You might lose a few fans but you gain others. You have to do whats comfortable, ive gotten the confidence to be more adventurous whereas in the past I didnt think it was the time. The lead single Physical was written by Terry Shaddick and Newton-Johns longtime friend Steve Kipner, when Newton-Johns then-manager Lee Kramer accidentally heard the demo, he immediately sent the song to her, but initially she didnt want to release the song because it was too cheeky
