1.
U2
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U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, initially rooted in post-punk, U2s sound grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music, yet has maintained an anthemic sound. Their lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal themes, popular for their live performances, the group has staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career. The band formed at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in 1976 when the members were teenagers with limited musical proficiency, within four years, they signed with Island Records and released their debut album Boy. Subsequent work such as their first UK number-one album War, by the mid-1980s, they had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985. The groups fifth album, The Joshua Tree, made them international superstars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. Topping music charts around the world, it produced their only number-one singles in the US, With or Without You, facing a backlash and creative stagnation, U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s through a new musical direction and public image. This experimentation continued through their album, Pop, and the PopMart Tour. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Cant Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and their U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 is the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour in history. The groups thirteenth album, Songs of Innocence, was released at no cost through the iTunes Store, U2 have released 13 studio albums and are one of the worlds best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 170 million records worldwide. They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The band formed in Dublin on 25 September 1976, Larry Mullen Jr. then a 14-year-old student at Mount Temple Comprehensive School, posted a note on the schools notice board in search of musicians for a new band—six people responded. Mullen later described it as The Larry Mullen Band for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge. Martin, who had brought his guitar and amplifier to the first practice but could not play, did not remain with the group, the group settled on the name Feedback because it was one of the few technical terms they knew. Most of their material consisted of cover songs, which the band admitted was not their forte. Some of the earliest influences on the band were emerging punk rock acts, such as the Jam, the Clash, Buzzcocks, the popularity of punk rock convinced the group that musical proficiency was not a prerequisite to being successful. In April 1977, Feedback played their first gig for an audience at St. Fintans High School. Shortly after, the changed their name to The Hype
2.
Abbey Road Studios
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Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio at 3 Abbey Road, St Johns Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, Abbey Road Studios is most notable as being the 1960s venue for innovative recording techniques adopted by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Hollies, Badfinger and others. One of its earliest world-famous-artist clients was Paul Robeson, who recorded December 1931, towards the end of 2009, the studio came under threat of sale to property developers. However, the British Government protected the site, granting it English Heritage Grade II listed status in 2010, originally a nine-bedroom Georgian townhouse built in 1831 on the footpath leading to Kilburn Abbey, the building was later converted to flats where the most flamboyant resident was Maundy Gregory. In 1931, the Gramophone Company acquired the premises and converted it into studios, pathé filmed the opening of the studios when Sir Edward Elgar conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in recording sessions of his music. In 1934, inventor of stereo sound, Alan Blumlein, recorded Mozarts Jupiter Symphony which was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham at the studios, the neighbouring house is also owned by the studio and used to house musicians. During the mid-20th century, the studio was used by leading British conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent. The Gramophone Company amalgamated with Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI and it was under this name that in 1936 cellist Pablo Casals became the first to record Johann Sebastian Bachs Cello Suites No.1 &2 at the command of EMI head Fred Gaisberg. The recordings went on to spur a revolution among Bach aficionados, in 1958, Studio Two at Abbey Road became a centre for rock and roll music when Cliff Richard and the Drifters recorded Move It there, and later pop music material. The Beatles named their 1969 album Abbey Road, after the street where the studio is located, the studio was renamed Abbey Road Studios in 1970 after the Beatles album had made it famous. Iain Macmillan took the cover photograph outside the studios, with the result that the nearby zebra crossing has become a place of pilgrimage for Beatles fans. It has been a tradition for visitors to pay homage to the band by writing on the wall in front of the even though it is painted over every three months. December 2010, the crossing at Abbey Road was given a Grade II listed status. Pink Floyd recorded most of their late 1960s to mid-1970s albums here, the Shadows named their Live at Abbey Road album after the studio, with the cover spoofing the Beatles album. The chief mastering engineer at Abbey Road was Chris Vinyl Blair, in 1979, EMI commissioned the British jazz fusion band Morrissey-Mullen to record Britains first digitally recorded single record at Abbey Road Studios. From July 18 to September 11,1983, the public had an opportunity to see inside the legendary Studio Two where The Beatles made most of their records. While a new mixing console was being installed in the control room, the soundtrack to the video had a number of recordings that were not made commercially available until the release of The Beatles Anthology project over a decade later. The Red Hot Chili Peppers used a photograph of the walking across the zebra crossing naked on the front of The Abbey Road E. P. which was released in 1988
3.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
4.
Alternative rock
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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
5.
Brian Eno
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Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, RDI is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. He is best known for his work in rock, ambient, pop. He has been described as one of musics most influential. Born in Suffolk, Eno studied painting and experimental music at art school in the late 1960s before joining glam rock group Roxy Music as synthesizer player in 1971. He took part in frequent collaborations with such as Robert Fripp, Cluster, David Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy. In subsequent decades, Eno continued to record albums, collaborate, and produce for other artists, including U2, Coldplay, Laurie Anderson, James, Grace Jones. He continues to release music, produce, and write, the unusual surname Eno, long established in Suffolk, derives from the French Huguenot surname Hennot. Maria had already had a daughter, and together William and Maria would have two children, Roger and Arlette. In school, Eno used a tape recorder as an instrument and experimented with his first, sometimes improvisational. From that collaboration, he involved in Cornelius Cardews Scratch Orchestra. The first released recording in which Eno played is the Deutsche Grammophon edition of Cardews The Great Learning, Another early recording was the Berlin Horse soundtrack, by Malcom Le Grice, a nine-minute,2 ×16 mm-double-projection, released in 1970 and presented in 1971. He then progressed to appearing on stage as a member of the group. He quit the band on completing the tour for the bands second album, For Your Pleasure, because of disagreements with lead singer Bryan Ferry. If Id walked ten yards further on the platform, or missed that train, or been in the next carriage, during his period with Roxy Music, and for his first three solo albums, he was credited on records only as Eno. Eno embarked on a career almost immediately. Between 1973 and 1977 he created four albums of electronically inflected art pop, Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, and Before and After Science. Tiger Mountain contains the galloping Third Uncle, one of Enos best-known songs and these four albums were remastered and reissued in 2004 by Virgins Astralwerks label. Due to Enos decision not to add any extra tracks of the original material, in 1972, Eno and Robert Fripp developed the Frippertronics tape delay system, a year later, the pair released the proto-ambient album
6.
Green Day
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Green Day is an American punk rock band formed in 1986 by lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt. For much of the career, the band has been a trio with drummer Tré Cool. Guitarist Jason White, who has worked with the band as a member since 1999, was an official member from 2012 to 2016. Green Day was originally part of the scene at the DIY924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley. The bands early releases were with the independent record label Lookout, in 1994, its major label debut Dookie became a breakout success and eventually shipped over 10 million copies in the U. S. The bands rock opera, American Idiot, reignited the bands popularity with a younger generation, the bands eighth studio album, 21st Century Breakdown, was released in 2009 and achieved the bands best chart performance to date. 21st Century Breakdown was followed up by a trilogy of albums called ¡Uno, ¡Dos. and ¡Tré. which were released in September, November and December 2012 respectively. The bands twelfth album, Revolution Radio was released on October 7,2016 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Green Day has sold more than 85 million records worldwide, in 2010, a stage adaptation of American Idiot debuted on Broadway. The musical was nominated for three Tony Awards, Best Musical, Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design, losing only the first, also in 2010, Green Day was ranked no.91 in the VH1 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. On April 18,2015, the band was inducted into the Rock, in 1986, friends Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt,14 years old at the time, formed a band called Sweet Children. The groups first live performance took place on October 17,1987, at Rods Hickory Pit in Vallejo, in 1988, Armstrong and Dirnt began working with former Isocracy drummer John Kiffmeyer, also known as Al Sobrante. As said in the film Punks Not Dead, Armstrong cites the band Operation Ivy as an influence. In 1988, Larry Livermore, owner of Lookout, Records, saw the band play an early show and signed the group to his label. In 1989, the band recorded its debut extended play,1,000 Hours, before 1,000 Hours was released, the group dropped the name Sweet Children, according to Livermore, this was done to avoid confusion with another local band Sweet Baby. The band adopted the name Green Day, due to the fondness for cannabis. Released Green Days debut studio album, 39/Smooth in early 1990, Records re-released 39/Smooth under the name 1, 039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, and added the songs from the bands first two EPs, Slappy, and 1,000 Hours. In late 1990, shortly after the bands first nationwide tour, Kiffmeyer left the East Bay area to attend Humboldt State University in Arcata, California
7.
Hurricane Katrina
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Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. The storm is ranked as the third most intense United States landfalling tropical cyclone. Overall, at least 1,245 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods, total property damage was estimated at $108 billion, roughly four times the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in the United States. Early the following day, the new depression intensified into Tropical Storm Katrina, the cyclone headed generally westward toward Florida and strengthened into a hurricane only two hours before making landfall at Hallandale Beach and Aventura on August 25. After very briefly weakening to a storm, Katrina emerged into the Gulf of Mexico on August 26. The storm caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge, severe property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as Mississippi beachfront towns, over 90 percent of these were flooded. Boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, over fifty breaches in New Orleanss hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29,2005. Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, according to a modeling exercise conducted by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, two-thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure. All of the studies concluded that the USACE, the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965, is responsible. This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money, exactly ten years after Katrina, J. Many other government officials were criticized for their responses, especially New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, several agencies including the United States Coast Guard, National Hurricane Center, and National Weather Service were commended for their actions. They provided accurate hurricane weather tracking forecasts with sufficient lead time, Hurricane Katrina formed as Tropical Depression Twelve over the southeastern Bahamas on August 23,2005, as the result of an interaction of a tropical wave and the remains of Tropical Depression Ten. It strengthened into Tropical Storm Katrina on the morning of August 24, the tropical storm moved towards Florida, and became a hurricane only two hours before making landfall between Hallandale Beach and Aventura on the morning of August 25. The storm weakened over land, but it regained hurricane status about one hour after entering the Gulf of Mexico, on August 27, the storm reached Category 3 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, becoming the third major hurricane of the season. An eyewall replacement cycle disrupted the intensification, but caused the storm to nearly double in size, the storm rapidly intensified after entering the Gulf, growing from a Category 3 hurricane to a Category 5 hurricane in just nine hours. This rapid growth was due to the movement over the unusually warm waters of the Loop Current. Katrina attained Category 5 status on the morning of August 28 and reached its peak strength at 1800 UTC that day, with sustained winds of 175 mph. However, this record was broken by Hurricane Rita
8.
Photograph
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A photograph or photo is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic medium such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scenes visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the eye would see. The process and practice of creating photographs is called photography, the word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς, meaning light, and γραφή, meaning drawing, writing, together meaning drawing with light. The first permanent photograph, a copy of an engraving, was made in 1822 using the bitumen-based heliography process developed by Nicéphore Niépce. In 1829 Niépce entered into a partnership with Louis Daguerre and the two collaborated to work out a similar but more sensitive and otherwise improved process, after Niépces death in 1833, Daguerre concentrated on silver halide-based alternatives. He named this first practical process for making photographs with a camera the daguerreotype and its existence was announced to the world on 7 January 1839 but working details were not made public until 19 August. Other inventors soon made improvements which reduced the exposure time from a few minutes to a few seconds, making portrait photography truly practical. The daguerreotype had shortcomings, notably the fragility of the image surface. Each was a unique opaque positive that could only be duplicated by copying it with a camera, inventors set about working out improved processes that would be more practical. By the end of the 1850s the daguerreotype had been replaced by the expensive and more easily viewed ambrotype and tintype. The mid-1930s saw the introduction of Kodachrome and Agfacolor Neu, the first easy-to-use color films of the modern multi-layer chromogenic type, the needs of the motion picture industry generated a number of special processes and systems, perhaps the best-known being the now-obsolete three-strip Technicolor process. Non-digital photographs are produced with a chemical process. In the two-step process the film captures a negative image. To produce an image, the negative is most commonly transferred onto photographic paper. Printing the negative onto transparent film stock is used to motion picture films. Alternatively, the film is processed to invert the negative image, such positive images are usually mounted in frames, called slides. Before recent advances in photography, transparencies were widely used by professionals because of their sharpness. Most photographs published in magazines were taken on color transparency film, originally, all photographs were monochromatic or hand-painted in color
9.
The Joshua Tree
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The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 9 March 1987 on Island Records, inspired by American tour experiences, literature, and politics, U2 chose America as a theme for the record. Recording began in January 1986 in Ireland, and to foster a relaxed, creative atmosphere, Recording was completed in November 1986, additional production continued into January 1987. Throughout the sessions, U2 sought a cinematic quality for the record, one that would evoke a sense of location, in particular and they represented this in the sleeve photography depicting them in American desert landscapes. The Joshua Tree received critical acclaim, topped the charts in over 20 countries, according to Rolling Stone, the album increased the bands stature from heroes to superstars. The album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1988, the group supported the record with the Joshua Tree Tour throughout 1987. Frequently featured on lists of the greatest records, The Joshua Tree is one of the worlds best-selling albums. U2 commemorated the records 20th anniversary with a remastered re-release, and its 30th anniversary with announcements of a concert tour. In 2014, it was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the US Library of Congress, before The Joshua Tree, U2 had released four studio albums and were an internationally successful band, particularly as a live act having toured every year in the 1980s. The groups stature and the anticipation for a new album grew following their 1984 record The Unforgettable Fire, their subsequent tour. U2 began writing new material in mid-1985 following the Unforgettable Fire Tour, I saw the spoiled child of the Western world. I started thinking, They may have a desert. And thats what attracted me to the desert as a symbol of some sort, in 1985, Bono participated in Steven Van Zandts anti-apartheid Sun City project and spent time with musicians Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. When Richards and Jagger played blues, Bono was embarrassed by his lack of familiarity with the genre, Bono realised that U2 had no tradition, and he felt as if they were from outer space. This inspired him to write the blues-influenced song Silver and Gold, nascent friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Richards encouraged Bono to look back to rocks roots and to focus on his skills as a songwriter and lyricist. He explained, I used to think that writing words was old-fashioned, I wrote words on the microphone. For The Joshua Tree, I felt the time had come to words that meant something. Dylan told Bono of his own debt to Irish music, while Bono further demonstrated his interest in music traditions in his duet with Irish Celtic, the group referred to this approach as working within the primary colours of rock music—guitar, bass, and drums
10.
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
11.
Achtung Baby
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Achtung Baby is the seventh studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 18 November 1991 on Island Records, thematically, Achtung Baby is darker, more introspective, and at times more flippant than their previous work. Seeking inspiration from German reunification, U2 began recording Achtung Baby at Berlins Hansa Studios in October 1990, the sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. After tensions and slow progress nearly prompted the group to disband, morale and productivity improved during subsequent recording sessions in Dublin, where the album was completed in 1991. To confound the publics expectations of the band and their music, U2 chose the records facetious title and colourful multi-image sleeve. Achtung Baby is one of U2s most successful records, it received reviews and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 Top Albums. Five songs were released as singles, all of which were chart successes, including One, Mysterious Ways. The album has sold 18 million copies worldwide and won a Grammy Award in 1993 for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Achtung Baby has since been acclaimed by writers and music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time. The record was reissued in October 2011 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its original release, U2s high exposure and their reputation for being overly serious led to accusations of grandiosity and self-righteousness. By the bands 1989 Lovetown Tour, they had become bored with playing their greatest hits. U2 believe that audiences misunderstood the groups collaboration with blues musician B. B. King on Rattle and Hum and the Lovetown Tour, and they described it as an excursion down a dead-end street. Bono said that, in retrospect, listening to black music enabled the group to create a work such as Achtung Baby, while their experiences with folk music helped him to develop as a lyricist. Towards the end of the Lovetown Tour, Bono announced on-stage that it was the end of something for U2, following the tour, the group began, what was at the time, their longest break from public performances and album releases. Reacting to their own sense of stagnation and to their critics. They wrote God Part II from Rattle and Hum after realising they had excessively pursued nostalgia in their songwriting, the song had a more contemporary feel that Bono said was closer to Achtung Babys direction. Much of the material they wrote was experimental, and according to Bono, ideas deemed inappropriate for the play were put aside for the bands use. During this period, Bono and the Edge began increasingly writing songs together without Mullen or bassist Adam Clayton, in mid-1990, Bono reviewed material he had written in Australia on the Lovetown Tour, and the group recorded demos at STS Studios in Dublin. The demos later evolved into the songs Whos Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Until the End of the World, Even Better Than the Real Thing, and Mysterious Ways
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