1.
Trance music
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Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed during the 1990s in Germany. Although trance is a genre of its own, it incorporates influences from other musical styles such as techno, house, pop, chill-out, classical music, tech house, ambient. A trance refers to a state of hypnotism and heightened consciousness and this is portrayed in trance music by the mixing of layers with distinctly foreshadowed build-up and release. Trance tracks are often lengthy to allow for such progression and commonly have sufficiently sparse opening and closing sections to facilitate mixing by DJs, Trance can be purely instrumental, although vocals are also a common feature. Typically they are performed by mezzo-soprano to soprano female soloists, often without verse/chorus structure, structured vocal form in trance music forms the basis of the vocal trance subgenre, which has been described as grand, soaring, and operatic and ethereal female leads floating amongst the synths. It was promoted by the well-known UK club-night megatripolis whose scene catapulted it to international fame, One writer traces the roots of trance to Paul van Dyks 1993 remix of Humates Love Stimulation. However, van Dyks trance origins can be traced back to his work with Visions Of Shiva. With film music also being influential, Trance was arguably at its commercial peak in the second part of 1990s and early 2000s. Classic trance employs a 4/4 time signature, a tempo of 125 to 150 BPM, a kick drum is usually placed on every downbeat and a regular open hi-hat is often placed on the upbeat or every 1/8th division of the bar. Rapid arpeggios and minor keys are common features of Trance, the latter being almost universal, instruments are added or removed every 4,8,16, or 32 bars. In the section before the breakdown, the motif is often introduced in a sliced up and simplified form. Then later, the climax is usually a culmination of the first part of the track mixed with the main melodic reprise. As is the case with many music tracks, trance tracks are usually built with sparser intros and outros in order to enable DJs to blend them together immediately. As trance is more melodic and harmonic than other dance music. More recent forms of trance music incorporate other styles and elements of music such as electro. It emphasizes harsher basslines and drum beats which decrease the importance of offbeats, the bpm of more recent styles tends to be on par with house music at 120 -135 beats per minute. However, unlike house music, recent forms of trance stay true to their melodic breakdowns, Trance music is broken into a large number of subgenres. Chronologically, the major subgenres are classic trance, acid trance, progressive trance, uplifting trance, closely related to Uplifting Trance is Euro-trance, which has become a general term for a wide variety of highly commercialized European dance music
2.
Xenomania
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Xenomania is an English songwriting and production team founded by Brian Higgins and based in Kent, England. In particular, all but one of Girls Alouds studio albums have been entirely written, Sugababes Round Round and Girls Alouds Sound of the Underground have been credited with reshaping British pop music for the 2000s. Gabriella Cilmis Sweet About Me and Girls Alouds The Promise were named Best Single at the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, the team has been referred to as a Phil Spector and a Motown of the 21st-century. Higgins himself has said that Xenomania aspires to be a version of RAK Records. Of Higgins and Xenomania, Girls Alouds former manager Louis Walsh says and they just jump out at you and stay in your brain. There are wide influences present in their productions, including electronic, glam rock, Motown soul, punk, the name Xenomania means, according to Higgins, the exact opposite of Xenophobia a love of everything, of all cultures. Current members of the Xenomania writing and production team are Higgins, long term members Tim Powell and Nick Coler left in 2010. There is also a Xenomania house band who work on backing tracks, members include Florrie Arnold, Kieran Jones. Parisian remixer Fred Falke also frequently works with Xenomania, Xenomania started a record label of the same name in 2008, developing artists and working on material before looking for major label deals. Artists include Alex Gardner, Jessie Malakouti, Brooke X, Mini Viva, Brian Higgins found early success after producing Australian singer Dannii Minogues third album, Girl, which gained favorable reviews at the time but failed to enter the British Top 40. However, the success of the single, All I Wanna Do, led to a collaboration with American singer Cher. Although the song outperformed all expectations and won him three Ivor Novello awards, Higgins found himself without a label when London Records was sold in 2000, Nick Coler programmed The KLFs singles and Tim Powell started out in 1989 doing hardcore rave stuff. Higgins attempted to launch Cooper as a solo artist under the stage name Moonbaby, thats when we started writing for other people, according to Cooper. Id had writers block for myself, but as soon as it was for somebody else all these songs popped out, moonbabys Here We Go would later be recorded by both Lene Nystrøm Rasted and Girls Aloud. Higgins says, We developed this sound of electronics and guitars fusing together but this was in the late Nineties when RnB lite dominated pop music, the song would later become a UK number-one single for Sugababes in 2002. Higgins praised Sugababes for the role in Xenomanias subsequent success—To me they represented something superior to what was out there. As a result, the Sugababes undoubtedly brought the best out of us as we always felt pressure to produce results that would do justice to their voices. Xenomania were approached to create the single for a girl group formed through the television talent show Popstars
3.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
4.
Stanley Kubrick
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Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. He is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinematic history, Kubrick was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, and attended William Howard Taft High School from 1941 to 1945. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war picture Paths of Glory and the historical epic Spartacus. His reputation as a filmmaker in Hollywood grew, and he was approached by Marlon Brando to film what would become One-Eyed Jacks, though Brando eventually decided to direct it himself. His home at Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, which he shared with his wife Christiane, became his workplace, where he did his writing, research, editing, and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete control over his films. His first British productions were two films with Peter Sellers, Lolita and Dr. Strangelove and he often asked for several dozen retakes of the same scene in a movie, which resulted in many conflicts with his casts. Despite the resulting notoriety among actors, many of Kubricks films broke new ground in cinematography, Steven Spielberg has referred to the film as his generations big bang, and it is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. For the 18th-century period film Barry Lyndon, Kubrick obtained lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA, with The Shining, he became one of the first directors to make use of a Steadicam for stabilized and fluid tracking shots. His last film, Eyes Wide Shut, was completed shortly before his death in 1999, Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26,1928, in the Lying-In Hospital at 307 Second Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. He was the first of two children of Jacob Leonard Kubrick, known as Jack or Jacques, and his wife Sadie Gertrude Kubrick, known as Gert and his sister, Barbara Mary Kubrick, was born in May 1934. At Stanleys birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in the Bronx, although his parents had been married in a Jewish ceremony, Kubrick did not have a religious upbringing, and would later profess an atheistic view of the universe. By the district standards of the West Bronx, the family was fairly wealthy, soon after his sisters birth, Kubrick began schooling in Public School 3 in the Bronx, and moved to Public School 90 in June 1938. Although his IQ was discovered to be average, his attendance was poor. He displayed an interest in literature from an age, and began reading Greek and Roman myths. When Kubrick was 12, his father Jack taught him chess, the game remained a lifelong interest of Kubricks, appearing in many scenes of his films. Kubrick himself, who became a member of the United States Chess Federation, explained that chess helped him develop patience. At the age of 13, Kubricks father bought him a Graflex camera and he became friends with a neighbor, Marvin Traub, who shared his passion for photography
5.
Meteorite
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When the object enters the atmosphere, various factors like friction, pressure, and chemical interactions with the atmospheric gases cause it to heat up and radiate that energy. It then becomes a meteor and forms a fireball, also known as a shooting/falling star, meteorites that survive atmospheric entry and impact vary greatly in size. For geologists, a bolide is a large enough to create a crater. Meteorites that are recovered after being observed as they transit the atmosphere or impact the Earth are called meteorite falls, all others are known as meteorite finds. As of April 2016, there were about 1,140 witnessed falls that have specimens in the worlds collections, there are more than 38,660 well-documented meteorite finds. Modern classification schemes divide meteorites into groups according to their structure, chemical and isotopic composition, meteorites smaller than 2 mm are classified as micrometeorites. Extraterrestrial meteorites are such objects that have impacted other celestial bodies and they have been found on the Moon and Mars. Meteorites are always named for the places they were found, usually a town or geographic feature. In cases where many meteorites were found in one place, the name may be followed by a number or letter, the name designated by the Meteoritical Society is used by scientists, catalogers, and most collectors. Most meteoroids disintegrate when entering the Earths atmosphere, usually, five to ten a year are observed to fall and are subsequently recovered and made known to scientists. Few meteorites are large enough to create large impact craters, instead, they typically arrive at the surface at their terminal velocity and, at most, create a small pit. Large meteoroids may strike the ground with a significant fraction of their escape velocity, the kind of crater will depend on the size, composition, degree of fragmentation, and incoming angle of the impactor. The force of such collisions has the potential to cause widespread destruction, the most frequent hypervelocity cratering events on the Earth are caused by iron meteoroids, which are most easily able to transit the atmosphere intact. In contrast, even relatively large stony or icy bodies like small comets or asteroids, up to millions of tons, are disrupted in the atmosphere, and do not make impact craters. Although such disruption events are uncommon, they can cause a concussion to occur. Very large stony objects, hundreds of meters in diameter or more, weighing tens of millions of tons or more, can reach the surface and cause large craters, such events are generally so energetic that the impactor is completely destroyed, leaving no meteorites. Several phenomena are well documented during witnessed meteorite falls too small to produce hypervelocity craters, various colors have been reported, including yellow, green, and red. Flashes and bursts of light can occur as the object breaks up, explosions, detonations, and rumblings are often heard during meteorite falls, which can be caused by sonic booms as well as shock waves resulting from major fragmentation events
6.
Vocoder
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A vocoder is a category of voice codec that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption, voice transformation, etc. The decoder applies these control signals to corresponding filters for re-synthesis, since these control signals change only slowly compared to the original speech waveform, the bandwidth required to transmit speech can be reduced. This allows more speech channels to share a single communication channel, by encrypting the control signals, voice transmission can be secured against interception. Its primary use in fashion is for secure radio communication. The advantage of this method of encryption is that none of the signal is sent. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same filter configuration to re-synthesize a version of the signal spectrum. The vocoder has also used extensively as an electronic musical instrument. The decoder portion of the vocoder, called a voder, can be used independently for speech synthesis, the human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is filtered by the nose and throat to produce differences in harmonic content in a controlled way. There is another set of sounds, known as the unvoiced and plosive sounds, the vocoder examines speech by measuring how its spectral characteristics change over time. This results in a series of signals representing these modified frequencies at any time as the user speaks. In simple terms, the signal is split into a number of frequency bands, thus, the vocoder dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. Information about the frequency of the original voice signal is discarded. It is this aspect of the vocoding process that has made it useful in creating special voice effects in popular music. Analog vocoders typically analyze an incoming signal by splitting the signal into a number of tuned frequency bands or ranges, a modulator and carrier signal are sent through a series of these tuned bandpass filters. In the example of a robot voice, the modulator is a microphone. There are usually between eight and 20 bands, the amplitude of the modulator for each of the individual analysis bands generates a voltage that is used to control amplifiers for each of the corresponding carrier bands. The result is that components of the modulating signal are mapped onto the carrier signal as discrete amplitude changes in each of the frequency bands
7.
Sasha (Welsh DJ)
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Sasha is a Welsh DJ, record producer and Grammy Award nominee. He was voted World No.1 DJ in 2000 in a poll conducted by DJ Magazine and he is a four-time International Dance Music Awards winner and four-time DJ Awards winner. Sasha began his career playing acid house music in the late 1980s. He partnered with fellow DJ John Digweed in 1993, touring internationally, Sasha has remixed tracks for artists such as Madonna, The Chemical Brothers and Hot Chip. Sashas remixing and production often combine electronic music genres, making it difficult for critics to pinpoint his musical style, including on his album of original work. After achieving success as a producer and DJ, Sasha worked with younger DJs and producers such as BT and his use of live audio engineering equipment helped popularise technological innovations among DJs who formerly relied on records and turntables. In 2007, he formed a label with Renaissance Records called emFire. Sasha is managed by Three Six Zero Group, Sasha was born in Bangor, Wales on 4 September 1969, but spent most of his youth with his mother in the Welsh town of Sandycroft, Flintshire, North Wales. Sashas mother taught French at Hawarden High School, Sashas early musical taste was primarily Top 40 pop music like The The and The Police. After an idyllic childhood, he passed the exam for Epsom College at age 17. However, he did not like Epsom and left before completing his Advanced Level, instead of continuing his schooling, Sasha moved to Bangor to live with his father and stepmother. Sashas stepmother forced him to piano lessons which, although he disliked them at the time. Sasha became aware of electronic music in 1988 at The Haçienda. Drawn to the sound of acid house music and the rebellious attitude he associated with it, he visited Manchester weekly. Sasha purchased many acid house records and began to teach himself how to mix, a local DJ at a club Sasha frequented announced that he was looking for other DJs to travel with him on a regional tour. Sasha volunteered and made his first live appearance in nearby Stockport, Sasha recalled of his debut, Id never even touched a Technics, I thought the pitch control was the volume, I didnt even know where to plug my headphones in. Im sure I was absolutely horrendous, Sasha soon found himself in debt due to low-paying performances and the many records he bought. To finance his collection, he performed at illegal warehouse raves in the Blackburn
8.
NME
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New Musical Express is a British music journalism magazine published since 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. It started as a newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s and 1990s. An online version of NME, NME. com, was launched in 1996 and it became the worlds biggest standalone music site, with over seven million users per month. With newsstand sales falling across the UK magazine sector, the paid circulation in the first half of 2014 was 15,830. In 2013, the list of NMEs The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, NME magazine was relaunched in September 2015 as a nationally distributed free publication. NMEs headquarters are in Southwark, London, England, the brands editor-in-chief is Mike Williams, who replaced Krissi Murison in 2012. The paper was established in 1952, the Accordion Times and Musical Express was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, for the sum of £1,000, just 15 minutes before it was due to be officially closed. It was relaunched as the New Musical Express, and was published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint. On 14 November 1952, taking its cue from the US magazine Billboard, it created the first UK Singles Chart, the first of these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK. The first number one was Here in My Heart by Al Martino, during the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time. The NME circulation peaked under Andy Gray, Editor 1957–1972, with a figure of 306,881 for the period from January to June 1964, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were frequently featured on the front cover. These and other artists appeared at the NME Poll Winners Concert. The concert also featured a ceremony where the winners would collect their awards. The NME Poll Winners Concerts took place between 1959 and 1972, from 1964 onwards they were filmed, edited and transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place. The latter part of the 1960s saw the chart the rise of psychedelia. During this period some sections of pop music began to be designated as rock, in early 1972 the paper found itself on the verge of closure by its owner IPC. Alan Smith was made editor and in 1972 was told by IPC to turn things around quickly or face closure, according to The Economist, the New Musical Express started to champion underground, up-and-coming music. NME became the gateway to a more rebellious world
9.
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
10.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
11.
Out of Control (Girls Aloud album)
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Out of Control is the fifth and final studio album by British girl group Girls Aloud, released in the United Kingdom on 3 November 2008 by Fascination Records. Like their previous albums, it was crafted by the team of Brian Higgins. Out of Control builds on the sound of Girls Alouds previous albums, Out of Control debuted to positive reviews from contemporary music critics. The album debuted at No.1 on the UK Albums Chart, Girls Alouds first studio album to do so and it was certified 2x platinum in the UK and Ireland. It yielded three singles, including chart-topping The Promise, which was awarded Best British Single at the 2009 BRIT Awards, Girls Aloud announced they would begin work on their fifth studio album in May 2008, while on the Tangled Up Tour. Sarah Harding told MTV News that they had working on it all summer. Brian Higgins said, By the time we did the last album and they were ready to sell a million albums immediately, so they didnt something a bit highbrow. They needed something that would hit you right between the eyes The group has moved more and more into the mainstream, because that was what was required, Girls Alouds website describes Out of Control as their most exciting and thrilling album yet. According to Kimberley Walsh, the title came from Girls Alouds record company telling the girls, We dont know what to say. It also comes from a lyric in We Wanna Party, nicola Roberts revealed that the album was nearly titled Girls Aloud, Revolution, after the song Revolution in the Head. The artwork for Out of Control was revealed on Girls Alouds official website on 16 October 2008, the Sun described the album as a mixture of ballads and the relentlessly upbeat, catchy hits we have come to expect. Kimberley Walsh has said that the album is a lot older sounding, the girl group were very involved in the albums direction. The 60s thing is quite prominent, Walsh told the BBC, but its out of the ordinary. Nicola Roberts said that the album features a lot of 1980s-inspired electropop. Sarah Harding said that Girls Aloud wanted to stay upbeat but try something a bit different, I dont think anything weve ever done has ever sounded the same. But we have that same vibe whatever we do because of our vocals, Nadine Coyle said the aim from the beginning was to come up with songs that didnt sound like anything else out there. Walsh continued, We want to impress the fans with what we do, so tried to up our game with this album. Girls Aloud co-wrote four songs on the album, Love Is the Key, Miss You Bow Wow, Revolution in the Head, in particularly, the bridge of Love Is the Key was written by Kimberley Walsh
12.
Nadine Coyle
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Nadine Elizabeth Louise Coyle is an Irish singer, songwriter, actress, and model. Coyle rose to fame in the early 2000s as a member of the girl group Girls Aloud, the group amassed a joint fortune of £30 million by May 2010. Coyle released her solo album Insatiable and its title track was released on 8 November 2010 through her own label, Black Pen Records. The album peaked at twenty on the Irish Albums Chart. Coyles net worth was estimated at £8.10 million in October 2014, Coyle was born on 15 June 1985 to Lillian and Niall Coyle in Derry, Northern Ireland. Her parents first noticed her talent for singing at the age of two, when she sang The Drifters Saturday Night at the Movies, Coyle was uninterested in her education but received good grades. She recorded a demo CD, which was distributed to Louis Walsh, the CD included cover versions of Fields of Gold, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Love Is, and the aria Summertime. While attending Thornhill College in 2001, Coyle auditioned for the Irish version of the reality talent show Popstars. She won a place in the band Six, but it was revealed that she had lied about her age. She was just 16 years old, two younger than the minimum age requirement of 18. Coyle said she was exploited by RTÉ and she returned to Thornhill College in Derry. She later revealed how she had a scare when she found a lump in her breast when she was 17. Walsh encouraged Coyle to enter Popstars, The Rivals, the second British series of the international Popstars franchise, several thousand applicants attended auditions across the UK in hope of being selected. Ten girls and ten boys were chosen as finalists by judges Walsh, Pete Waterman and these finalists then took to the stage participating in weekly Saturday night live performances. Following her performance of Fields of Gold, Walsh told her she gave the performance of the night, stole the show for me, while fellow judge Halliwell said, Id love to buy a single of yours already. Coyle joined Cheryl Tweedy, Sarah Harding, Nicola Roberts, and Kimberley Walsh to comprise the new girl group Girls Aloud, the groups debut single Sound of the Underground peaked at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the 2002 Christmas number one. Girls Aloud hold the record for the shortest time between formation and reaching number one, the group released their debut album Sound of the Underground in May 2003, which entered the charts at number two and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry later the same year. Their singles Ill Stand by You, Walk This Way, and they also achieved seven certified albums and have been nominated for five Brit Awards, winning the 2009 Best Single for The Promise
