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| Name | Coco Lee |
|---|---|
| Chinesename | 李玟 |
| Pinyinchinesename | Lǐ Wén |
| Jyutpingchinesename | Lei5 Man4 |
| Birthname | 李美林 Lei5 Mei5 Lam4 |
| Ancestry | Harbin, China |
| Origin | Hong Kong |
| Birthdate | January 17, 1975 |
| Birthplace | Hong Kong |
| Othername | Ferren Lee-Kelly |
| Occupation | singer, songwriter, actress |
| Genre | Pop, C-pop, dance-pop, hip hop, R&B;, adult contemporary, soul |
| Label | Capital Artists1993–1994 Fancy Pie1994–1996 550 Music/Epic/Sony Music Entertainment/Sony BMG1996–2008 Warner Music/MusicNation2009–present |
| Yearsactive | 1993–present |
| Awards | Awards 1994Top 10 Most Popular IdolBest New Artist awardsthe Golden Dragon Chart Awards 1996Best selling album (Coco Lee) of 1996Best MV (Yesterday's passion)Awards 1997Best Female Artist by the Best 10 ArtistsMTV Asia Music Awards 1998Best Album (DiDaDi)Best Music Video (DiDaDi)MTV/CCTV Chinese Music Awards 1999Artist of the yearRadio Music Awards 1999 (Singapore)Best international newcomerYale and Harvard Universities 2000Asian-American of the yearBest Performer of the yearAwards in Hong Kong 2001Best Mandarin Female ArtistTop 10 Artist of the YearInternational Golden Melody Awards Malaysia 2001Most Popular Stage Showmanship FemaleM'sia Awards 2002best songMTV/CCTV Chinese Music Awards 2002Best female artist of the yearMTV Style Awards China 2003Breakthrough International Artist of the YearAsia's Most Outstanding PerformerLycra Style Awards 2004Asian Style Artist10 Best dressed of 2004Changchun festival 2004Best new talent (Master of everything)QQ Star Awards 2010Female Singer of the Year 2009Album of the Year 2009Hit Music Awards 2010Best song of the year 2009 (BYOB)Best female artist in Taiwan and Hong Kong area of the year 2009Awards 2010China’s Top 10 Barbie Dream Girls |
Coco Lee (), born on January 17, 1975, also known by her official English name as Ferren Lee-Kelly, is a Hong Kong Chinese pop singer, songwriter, record producer and actress born to Chinese Malaysian parents. She is the only Asian artist to have multiple top-three singles in the MTV Asia Hitlist. "Do You Want My Love" also entered the music charts in America and the entire album, Just No Other Way gave Lee a break in the English market. She speaks Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and English fluently.
Lee is the first and only Chinese person to perform in the Oscars, singing the Academy Award nominee for Best Original Song, "A Love Before Time", from the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, in the 73rd Academy Awards in Los Angeles. She also provided the voice of Mulan in the Mandarin version of Disney's animated feature of the same name.
In 2001, Asia Weekly magazine named Lee as one of the most powerful people in Asia on their Power 50 list.
There, Lee went to Presidio Middle School. After secondary school where she was the volleyball team captain, she attended Raoul Wallenberg Traditional High School in San Francisco, where she was student Council President for 4 years in a row. In 1991, she represented her high school for Miss Teen Chinatown Pageant winning first place, then she won first place in a local karaoke contest. She started medical (biology) studies at the University of California Irvine.
In 1997, Lee released her Mandarin album entitled "Sincere" as well as a self-titled Cantonese album (her native language). In 1998, her Mandarin album Di Da Di was released and sold to 1 million copies in less than 3 months.
For her next album Sunny day, Lee registered the song Colors of the world for the opening of the Football World Cup, and the song The answer (答案) for the Chinese movie Bishonen. Walt Disney Pictures hired her to sing the theme song "Reflection" (自已) and be the voice of the heroine Fa Mulan in the Mandarin version of Mulan. The English version of the song appears on her maxi single Take a chance on love (碰碰看愛情) as well as Missing you in 365 days (想你的365天), the soundtrack of the cartoon Lotus lantern.
In November 1998, she had a concert at Bally, in Las Vegas. In 1999, Lee sang When you tell me that you love me with Julio Iglesias. This song appears on the Asian version of his album My life : The greatest hits. The same year, she sang Married you (你讓我有感覺), the theme song of the movie Notting Hill. This song appears on her Mandarin album Today til' forever (今天到永遠). Later on, she was invited by Michael Jackson to perform at his "Michael Jackson and friends" charity concert in front of 60 000 people.
In 2000, Lee recorded from The United States the Chinese songs "We meet the future" and "Hand in hand" for SARS with other artists such as Wang Lee Hom, Stephanie Sun, Elva Hsiao and Jolin Tsai. Then she went back to China and released a new Mandarin album You & me. The track True lover (真情人) held n#1 spot for 13 weeks. At the end of the year, she performed with Ricky Martin and followed him in his Asian tour. In 2001, Lee sang the song A Love Before Time for the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This song appears in English in the soundtrack album and in Mandarin (月光愛人) in her next album named Promise Coco released in October 2001. It contains So crazy, Dao ma dan (刀馬旦) written by the singer Jay Chou, Baby I'm sorry (Baby對不起) or I'm still in love, the theme song for the movie Serendipity. Later on, 170 000 tickets were sold for her "Promise Coco Tour" for only 3 shows (in Shenzhen, Wuhan and Shanghai).
In 2002, Lee released her remix album D. Is Coco (Dance is Coco). She sang a song against tobacco called From the beginning til' the end (煙絲萬縷) with singer Jacky Cheung. Then, she sang the anti racism song A dream of one with Korean singer Jin Young Park.
In 2003, she performed with Shaggy at the "MTV Asia awards" in Singapore and also presented the show with him.
Lee co-starred in the Chinese comedy movie Master of Everything (自娱自乐) with John Lone, which won the Best Foreign Film award in the 2005 Beverly Hills Film Festival. In 2004, as the YouthAIDS ambassador, she attended the global AIDS conference inBangkok, Thailand as the representative of the Asian artists to meet various youth groups discussing what she can do to educate them about AIDS.
In 2005, Sony BMG released her second English album, Exposed. This album contains the Korean soundtrack of called All around the world but also a duet called No doubt with Indian rapper Blaaze. The album was banned in Mainland China for sexy lyrics in a few songs such as Touch or So good.
Lee's follow up album to her C-Pop album Promise Coco, titled Just Want You (要定你) and released on September 22, 2006. It features the hit single "Hip-Hop Tonight" with Vanness Wu, which follows in the same vein as No Doubt. On September 22, 2007, Coco Lee returned to the United States for two live concerts, the first at Harrah's in San Diego and the second at the Shoreline Amphitheater in San Francisco, with special guest Alex To. It was her first live performance in her hometown in several years. In 2008, Coco was chosen to sing one of the Olympic songs, "Forever Friends", opposite Sun Nan. Later on, she changed her record company and decided to work with Warner Music (Taiwan) from Music Nation.
In 2009, Coco Lee ranked No.15 in E! Entertainment's list of the world's 25 sexiest pop divas. On July 17, she had a solo concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
On August 14, she released her new Mandarin album East to west (CoCo的東西) with Warner Music. It contains the songs "Party time", "Turn" (流轉) which is the soundtrack of the 3D Animation movie "The Legend of Silkboy" (世博总动员-湖丝仔) for the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the cover of Jay Sean's "Maybe" called "Love now" (愛要現在), but also "BYOB" ("Bring Your Own Bag") a song to encourage people to bring and recycle their own shopping bags to save the environment. Then she registered the song "Smile Shanghai" with other artists such as JJ Lin, Andy Lau, Jam Hsiao or Jane Zhang for Shanghai World Expo 2010.
Her "East2West" World Tour Concert had its first stop at Taipei Arena on March, 27. She pursued at the Encore Theatre in Wynn Casino in Las Vegas on July 3 and 4, then in Singapore Indoor Stadium in Singapore on October 2 and in Nanning on December 16.
In December 2010, Lee registered Four Seas Alliance (四海盟約), the theme song for the 2011 China television drama Water Margin (水滸傳).
1995 : I'm still your lover (best of Love from now on and Promise me)
Category:1975 births Category:Cantopop singers Category:Hong Kong Mandopop singers Category:English-language singers Category:Hong Kong actors Category:Hong Kong singers Category:Hong Kong immigrants to the United States Category:Living people Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:New Talent Singing Awards contestants
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Julio Iglesias |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva |
| Born | September 23, 1943Madrid, Spain |
| Genre | Latin and Latin pop |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Label | Columbia Records and Sony Music Entertainment |
| Url | www.julioiglesias.com |
In the 1960s, he studied law in Madrid and was a goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's futbol team. But unfortunately for both Iglesias and the team, a car crash in which he was involved on September 22, 1963, ruined his football career: "I had a car accident; [a] very, very strange car accident...I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call 'paraparexia,' which is not a paraplegi[a]. It's a compression in the [spinal] cord, in the sense of the neck...my spinal cord; and I was very, very ill for three years." His doctors thought he would never walk again; indeed, his legs were left permanently weakened, and they continued to require therapy as of late October 2010. However, slowly, he began recovering his health. To develop and increase the dexterity of his hands, he began playing guitar. When he recovered from his accident, he resumed academic studies and traveled to the United Kingdom to study the English language, first in Ramsgate, then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.
In 1971, he married Filipina journalist Isabel Preysler and had three children, Chabeli Iglesias, Julio Iglesias, Jr. and Enrique Iglesias. Their marriage was annulled in 1979.
On August 24, 2010, Julio Iglesias and Miranda Rijnsburger got married after a 20-year relationship. The religious ceremony was celebrated in the Parish of the Virgen del Carmen of Marbella, and was followed by a Mass of thanksgiving in the chapel on the property the couple owns in the same city. The couple has three sons and twin daughters: Miguel (born September 7, 1997), Rodrigo (born April 3, 1999), Victoria and Cristina (born May 1, 2001) and Guillermo (born May 5, 2007).
Following the annulment of his marriage to Preysler in 1979, he moved to Miami, Florida, in the United States and signed a deal with CBS International, and started singing in different languages such as English, French, Portuguese, German and other languages to his music. Iglesias released the album De Niña a Mujer (1981), from it came the first English-language hit, a Spanish cover of "Begin the Beguine" which became number 1 in the United Kingdom, he also released a collection, Julio (1983). In 1984, he released 1100 Bel Air Place, the hit album which gave him publicity in the English speaking entertainment industry. It sold four million albums in the United States, with the first single "To All the Girls I've Loved Before", a duet with Willie Nelson, earning a fifth place spot in the Billboard Hot 100; it also featured "All of You", with Diana Ross.
In 1985, Julio Iglesias, Sr, was kidnapped, but found alive two weeks later, prompting Julio Iglesias to move his children to Miami, Florida. That year he recorded the duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson previously mentioned. Iglesias won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album in the 1988 Grammy Awards for the album Un Hombre Solo (A Man Alone). He recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder on "My Love", in his Non Stop album, a crossover success in 1988. In the 1990s, Iglesias returned to his original Spanish melody in Tango (1996), nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards, losing to the Romances album by Mexican singer, Luis Miguel. Also that year, his youngest son from his first marriage, Enrique Iglesias, also was nominated for the Vivir album.
Julio Iglesias went on to win the World Music Award for Tango in Monaco later that year where he was up against singer Luis Miguel and son Enrique for the second time. Julio performed two "Tangos" to the delight of the audience. In 1995, he appeared as a guest star in the videoclip of Thalía's song "Amandote"; she had starred in the video clip of Iglesias's hit "Baila Morena". Iglesias returned to the headlines in October 2003, when he went to Argentina and kissed show host Susana Giménez three times during a live telecast of her show.
In 2003, he released his album Divorcio (Divorce). In its first day of sales, Divorcio sold a record 350,000 albums in Spain, and reached the number 1 spot on the charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Russia. , Romania.]] In 2003 and 2004, he was featured on a ten month world tour; which took Iglesias, aided by the success his album Divorcio and toured from Europe and Asia to North America, South America and Africa. More than half the shows on the tour sold out within days of going on sale. In December 2004, his Dutch girlfriend Miranda Rijnsburger and Iglesias himself recorded a duet of the Christmas song "Silent Night". The song, which was not officially released, also included a voice message from Iglesias, Rijnsburger and their 4 young children. The song was released online through the singer's official website and a CD was included on their Christmas card as a holiday gift from the Iglesias family to their friends and fans around the world.
In 2008, Iglesias recorded another song as a gift to his fans. The family recorded "The Little Drummer Boy" in Spanish and English and included it in the family's Christmas card. Iglesias also made investments in the Dominican Republic's eastern town of Punta Cana, a major tourist destination, where he spends most of the year when he is not on tour. Iglesias's south Florida mansion on the exclusive private Indian Creek Island property was placed on the market in 2006 for a quoted $28 million dollars, making it one of "Ten Most Expensive Homes in the South" in 2006 according to Forbes Magazine.
In September 2006, a new English album titled Romantic Classics was released. "I've chosen songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that I believe will come to be regarded as the new standards", Iglesias stated in the album's sleeve notes. The album features the hits "I Want To Know What Love Is", "Careless Whisper", and "Right Here Waiting". Romantic Classics was Iglesias's highest debut on the Billboard charts, entering at number 31 in the United States, 21 in Canada, 10 in Australia, and top spots across Europe and Asia. He returned to the studio to record songs in Filipino and Indonesian for his Asian releases of Romantic Classics which helped propel record sales in the Asian entertainment industry. Iglesias promoted Romantic Classics in 2006 and was seen all over the world on Television shows and in the United States, he appeared on Dancing With The Stars (where he sang his hit "I Want To Know What Love Is"), Good Morning America, The View, Fox and Friends, and Martha Stewart.
In 2008, Iglesias promoted his Romantic Classics album worldwide and in 2009-2010, he plans for a world tour as a celebration of forty years in the music industry.
In 2010, Iglesias continued to travel around the world with his "Starry Night World Tour" to promote his 42 years of career.
According with his official site ( www.julioiglesias.com ) , has sold over 300 millions of albums worldwide until 1 November 2010.
In 2011, the artist will launch a new studio album, in March, called Numero 1.
Category:1943 births Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Spanish Jews Category:English-language singers Category:Eurovision Song Contest entrants of 1970 Category:French-language singers Category:Galician people Category:German-language singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Italian-language singers Category:Russian-language singers Category:Living people Category:People from Madrid Category:People of Jewish descent Category:Portuguese-language singers Category:Real Madrid Castilla footballers Category:Spanish Eurovision Song Contest entrants Category:Spanish expatriates in the United States Category:Spanish footballers Category:Spanish-language singers Category:Spanish male singers Category:Spanish singers Category:People from Miami, Florida
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | James Taylor |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | James Vernon Taylor |
| Born | March 12, 1948Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Origin | Carrboro, North Carolina |
| Instrument | VocalsGuitarHarmonica |
| Genre | Folk rockRockPopCountry |
| Occupation | Singer-songwritermusician |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Label | Apple/Capitol/EMI RecordsWarner Bros. RecordsColumbia/SME RecordsHear Music |
| Associated acts | Carole King, Carly Simon |
| Url | JamesTaylor.com |
James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina. He owns a house in the Berkshire County town of Washington, Massachusetts. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.
Taylor achieved his major breakthrough in 1970 with the #3 single "Fire and Rain" and had his first #1 hit the following year with "You've Got a Friend", a recording of Carole King's classic song. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. His commercial achievements declined slightly until a big resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums (including Hourglass, October Road and Covers) were released.
In 1951, when James was three years old, the family moved to the countryside of Carrboro, North Carolina, when Isaac took a job as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area, which was sparsely populated. James attended public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac Taylor later rose to become Dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. The family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard beginning in 1953.
Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in North Carolina, and switched to the guitar in 1960. His style on that instrument evolved from listening to hymns, carols, and Woody Guthrie, while his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate's keyboards: "My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand." He began attending Milton Academy, a prep boarding school in Massachusetts in Fall 1961; summering before then with his family on Martha's Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar quickly realized that Taylor's singing had a "natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing." Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at age 14, and continued to learn the instrument effortlessly.
Taylor faltered during his junior year at Milton, not feeling at ease in the high-pressured college prep environment despite having good scholastic performance. He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School. There he joined a band his brother Alex had formed called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar; in 1964 they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James's song "Cha Cha Blues" on the B-side. He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as "a lifesaver ... like a pardon or like a reprieve," and both his brother Livingston and sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well.
Taylor associated with a motley collection of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar's dismay, and wrote the "Paint It, Black"-influenced "Rainy Day Man" to depict his drug experience. Released on Jay Gee Records, a subsidiary of Jubilee Records, it received some radio airplay in the Northeast, Other songs had been recorded during the same session, but Jubilee declined to go forward with an album. Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: "I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink." Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions.
Taylor decided to try being a solo act and a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living variously in Notting Hill, Belgravia, and Chelsea. He recorded some demos in Soho and, capitalizing on Kortchmar's connection to The King Bees (who once once opened for Peter and Gordon), brought the demos to Peter Asher, who was A&R; head for The Beatles' newly-formed label Apple Records. Asher showed the demos to Paul McCartney, who later said, "I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great ... and he came and played live, so it was just like, 'Wow, he's great." Taylor recorded the album from July to October 1968 at Trident Studios, at the same time The Beatles were recording The White Album. McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on "Carolina in My Mind", whose lyric holy host of others standing around me made reference to the Beatles, while the title phrase of Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" provided the starting point for Harrison's classic "Something". McCartney and Asher brought in arranger Richard Hewson to add orchestrations to several of the songs and unusual "link" passages in between them; these would receive a mixed reception at best.
During the recording sessions, Taylor fell back into his drug habit, using heroin and methedrine. Meanwhile, Apple released his debut album, James Taylor, in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the U.S. In early 1969, to clean up the situation, three of the Beatles brought in Allen Klein, who began purging Apple personnel. Asher did not like Klein; he resigned of his own accord and offered to manage Taylor, to which Taylor agreed. Klein wanted to hit Taylor with a $5 million lawsuit for leaving, but McCartney (a Klein antagonist) and then the other Beatles, overruled him on the grounds that artists should not be holding each other to contracts. Shortly thereafter, he broke both hands and both feet in a motorcycle accident on Martha's Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months. But while recovering, he continued to write songs and in October 1969, signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records. in 2003. ("Fire and Rain" was also listed #227 on Rolling Stone's list of the Greatest Songs of All Time).
for Two-Lane Blacktop: Boswell, Oklahoma ]] During the time Sweet Baby James was released, Taylor appeared with Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys in a Monte Hellman film, Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970, he performed with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert that funded Greenpeace's protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska. (This performance was released in 2009 on the album Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace.) In January 1971, sessions for Taylor's next album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, began. Released in April, the album also gained massive critical acclaim and contained Taylor's biggest Pop single in the U.S., a version of the Carole King standard "You've Got a Friend" (featuring backing vocals by Joni Mitchell), which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late July. The album itself reached #2 in the album charts, which would be Taylor's highest position ever on this list. In early 1972, Taylor received his first Grammy Award, for (Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male) for "You've Got a Friend" (King also won Song of the Year for the same song on that ceremony). The album went on to sell 2½ million copies in the United States alone.
November 1972 saw the release of Taylor's fourth album, One Man Dog. A concept album primarily recorded in his home recording studio, it featured cameos by Linda Ronstadt and consisted of eighteen short pieces of music put together. It was received with generally lukewarm reviews and, despite making the Top 10 of the Billboard Album Charts, overall sales were disappointing. The lead single "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" peaked at #18 on the Hot 100, and the follow-up, "One Man Parade", barely reached the Top 75. Almost simultaneously, Taylor married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3, in a small ceremony at her Murray Hill, Manhattan apartment. A post-concert party following a Taylor performance at Radio City Music Hall turned into a large-scale wedding party, and the Simon-Taylor marriage would find much public attention over the following years.
However, James Taylor's artistic fortunes spiked again in 1975 when the Gold album Gorilla reached #6 and provided one of his biggest hit singles, a cover version of Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)", which featured wife Carly in backing vocals and reached #5 in America and #1 in Canada. On the Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, the track also reached the top, and the follow-up single, the feel-good "Mexico" also reached the Top 5 of that list. A critically very-well received album, Gorilla showcased Taylor's electric, lighter side that was evident on Walking Man. However, it was arguably a more consistent and fresher-sounding Taylor, with classics such as "Wandering" and "Angry Blues." It also featured a song about his daughter Sally, "Sarah Maria".
Gorilla was followed in 1976 by In the Pocket, Taylor's last studio album to be released under Warner Bros. Records. The album found him with many colleagues and friends, including Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder (who co-wrote a song with Taylor and contributed a harmonica solo). A very melodic album, it was highlighted with the single "Shower the People", an enduring classic that hit #1 Adult Contemporary and almost hit the Top 20 of the Pop Charts. But the album was not very well-received, reaching only #16 and being highly criticized, particularly by Rolling Stone. Nevertheless 1976 was a huge boom year in the recording business — the year of inception of the "Platinum" disc — and In The Pocket was certified Gold.
With the close of Taylor's contract with Warner, in November the label released Greatest Hits, the album that comprised most of his best work between 1970 and 1976. It became with time his best-selling album, ever. It was certified eleven times Platinum in the US, earning a Diamond certification by the RIAA and eventually selling close to twenty million copies worldwide. It still stands as the best-selling folk album by any artist.
Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor collaborated with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in the recording of a cover of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and topped the AC charts in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in the summer of 1979 with the cover-studded Platinum album Flag, featuring a Top 30 version of Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Up on the Roof". (Two selections from Flag, "Millworker" and "Brother Trucker," were featured on the PBS production of the Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel's non-fiction book , and James himself appeared in that production as a trucker; he performed "Brother Trucker" in character.) Taylor also appeared on the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden, where he made a memorable live performance of "Mockingbird" with his wife Carly. The concert appeared on both the No Nukes album and film.
On December 7, 1980 Taylor had an encounter with Mark David Chapman who would assassinate John Lennon. Taylor told the BBC in 2010 "The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak speak about what he was going to do and his stuff with how John was interested, and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John." The next night Taylor who lived in the next building from Lennon heard the assassination.
In March 1981, James Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work, whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect he and Simon had had on each other. The album was another Platinum success, reaching #10 and providing Taylor's final real hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, "Her Town Too," which reached #5 Adult Contemporary and #11 on the Hot 100 in Billboard. The album's title was, in part, drawn from the reasons for Taylor's divorce from Carly Simon. She gave him an ultimatum: cut back on his music and touring, and spend more time with her and their children, or the marriage was through. The album's title was Taylor's answer, and Simon asked for divorce. (The emotional repercussions of the divorce likely served as at least part of the inspiration for "Her Town Too.")
On February 18, 2001 at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time, marrying Caroline ("Kim") Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They had begun dating in 1995, when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. The couple reside in the town of Washington, Massachusetts with their twin boys, Rufus and Henry, born in April 2001 to a surrogate mother via in vitro fertilization. The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a "limited edition" two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, "Sailing to Philadelphia," which also appeared on Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia album. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing "The Boxer" at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, "How's the World Treating You?" In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released with distribution through Hallmark Cards.
Taylor performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 24, 2004. In December, he appeared as himself in an episode of The West Wing entitled "A Change Is Gonna Come". He sang Sam Cooke's classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" at an event honoring an artist played by Taylor's wife Caroline. Later on, he appeared on CMT's Crossroads alongside the Dixie Chicks. In early 2006, MusiCares honored Taylor with performances of his songs by an array of notable musicians. Before a performance by the Dixie Chicks, lead singer Natalie Maines acknowledged that he had always been one of their musical heroes, and had for them lived up to their once-imagined reputation of him. They performed his song, "Shower the People", with a surprise appearance by Arnold McCuller, who has sung backing vocals on Taylor's live tours for many years.
In the fall of 2006, Taylor released a repackaged and slightly different version of his Hallmark Christmas album, now entitled James Taylor at Christmas, and distributed by Columbia/Sony. In 2006, Taylor performed Randy Newman's song "Our Town" for the Disney animated film Cars. The song was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for the best Original Song. On January 1, 2007, Taylor headlined the inaugural concert at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York, honoring newly sworn in Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.
Taylor's next album, One Man Band was released on CD and DVD in November 2007 on Starbucks' Hear Music Label, where he joined with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. The introspective album grew out of a three-year tour of the United States and Europe—featuring some of Taylor's most beloved songs and anecdotes about their creative origins—accompanied solely by the "one man band" of his longtime pianist/keyboardist, Larry Goldings. The mix of One Man Band won a TEC Award for best surround sound recording in 2008.
November 28–30, 2007, Taylor, accompanied by his original band and Carole King, headlined a series of six shows at The Troubadour. The appearances marked the 50th anniversary of the venue, where Taylor, King and many others, such as Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, began their music careers. Proceeds from the concert went to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, MusiCares, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, a member of America's Second Harvest — The Nation's Food Bank Network. Parts of the performance shown on CBS Sunday Morning in the December 23, 2007, broadcast showed Taylor alluding to his early drug problems by saying, "I played here a number of times in the 70s, allegedly..." Taylor has used versions of this joke on other occasions, and it appears as part of his One Man Band DVD and tour performances.
]] In December 2007 James Taylor at Christmas was nominated for a Grammy Award. In January 2008 Taylor recorded approximately 20 songs by others for a new album with a band including Luis Conte, Michael Landau, Lou Marini, Arnold McCuller, Jimmy Johnson, David Lasley, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Steve Gadd and Larry Goldings. The resulting live-in-studio album, named Covers, was released in September 2008. This album forays into country and soul while being the latest proof that Taylor is a more versatile singer than his best known hits might suggest. The Covers sessions stretched to include "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," from the musical Oklahoma - a song that his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs when he was seven years old. Meanwhile, in summer 2008, Taylor and this band toured 34 North American cities with a tour entitled James Taylor and His Band of Legends. A additional album, called Other Covers, came out in April 2009, containing songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the original Covers but had not been put out to the full public yet.
During October 19–21, 2008, Taylor performed a series of free concerts in five North Carolina cities in support of Barack Obama's presidential bid. On Sunday, January 18, 2009, he performed at the , singing "Shower the People" with John Legend and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.
Taylor performed on the final The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on May 29, 2009, distinguishing himself further as the final musician to appear in Leno's original 17-year run.
On September 8, 2009 Taylor made an appearance at the twenty-fourth season premiere block party of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Chicago's Michigan Avenue.
performing "You've Got a Friend" together during their Troubadour Reunion Tour in 2010.]] On January 1, 2010, Taylor sang the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, while Daniel Powter sang the Canadian national anthem.
On March 7, 2010, Taylor sang The Beatles' "In My Life" in tribute to deceased artists at the 82nd Academy Awards.
In March 2010 he commenced the Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King and members of his original band, including Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Danny Kortchmar. They played shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America, with the final night being at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, CA. The tour was a major commercial success, and in some locations found Taylor playing arenas instead of his usual theaters or amphitheaters. Ticket sales amounted to over 700,000 and the tour grossed over 59 million dollars. It was one of the most successful tours of the year.
;U.S. Billboard Top 10 Albums
;U.S. Billboard Top 10 'Pop' Singles
Category:1970s_singers Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:American acoustic guitarists Category:American folk guitarists Category:American folk singers Category:American male singers Category:American pop guitarists Category:American rock guitarists Category:American rock singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Apple Records artists Category:American people of English descent Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from Massachusetts Category:Musicians from North Carolina Category:People from Belmont, Massachusetts Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers
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