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United States of America | ||||||
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Motto: In God We Trust (official) E Pluribus Unum (traditional) (Latin: Out of Many, One) |
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Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner" |
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Capital | Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W |
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Largest city | New York City | |||||
Official language(s) | None at federal level[a] | |||||
National language | English (de facto)[b] | |||||
Demonym | American | |||||
Government | Federal presidential constitutional republic | |||||
- | President | Barack Obama (D) | ||||
- | Vice President | Joe Biden (D) | ||||
- | Speaker of the House | John Boehner (R) | ||||
- | Chief Justice | John Roberts | ||||
Legislature | Congress | |||||
- | Upper house | Senate | ||||
- | Lower house | House of Representatives | ||||
Independence | from the Kingdom of Great Britain | |||||
- | Declared | July 4, 1776 | ||||
- | Recognized | September 3, 1783 | ||||
- | Current constitution | June 21, 1788 | ||||
Area | ||||||
- | Total | 9,826,675 km2 [1][c](3rd/4th) 3,794,101 sq mi |
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- | Water (%) | 6.76 | ||||
Population | ||||||
- | 2012 estimate | 313,802,000[2] (3rd) | ||||
- | Density | 33.7/km2 87.4/sq mi |
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GDP (PPP) | 2011 estimate | |||||
- | Total | $15.094 trillion[3] (1st) | ||||
- | Per capita | $48,386[3] (6th) | ||||
GDP (nominal) | 2011 estimate | |||||
- | Total | $15.094 trillion[3] (1st) | ||||
- | Per capita | $48,386[3] (15th) | ||||
Gini (2007) | 45.0[1] (39th) | |||||
HDI (2011) | 0.910[4] (very high) (4th) | |||||
Currency | United States dollar ($) (USD ) |
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Time zone | (UTC−5 to −10) | |||||
- | Summer (DST) | (UTC−4 to −10) | ||||
Date formats | m/d/yy (AD) | |||||
Drives on the | right | |||||
Internet TLD | .us .gov .mil .edu | |||||
Calling code | +1 | |||||
^ a. English is the official language of at least 28 states—some sources give a higher figure, based on differing definitions of "official".[5] English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii.
^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. ^ c. Whether the United States or China is larger is disputed. The figure given is from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. Other sources give smaller figures. All authoritative calculations of the country's size include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the territories. ^ d. The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than 4 million U.S. citizens (mostly in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States. |
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.[6] The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity).[3][7] Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.[3]
Indigenous peoples descended from forebears who migrated from Asia have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in the American Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence.[8] The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a stronger central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.
Through the 19th century, the United States displaced native tribes, acquired the Louisiana territory from France, Florida from Spain, part of the Oregon Country from the United Kingdom, Alta California and New Mexico from Mexico, and Alaska from Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over the expansion of the institution of slavery and states' rights provoked the Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, its national economy was the world's largest.[9] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for 41% of global military spending,[10] and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.[11]
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In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".[13] On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." The Franco-American treaties of 1778 used "United States of North America", but from July 11, 1778, "United States of America" was used on the country's bills of exchange, and it has been the official name ever since.[14]
The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a once popular name for the United States, derives from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".
The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". Although "United States" is the official appositional term, "American" and "U.S." are more commonly used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.[15]
The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".[16]
The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1,900 million acres (7,700,000 km2). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (1,480,000 km2). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (16,000 km2).[17] The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km2)[18] to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km2)[19] to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km2).[1] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[20]
The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.[21]
The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.[22]
The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.[23] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.[24] About 91,000 insect species have been described.[25] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[26] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.[27] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.[27]
The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions comprises Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959.[28] The states do not have the right to secede from the union.
The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.[29] Those born in the major territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.[30] American citizens residing in the territories have many of the same rights and responsibilities as citizens residing in the states; however, they are generally exempt from federal income tax, may not vote for president, and have only nonvoting representation in the U.S. Congress.[31]
The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.[32] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.[33]
In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.[34] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.
In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.[35] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans (popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.[36] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.
After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a constitutional convention in 1787. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.
Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the Atlantic slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including abolitionism.
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.[37] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.[38] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.
Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[39] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.[40] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.[41]
After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture. National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[42] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.[43] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.[44] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.[45] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.
The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.[46] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.[47] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[48] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.[49]
The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. Resisting leftist land and income redistribution projects around the world, the United States often supported authoritarian governments. American troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.
The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson.[50][51] He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs.[52] Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.
As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.
Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.[53] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds.[54] Forces led by the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, ousting Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African American president, Barack Obama, was elected. Major health care and financial system reforms were enacted two years later. In 2011, a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Iraq War ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country.
The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic and representative democracy, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law".[55] The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the U.S. Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document.[56] In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels.
The federal government is composed of three branches:
The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. The Senate has 100 members with each state having two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every other year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned to the states and the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.
The state governments are structured in roughly similar fashion; Nebraska uniquely has a unicameral legislature. The governor (chief executive) of each state is directly elected. Some state judges and cabinet officers are appointed by the governors of the respective states, while others are elected by popular vote.
The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government and its relationship with the individual states. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of Americans' individual rights. All laws and governmental procedures are subject to judicial review and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution is voided. The principle of judicial review, not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was declared by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803).
The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history.[57] For elective offices at most levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.
Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or liberal. The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states", are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.
The winner of the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president. The 2010 midterm elections saw the Republican Party take control of the House and make gains in the Senate, where the Democrats retain the majority. In the 112th United States Congress, the Senate comprises 51 Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 47 Republicans; the House comprises 242 Republicans and 192 Democrats—one seat is vacant. There are 29 Republican and 20 Democratic state governors, as well as one independent.
The United States exercises global economic, political, and military influence. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and New York City hosts the United Nations Headquarters. It is a member of the G8,[58] G20, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.
The United States has a "special relationship" with the United Kingdom[59] and strong ties with Canada,[60] Australia,[61] New Zealand,[62] the Philippines,[63] Japan,[64] South Korea,[65] Israel,[66] and several European countries. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of America's large gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among twenty-two donor states. By contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.[67]
The president holds the title of commander-in-chief of the nation's armed forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The United States Department of Defense administers the armed forces, including the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. The Coast Guard is run by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and the Department of the Navy in time of war. In 2008, the armed forces had 1.4 million personnel on active duty. The Reserves and National Guard brought the total number of troops to 2.3 million. The Department of Defense also employed about 700,000 civilians, not including contractors.[68]
Military service is voluntary, though conscription may occur in wartime through the Selective Service System.[69] American forces can be rapidly deployed by the Air Force's large fleet of transport aircraft, the Navy's eleven active aircraft carriers, and Marine Expeditionary Units at sea with the Navy's Atlantic and Pacific fleets. The military operates 865 bases and facilities abroad,[70] and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries.[71] The extent of this global military presence has prompted some scholars to describe the United States as maintaining an "empire of bases".[72]
Total U.S. military spending in 2010, almost $700 billion, was 43% of global military spending and greater than the next fourteen largest national military expenditures combined. At 4.8% of GDP, the rate was the second-highest among the top fifteen military spenders, after Saudi Arabia.[73] The proposed base Department of Defense budget for 2012, $553 billion, is a 4.2% increase over 2011; an additional $118 billion is proposed for the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.[74] The last American troops serving in Iraq departed in December 2011;[75] 4,484 servicemen were killed during the Iraq War.[76] Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan as of April 2012;[77] as of April 4, 1,924 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan.[78]
Economic indicators | ||
---|---|---|
Unemployment | 8.2% (May 2012) | [79] |
GDP growth | 2.2% (1Q 2012), 1.7% (2011) | [80] |
CPI inflation | 2.3% (April 2011 – April 2012) | [81] |
Poverty | 15.1% (2010) | [82] |
Public debt | $15.62 trillion (April 13, 2012) | [83] |
Household net worth | $58.5 trillion (4Q 2011) | [84] |
The United States has a capitalist mixed economy, which is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity.[85] According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. GDP of $15.1 trillion constitutes 22% of the gross world product at market exchange rates and over 19% of the gross world product at purchasing power parity (PPP).[3] Though larger than any other nation's, its national GDP is about 5% smaller than the GDP of the European Union at PPP in 2008. The country ranks ninth in the world in nominal GDP per capita and sixth in GDP per capita at PPP.[3] The U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency.[86]
The United States is the largest importer of goods and third largest exporter, though exports per capita are relatively low. In 2010, the total U.S. trade deficit was $635 billion.[87] Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, and Germany are its top trading partners.[88] In 2010, oil was the largest import commodity, while transportation equipment was the country's largest export.[87] China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. public debt.[89]
In 2009, the private sector was estimated to constitute 86.4% of the economy, with federal government activity accounting for 4.3% and state and local government activity (including federal transfers) the remaining 9.3%.[91] While its economy has reached a postindustrial level of development and its service sector constitutes 67.8% of GDP, the United States remains an industrial power.[92] The leading business field by gross business receipts is wholesale and retail trade; by net income it is manufacturing.[93] Chemical products are the leading manufacturing field.[94] The United States is the third largest producer of oil in the world, as well as its largest importer.[95] It is the world's number one producer of electrical and nuclear energy, as well as liquid natural gas, sulfur, phosphates, and salt. While agriculture accounts for just under 1% of GDP,[92] the United States is the world's top producer of corn[96] and soybeans.[97] Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the two most recognized brands in the world.[98]
In August 2010, the American labor force comprised 154.1 million people. With 21.2 million people, government is the leading field of employment. The largest private employment sector is health care and social assistance, with 16.4 million people. About 12% of workers are unionized, compared to 30% in Western Europe.[99] The World Bank ranks the United States first in the ease of hiring and firing workers.[100] In 2009, the United States had the third highest labor productivity per person in the world, behind Luxembourg and Norway. It was fourth in productivity per hour, behind those two countries and the Netherlands.[101] Compared to Europe, U.S. property and corporate income tax rates are generally higher, while labor and, particularly, consumption tax rates are lower.[102]
According to the United States Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2010 was $49,445. The median ranged from $64,308 among Asian American households to $32,068 among African American households.[82] Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, the overall median is similar to the most affluent cluster of developed nations. After declining sharply during the middle of the 20th century, poverty rates have plateaued since the early 1970s, with 11–15% of Americans below the poverty line every year, and 58.5% spending at least one year in poverty between the ages of 25 and 75.[103][104] In 2010, 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty, a figure that rose for the fourth year in a row.[82]
The U.S. welfare state is one of the least extensive in the developed world, reducing both relative poverty and absolute poverty by considerably less than the mean for rich nations,[105][106] though combined private and public social expenditures per capita are relatively high.[107] While the American welfare state effectively reduces poverty among the elderly,[108] it provides relatively little assistance to the young.[109] A 2007 UNICEF study of children's well-being in twenty-one industrialized nations ranked the United States next to last.[110]
Between 1947 and 1979, real median income rose by over 80% for all classes, with the incomes of poor Americans rising faster than those of the rich.[111] However, income gains since then have been slower, less widely shared, and accompanied by increased economic insecurity.[111][112] Median household income has increased for all classes since 1980,[113] largely owing to more dual-earner households, the closing of the gender pay gap, and longer work hours, but the growth has been strongly tilted toward the very top.[105][111][114] Consequently, the share of income of the top 1%—21.8% of total reported income in 2005—has more than doubled since 1980,[115] leaving the United States with the greatest income inequality among developed nations.[105][116] The United States has a progressive tax system which equates to higher income earners paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes.[117] The top 1% pays 27.6% of all federal taxes, while the top 10% pays 54.7%.[118] Wealth, like income and taxes, is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share among developed nations.[119] The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth.[120] In 2011 the United Nations Development Programme ranked the United States 23rd among 139 countries on its inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI), nineteen places lower than in the standard HDI.[121]
The United States has been a leader in scientific research and technological innovation since the late 19th century. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone. Thomas Edison's laboratory developed the phonograph, the first long-lasting light bulb, and the first viable movie camera. Nikola Tesla pioneered alternating current, the AC motor, and radio. In the early 20th century, the automobile companies of Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford popularized the assembly line. The Wright brothers, in 1903, made the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight.[122]
The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led many European scientists, including Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and John von Neumann, to immigrate to the United States. During World War II, the Manhattan Project developed nuclear weapons, ushering in the Atomic Age. The Space Race produced rapid advances in rocketry, materials science, and computers. IBM, Apple Computer, and Microsoft refined and popularized the personal computer. The United States largely developed the ARPANET and its successor, the Internet. Today, 64% of research and development funding comes from the private sector.[123] The United States leads the world in scientific research papers and impact factor.[124] As of April 2010, 68% of American households had broadband Internet service.[125] The country is the primary developer and grower of genetically modified food, representing half of the world's biotech crops.[126]
Personal transportation is dominated by automobiles, which operate on a network of 13 million roads,[128] including one of the world's longest highway systems.[129] The world's second largest automobile market,[130] the United States has the highest rate of per-capita vehicle ownership in the world, with 765 vehicles per 1,000 Americans.[131] About 40% of personal vehicles are vans, SUVs, or light trucks.[132] The average American adult (accounting for all drivers and nondrivers) spends 55 minutes driving every day, traveling 29 miles (47 km).[133]
Mass transit accounts for 9% of total U.S. work trips,[134] ranking last in a survey of 17 countries.[135] While transport of goods by rail is extensive, relatively few people use rail to travel,[136] though ridership on Amtrak, the national intercity passenger rail system, grew by almost 37% between 2000 and 2010.[137] Light rail development has increased in recent years but, like high speed rail, is below European levels.[138] Bicycle usage for work commutes is minimal.[139]
The civil airline industry is entirely privately owned and has been largely deregulated since 1978, while most major airports are publicly owned. The three largest airlines in the world by passengers carried are U.S.-based; Delta Air Lines is number one.[140] Of the world's thirty busiest passenger airports, sixteen are in the United States, including the busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.[141]
The United States energy market is 29,000 terawatt hours per year. Energy consumption per capita is 7.8 tons of oil equivalent per year, the 10th highest rate in the world. In 2005, 40% of this energy came from petroleum, 23% from coal, and 22% from natural gas. The remainder was supplied by nuclear power and renewable energy sources.[142] The United States is the world's largest consumer of petroleum.[143] For decades, nuclear power has played a limited role relative to many other developed countries, in part due to public perception in the wake of a 1979 accident. In 2007, several applications for new nuclear plants were filed.[144] The United States has 27% of global coal reserves.[145]
American public education is operated by state and local governments, regulated by the United States Department of Education through restrictions on federal grants. Children are required in most states to attend school from the age of six or seven (generally, kindergarten or first grade) until they turn eighteen (generally bringing them through twelfth grade, the end of high school); some states allow students to leave school at sixteen or seventeen.[147] About 12% of children are enrolled in parochial or nonsectarian private schools. Just over 2% of children are homeschooled.[148]
The United States has many competitive private and public institutions of higher education. According to prominent international rankings, 13 or 15 American colleges and universities are ranked among the top 20 in the world.[149][150] There are also local community colleges with generally more open admission policies, shorter academic programs, and lower tuition. Of Americans twenty-five and older, 84.6% graduated from high school, 52.6% attended some college, 27.2% earned a bachelor's degree, and 9.6% earned graduate degrees.[151] The basic literacy rate is approximately 99%.[1][152] The United Nations assigns the United States an Education Index of 0.97, tying it for 12th in the world.[153]
The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth ranks it 50th among 221 nations.[155] Increasing obesity in the United States and health improvements elsewhere have contributed to lowering the country's rank in life expectancy from 1987, when it was 11th in the world.[156] Approximately one-third of the adult population is obese and an additional third is overweight;[157] the obesity rate, the highest in the industrialized world, has more than doubled in the last quarter-century.[158] Obesity-related type 2 diabetes is considered epidemic by health care professionals.[159] The infant mortality rate of 6.06 per thousand places the United States 176th out of 222 countries, higher than all of Western Europe.[160]
The U.S. health care system far outspends any other nation's, measured in both per capita spending and percentage of GDP.[161] The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. health care system in 2000 as first in responsiveness, but 37th in overall performance.
Health care coverage in the United States is a combination of public and private efforts, and is not universal as in all other developed countries. In 2004, private insurance paid for 36% of personal health expenditures, private out-of-pocket payments covered 15%, and federal, state, and local governments paid for 44%.[162] In 2005, 46.6 million Americans, 15.9% of the population, were uninsured, 5.4 million more than in 2001. The main cause of this rise is the drop in the number of Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance.[163] The subject of uninsured and underinsured Americans is a major political issue.[164] A 2009 study estimated that lack of insurance is associated with nearly 45,000 deaths a year.[165] In 2006, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate universal health insurance.[166] Federal legislation passed in early 2010 will create a near-universal health insurance system around the country by 2014.
Law enforcement in the United States is primarily the responsibility of local police and sheriff's departments, with state police providing broader services. Federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have specialized duties. At the federal level and in almost every state, jurisprudence operates on a common law system. State courts conduct most criminal trials; federal courts handle certain designated crimes as well as certain appeals from the state systems. Federal law prohibits a variety of drugs, although states sometimes pass laws in conflict with federal regulations. The smoking age is generally 18, and the drinking age is generally 21.
Among developed nations, the United States has above-average levels of violent crime and particularly high levels of gun violence and homicide.[168] There were 5.0 murders per 100,000 persons in 2009, 10.4% fewer than in 2000.[169] Gun ownership rights are the subject of contentious political debate.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate[170] and total prison population[171] in the world. At the start of 2008, more than 2.3 million people were incarcerated, more than one in every 100 adults.[172] The current rate is about seven times the 1980 figure,[173] and over three times the figure in Poland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country with the next highest rate.[174] African American males are jailed at about six times the rate of white males and three times the rate of Hispanic males.[170] The country's high rate of incarceration is largely due to sentencing and drug policies.[170][175]
Though it has been abolished in most Western nations, capital punishment is sanctioned in the United States for certain federal and military crimes, and in thirty-four states. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year moratorium, there have been more than 1,000 executions.[176] In 2010, the country had the fifth highest number of executions in the world, following China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.[177] In 2007, New Jersey became the first state to legislatively abolish the death penalty since the 1976 Supreme Court decision, followed by New Mexico in 2009 and Illinois in 2011.[178]
Race/Ethnicity (2010)[179] | |
---|---|
White | 72.4% |
Black/African American | 12.6% |
Asian | 4.8% |
American Indian and Alaska Native | 0.9% |
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander | 0.2% |
Other | 6.2% |
Two or more races | 2.9% |
Hispanic/Latino (of any race) | 16.3% |
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates the country's population now to be 313,802,000,[2] including an estimated 11.2 million illegal immigrants.[180] The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th century, from about 76 million in 1900.[181] The third most populous nation in the world, after China and India, the United States is the only major industrialized nation in which large population increases are projected.[182] Even with a birth rate of 13.82 per 1,000, 30% below the world average, its population growth rate is positive at 1%, significantly higher than those of many developed nations.[183] In fiscal year 2011, over 1 million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence.[184] Mexico has been the leading source of new residents for over two decades; since 1998, China, India, and the Philippines have been in the top four sending countries every year.[185]
The United States has a very diverse population—thirty-one ancestry groups have more than one million members.[186] White Americans are the largest racial group; German Americans, Irish Americans, and English Americans constitute three of the country's four largest ancestry groups.[186] African Americans are the nation's largest racial minority and third largest ancestry group.[186] Asian Americans are the country's second largest racial minority; the two largest Asian American ethnic groups are Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.[186] In 2010, the U.S. population included an estimated 5.2 million people with some American Indian or Alaska Native ancestry (2.9 million exclusively of such ancestry) and 1.2 million with some native Hawaiian or Pacific island ancestry (0.5 million exclusively).[187] The census counted more than 19 million people of "Some Other Race" who were "unable to identify with any" of its five official race categories in 2010.[187]
The population growth of Hispanic and Latino Americans (the terms are officially interchangeable) is a major demographic trend. The 50.5 million Americans of Hispanic descent[187] are identified as sharing a distinct "ethnicity" by the Census Bureau; 64% of Hispanic Americans are of Mexican descent.[188] Between 2000 and 2010, the country's Hispanic population increased 43% while the non-Hispanic population rose just 4.9%.[179] Much of this growth is from immigration; as of 2007, 12.6% of the U.S. population was foreign-born, with 54% of that figure born in Latin America.[189] Fertility is also a factor; as of 2010 the average Hispanic woman gave birth to 2.4 children in her lifetime, compared to 2.0 for non-Hispanic black women and 1.8 for non-Hispanic white women (below the replacement rate of 2.1).[190] Minorities (as defined by the Census Bureau as all those beside non-Hispanic, non-multiracial whites) constituted 36.3% of the population in 2010,[191] and nearly 50% of children under age 1,[192] and are projected to constitute the majority by 2042.[193]
About 82% of Americans live in urban areas (including suburbs);[1] about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000.[194] In 2008, 273 incorporated places had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than 1 million residents, and four global cities had over 2 million (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston).[195] There are fifty-two metropolitan areas with populations greater than 1 million.[196] Of the fifty fastest-growing metro areas, forty-seven are in the West or South.[197] The metro areas of Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Phoenix all grew by more than a million people between 2000 and 2008.[196]
Leading population centers | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank | Core city | Metro area pop.[198] | Metropolitan Statistical Area | Region[199] | New York City Los Angeles |
||
1 | New York City | 19,015,900 | New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA | Northeast | |||
2 | Los Angeles | 12,944,801 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA MSA | West | |||
3 | Chicago | 9,504,753 | Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI MSA | Midwest | |||
4 | Dallas | 6,526,548 | Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX MSA | South | |||
5 | Houston | 6,086,538 | Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown, TX MSA | South | |||
6 | Philadelphia | 5,992,414 | Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington, PA–NJ–DE–MD MSA | Northeast | |||
7 | Washington, D.C. | 5,703,948 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV MSA | South | |||
8 | Miami | 5,670,125 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL MSA | South | |||
9 | Atlanta | 5,359,205 | Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA | South | |||
10 | Boston | 4,591,112 | Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH MSA | Northeast | |||
based on the 2011 U.S. Population Estimate |
Languages (2010)[200] | |
---|---|
English (only) | 229.7 million |
Spanish, incl. Creole | 37.0 million |
Chinese | 2.8 million |
French, incl. Creole | 2.1 million |
Tagalog | 1.6 million |
Vietnamese | 1.4 million |
Korean | 1.1 million |
German | 1.1 million |
English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2010, about 230 million, or 80% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught second language.[200][201] Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states.[5] Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law.[202]
While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French.[203] Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms.[204] Many jurisdictions with large numbers of non-English speakers produce government materials, especially voting information, in the most commonly spoken languages in those jurisdictions. Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.
The United States is officially a secular nation; the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion and forbids the establishment of any religious governance. In a 2002 study, 59% of Americans said that religion played a "very important role in their lives", a far higher figure than that of any other wealthy nation.[205] According to a 2007 survey, 78.4% of adults identified themselves as Christian,[206] down from 86.4% in 1990.[207] Protestant denominations accounted for 51.3%, while Roman Catholicism, at 23.9%, was the largest individual denomination. The study categorizes white evangelicals, 26.3% of the population, as the country's largest religious cohort;[206] another study estimates evangelicals of all races at 30–35%.[208] The total reporting non-Christian religions in 2007 was 4.7%, up from 3.3% in 1990.[207] The leading non-Christian faiths were Judaism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Islam (0.6%), Hinduism (0.4%), and Unitarian Universalism (0.3%).[206] The survey also reported that 16.1% of Americans described themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply having no religion, up from 8.2% in 1990.[206][207]
In 2007, 58% of Americans age 18 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 25% had never been married.[209] Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees.[210]
Same-sex marriage is a contentious issue. Some states permit civil unions or domestic partnerships in lieu of marriage. Since 2003, several states have legalized gay marriage as the result of judicial or legislative action. Meanwhile, the federal government and a majority of states define marriage as between a man and a woman and/or explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage. Public opinion on the issue has shifted from general opposition in the 1990s to a statistical deadlock, to a majority in support.[211]
The U.S. teenage pregnancy rate, 79.8 per 1,000 women, is the highest among OECD nations.[212] Abortion policy was left to the states until the Supreme Court legalized the practice in 1973. The issue remains highly controversial, with public opinion closely divided for many years. Many states ban public funding of the procedure and restrict late-term abortions, require parental notification for minors, and mandate a waiting period. While the abortion rate is falling, the abortion ratio of 241 per 1,000 live births and abortion rate of 15 per 1,000 women aged 15–44 remain higher than those of most Western nations.[213]
The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values.[6][215] Aside from the now small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries.[216] Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa.[6][217] More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.[6]
American culture is considered the most individualistic in the world.[218] The American Dream, or the incorrect perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants.[219] While the mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society,[220] scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values.[221] The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism.[222] Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree.[223] While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute.[224]
The world's first commercial motion picture exhibition was given in New York City in 1894, using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope. The next year saw the first commercial screening of a projected film, also in New York, and the United States was in the forefront of sound film's development in the following decades. Since the early 20th century, the U.S. film industry has largely been based in and around Hollywood, California. Director D. W. Griffith was central to the development of film grammar and Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) is frequently cited as the greatest film of all time.[225] American screen actors like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe have become iconic figures, while producer/entrepreneur Walt Disney was a leader in both animated film and movie merchandising. The major film studios of Hollywood have produced the most commercially successful movies in history, such as Star Wars (1977) and Titanic (1997), and the products of Hollywood today dominate the global film industry.[226]
Americans are the heaviest television viewers in the world,[227] and the average viewing time continues to rise, reaching five hours a day in 2006.[228] The four major broadcast networks are all commercial entities. Americans listen to radio programming, also largely commercialized, on average just over two-and-a-half hours a day.[229] Aside from web portals and search engines, the most popular websites are Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogger, eBay, and Craigslist.[230]
The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music have deeply influenced American music at large, distinguishing it from European traditions. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and what is now known as old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz was developed by innovators such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, and rhythm and blues in the 1940s. Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry were among the mid-1950s pioneers of rock and roll. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of America's most celebrated songwriters and James Brown led the development of funk. More recent American creations include hip hop and house music. American pop stars such as Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna have become global celebrities.[231]
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the 19th century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is now recognized as an essential American poet.[232] A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel".[233]
Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are often named among the most influential writers of the 20th century.[234] Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. The Beat Generation writers opened up new literary approaches, as have postmodernist authors such as John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo.
The transcendentalists, led by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Sanders Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the 20th century, the work of W. V. O. Quine and Richard Rorty, and later Noam Chomsky, brought analytic philosophy to the fore of American philosophical academia. John Rawls and Robert Nozick led a revival of political philosophy.
In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The realist paintings of Thomas Eakins are now widely celebrated. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene.[235] Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new, individualistic styles. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought fame to American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry.
One of the first major promoters of American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the 20th century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.
Though little known at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition, while experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created a distinctive American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a new synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham helped create modern dance, while George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in 20th-century ballet. Americans have long been important in the modern artistic medium of photography, with major photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Ansel Adams. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.[236]
Mainstream American cuisine is similar to that in other Western countries. Wheat is the primary cereal grain. Traditional American cuisine uses indigenous ingredients, such as turkey, venison, potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup, which were consumed by Native Americans and early European settlers. Slow-cooked pork and beef barbecue, crab cakes, potato chips, and chocolate chip cookies are distinctively American foods. Soul food, developed by African slaves, is popular around the South and among many African Americans elsewhere. Syncretic cuisines such as Louisiana creole, Cajun, and Tex-Mex are regionally important.
Characteristic dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs derive from the recipes of various immigrants. French fries, Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos, and pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are widely consumed.[237] Americans generally prefer coffee to tea. Marketing by U.S. industries is largely responsible for making orange juice and milk ubiquitous breakfast beverages.[238]
The American fast food industry, the world's largest, pioneered the drive-through format in the 1930s. Fast food consumption has sparked health concerns. During the 1980s and 1990s, Americans' caloric intake rose 24%;[237] frequent dining at fast food outlets is associated with what public health officials call the American "obesity epidemic".[239] Highly sweetened soft drinks are widely popular, and sugared beverages account for 9% of American caloric intake.[240]
Baseball has been regarded as the national sport since the late 19th century, while American football is now by several measures the most popular spectator sport.[241] Basketball and ice hockey are the country's next two leading professional team sports. College football and basketball attract large audiences. Boxing and horse racing were once the most watched individual sports,[242] but they have been eclipsed by golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR. Soccer is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. Tennis and many outdoor sports are popular as well.
While most major U.S. sports have evolved out of European practices, volleyball, skateboarding, snowboarding, and cheerleading are American inventions. Basketball was invented in Massachusetts by Canadian-born James Naismith. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate Western contact. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The United States has won 2,301 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, more than any other country,[243] and 253 in the Winter Olympic Games, the second most.[244]
The nation retains United States customary units, comprising mainly former British imperial units such as miles, yards, and degrees Fahrenheit. Distinct units include the U.S. gallon and U.S. pint volume measurements. The United States is one of only three countries that do not rely primarily on the International System of Units. However, metric units are increasingly used in science, medicine, and many industrial fields.[245]
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lez:Америкадин Садхьанвай Штатарvep:Amerikan Ühtenzoittud Valdkundad
Justin Bieber | |
---|---|
Justin Bieber at the NRJ Music Awards in Cannes, France in 2012 |
|
Background information | |
Birth name | Justin Drew Bieber[1] |
Born | [2] London, Ontario, Canada |
March 1, 1994
Origin | Stratford, Ontario, Canada |
Genres | Pop, R&B, teen pop[3][4][5] |
Occupations | Singer-songwriter, musician, actor |
Instruments | Vocals, guitar, piano, percussion,[6] trumpet[7] |
Years active | 2008–present |
Labels | Island, RBMG |
Associated acts | Usher, Ludacris |
Website | justinbiebermusic.com |
Justin Drew Bieber ( /ˈbiːbər/ BEE-bər, born March 1, 1994)[2] is a Canadian Pop/R&B singer-songwriter, musician, and actor.[3][5] Bieber was discovered in 2008 by Scooter Braun,[8] who came across Bieber's videos on YouTube and later became his manager. Braun arranged for him to meet with Usher in Atlanta, Georgia, and Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher,[9] and then to a recording contract with Island Records offered by L.A. Reid.[6][10] Bieber's debut single, "One Time", was released in 2009 and peaked in the top twenty in Canada and charted in the top thirty in several international markets. His debut album, the seven-track EP My World, followed in November 2009, and was soon certified platinum in the United States. He became the first artist to have seven songs from a debut album chart on the Billboard Hot 100.[11]
Bieber's first full-length studio album, My World 2.0, was released in March 2010. It debuted at number one or within the top ten in several countries and was certified platinum in the United States. It was preceded by the worldwide top-ten single, "Baby". The music video of "Baby" is currently ranked as the most viewed and most discussed YouTube video.[12] Bieber followed up the release of his debut album with his first headlining tour, the My World Tour, the remix albums My Worlds Acoustic and Never Say Never – The Remixes, and the 3D biopic-concert film Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, that nearly matched the record for the biggest opening weekend gross for a concert-film. Bieber released his second studio album, Under the Mistletoe, in November 2011, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Bieber has received numerous awards, including Artist of the Year at the 2010 American Music Awards, and has been nominated for such awards as Best New Artist and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 53rd Grammy Awards. In 2012, Bieber was named Forbes 3rd most powerful celebrity in the world, earning $55 million. As of May 2012, Bieber has sold 15 million albums.[13]
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Bieber was born on March 1, 1994, in London, Ontario in St Joseph's Hospital,[14][15] and was raised in Stratford, Ontario.[16] Bieber's mother, Patricia Lynn "Pattie" Mallette, was 18 years old when she became pregnant. Mallette, originally from Stratford, raised her son with the help of her parents, Bruce and Diane.[17] Mallette worked a series of low-paying office jobs, raising Bieber as a single mother in low-income housing. Bieber has maintained contact with his father, Jeremy Jack Bieber, who married another woman and had two children.[18][19][20] Bieber's great-grandfather was from Germany.[21] Bieber's mother's ancestry is French Canadian.[22] Bieber attended a French immersion elementary school in Stratford called Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School.[17]
During his childhood, Bieber was interested in hockey, soccer, and chess; he often kept his musical aspirations to himself.[18] As he grew up, Bieber taught himself to play the piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet.[16][23] In early 2007, when he was twelve, Bieber sang Ne-Yo's "So Sick" for a local singing competition in Stratford and was placed second.[6][23] Mallette posted a video of the performance on YouTube for their family and friends to see. She continued to upload videos of Bieber singing covers of various R&B songs, and Bieber's popularity on the site grew.[10] Chris Hicks, Bieber's A&R at Island/Def Jam, explained the young artist's huge online following to HitQuarters by saying:
"He was doing something different. He was an attractive white kid singing very soulful R&B hits. That set him apart immediately from anyone in his range because no one was covering or singing these kind of records. But equally important was that you believed in these songs – it was real. And you wanted to hear more."[24]
While searching for videos of a different singer, Scooter Braun, a former marketing executive of So So Def, clicked on one of Bieber's 2007 videos by accident.[18] Impressed, Braun tracked down the theater Bieber was performing in, located Bieber's school, and finally contacted Mallette. Mallette was reluctant because of Braun's Jewish religion; she remembered praying, "God, I gave him to you. You could send me a Christian man, a Christian label! ... you don’t want this Jewish kid to be Justin’s man, do you?"[18] However, after praying with her church elders and receiving their encouragement, she permitted Braun to fly Bieber, then 13,[10] to Atlanta, Georgia, to record demo tapes.[18] A week after arriving, Bieber sang for R&B singer/songwriter Usher.[25] Bieber was soon signed to Raymond Braun Media Group (RBMG), a joint venture between Braun and Usher.[9] Justin Timberlake was also reportedly in the running to sign Bieber, but lost the bidding war to Usher.[9][26] Usher then sought assistance in finding a label home for the artist from then manager Chris Hicks, who helped engineer an audition with his contact Antonio L.A. Reid of Island Def Jam Music Group.[24] Reid signed Bieber to Island Records in October 2008 (resulting in a joint venture between RBMG and Island Records) and appointed Hicks as executive Vice-President of Def Jam where he would be able manage Bieber's career at the label.[6][9][10][24] At that point, Bieber and his mother moved to Atlanta temporarily, also the home of Usher and Braun, to record and get counseling from Braun.[9] Braun became Bieber's manager.[10]
Bieber's first single, "One Time", was released to radio while Bieber was still recording his debut album.[27] The song reached number 12 on the Canadian Hot 100 during its first week of release in July 2009,[10] and later peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. During fall 2009 it had success in international markets.[28] The song was certified Platinum in Canada and the US and Gold in Australia and New Zealand.[29][30][31] Bieber's first release, an extended play entitled My World, was released on November 17, 2009. The album's second single, "One Less Lonely Girl", and two promo singles, "Love Me", and "Favorite Girl", were released exclusively on the iTunes store and charted within the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100.[28] "One Less Lonely Girl" was later also released to radio and peaked within the top fifteen in Canada and the US, being certified Gold in the latter.[28] My World was eventually certified Platinum in the US and Double Platinum in both Canada and the UK.[31][32][33] To promote the album, Bieber performed on several live shows such as mtvU's VMA 09 Tour, European program The Dome, YTV's The Next Star, The Today Show,[34][35] The Wendy Williams Show, Lopez Tonight, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, It's On with Alexa Chung, Good Morning America, Chelsea Lately, and BET's 106 & Park with Rihanna. Bieber also guest starred in an episode of True Jackson, VP in late 2009.[36]
Bieber performed Stevie Wonder's "Someday at Christmas" for U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House for Christmas in Washington, which was broadcast on December 20, 2009, on U.S. television broadcaster TNT.[37] Bieber was also one of the performers at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest on December 31, 2009.[38] Bieber was a presenter at the 52nd Grammy Awards on January 31, 2010. He was invited to be a vocalist for the remake of We Are The World (a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie) for its 25th anniversary to benefit Haiti after the earthquake. Bieber sings the opening line, which was sung by Lionel Richie in the original version.[39] On March 12, 2010, a version of K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" recorded by a collective of Canadian musicians known as Young Artists for Haiti was released. Bieber is featured in the song, performing the closing lines.
"Baby", the lead single from his debut album, My World 2.0, which features Ludacris, was released in January 2010 and became his biggest hit thus far, charting at number five in the U.S. and reaching the top ten in seven other countries.[28] Two promo singles "Never Let You Go", and "U Smile" were top thirty hits on the U.S. Hot 100, and top twenty hits in Canada.[28] According to review aggregator Metacritic, the album has received "generally favorable reviews".[40] It debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200, making Bieber the youngest solo male act to top the chart since Stevie Wonder in 1963.[41] My World 2.0 also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, Irish Albums Chart, Australian Albums Chart, and the New Zealand Albums Chart[28] and reached the top ten of fifteen other countries.[42][43] To promote the album, Bieber appeared on several live programs including The View, the 2010 Kids Choice Awards, Nightline, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Dome and 106 and Park.[44] Bieber collaborated with Sean Kingston on his single "Eenie Meenie" which also appeared on Bieber's debut album. The song reached the top ten in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the top-twenty of most other markets.
On April 10, 2010, Bieber was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.[45] On July 4, 2010, Bieber performed at the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular in New York City.[46] The second single from My World 2.0, "Somebody to Love", was released in April 2010, and a remix was released featuring Bieber's mentor Usher. The single reached number ten in Canada, number fifteen in the United States, and the top twenty in multiple international countries.
On June 23, 2010, Bieber went on his first official headlining tour, the My World Tour, starting in Hartford, Connecticut, to promote My World and My World 2.0.[47] In July 2010, it was reported that Bieber was the most searched for celebrity on the Internet.[48] That same month his music video, "Baby", surpassed Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" to become the most viewed, and most disliked YouTube video ever.[49] In September 2010, it was reported that Bieber accounted for three percent of all traffic on Twitter, according to an employee of the social-networking site.[50]
Bieber began recording his second album in July 2010 in New York City.[51] At this point, because of puberty, his voice was deeper than it was when he recorded his first album. In April 2010, the singer discussing his vocals remarked, "It cracks. Like every teenage boy, I'm dealing with it and I have the best vocal coach in the world. [...] Some of the notes I hit on "Baby" I can't hit anymore. We have to lower the key when I sing live."[52]
Bieber guest-starred in the season premiere of the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which aired on September 23, 2010. He played a "troubled teen who is faced with a difficult decision regarding his only brother", who is also a serial bomber. Bieber was also in a subsequent episode which aired on February 17, 2011, in which his character is killed.[53] Bieber performed a medley of "U Smile", "Baby", and "Somebody to Love" and briefly played the drums at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards on September 12, 2010.[54] Bieber announced in October 2010 that he would release an acoustic album, called My Worlds Acoustic.[55] It was released on Black Friday in the United States and featured acoustic versions of songs from his previous albums, and accompanied the release of a completely new song titled "Pray".[56]
A 3-D part-biopic, part-concert film starring Bieber entitled Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, was released on February 11, 2011, directed by Step Up 3D director Jon Chu. It topped the box office with an estimated gross of $12.4 million on its opening day from 3,105 theaters.[57] It grossed $30.3 million for the weekend and was narrowly beaten by the romantic comedy Just Go With It, which grossed $31 million.[58] Never Say Never is said to have exceeded industry expectations, nearly matching the $31.1 million grossed by Miley Cyrus's 2008 3-D concert film, Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert, which holds the record for the top debut for a music-documentary.[59][60] Never Say Never grossed a total of $98,441,954 worldwide.[61] The film is accompanied by his second remix album, Never Say Never – The Remixes, released February 14, 2011, and features remixes of songs from his debut album, with guest appearances from Miley Cyrus, Chris Brown, and Kanye West, among others.[62]
On February 27, 2011, Bieber attended the 2011 Vanity Fair Oscar Party with American actress and singer Selena Gomez,[63] confirming several months of media speculation about a romantic relationship between the pair.[64][65][66][67][68][69]
In June 2011, Bieber was ranked number 2 on the Forbes list of Best-Paid Celebrities under 30. He is the youngest star and 1 of 7 musicians on the list raking in with $53 million earned in a 12 month period.[70] On November 1, 2011, Bieber released Under the Mistletoe, his second studio album.[71] It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 210,000 copies in its first week of release.[72]
In late 2011, Bieber began recording his third studio album, entitled Believe. Kanye West and Drake are confirmed to be featured on the album.[73] On February 22, 2012, Bieber announced via Twitter that the first single off Believe will be released in March 2012.[74] The following week, Bieber appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to announce that the first single will be called "Boyfriend" and was released on March 26, 2012.[75] The song was co-written by Mike Posner.[76] The second single, Die In Your Arms, was released on May 29th, 2012. [77]
Justin Bieber has a higher score on the Klout online "influence" scale than Barack Obama or The Dalai Lama.[78] According to Jan Hoffman of The New York Times, part of Bieber's appeal stems from his YouTube channel. Long before he released his EP, My World, in mid-November, the YouTube videos attracted millions of views.[18] Braun recognized the appeal. Prior to flying him to Atlanta, Braun wanted to "build him up more on YouTube first" and had Bieber record more home videos for the channel. "I said: 'Justin, sing like there’s no one in the room. But let's not use expensive cameras.' We'll give it to kids, let them do the work, so that they feel like it's theirs", recalled Braun.[18] Bieber continues to upload videos to the same channel and has opened a Twitter account, from which he interacts with fans regularly;[10] his account was reported in November 2010 to have over 6 million followers.[79] Since then he has been consistently gaining followers at an average of 24,000 per day.[80] The accounts also serve marketing purposes; for example, Bieber's music video for "One Time" only began selling quickly after it was uploaded to YouTube.[81]
Usher comments that while he and Bieber were both signed at the same age, "I had the chance to ramp up my success, where this has happened to Bieber abruptly." As a result, Usher, Braun, Bieber's bodyguard Kenny, and other adults surrounding Bieber constantly coach him on handling fame and his public image.[18] After signing Bieber, Usher appointed one of his former assistants, Ryan Good, to be Bieber's road manager and stylist. Good, once nicknamed Bieber's "swagger coach", created a "streetwise look" for the singer which consisted of baseball caps, hoodies, dog chains and flashy sneakers. Amy Kaufman of The Los Angeles Times comments, "Though a product of a middle-class suburban upbringing in Stratford, Ontario, Bieber's manner of dress and speech ("Wassup man, how you doin'?" or "It's like, you know, whateva' ") suggest he's mimicking his favorite rappers."[82]
Bieber is often featured in teen magazines such as Tiger Beat,[18] and has been labeled as a "teen heartthrob".[83] Bieber has released a collection of nail varnishes to raise awareness for charity.[84] Wax statues of Bieber are on display at Madame Tussauds wax museums in New York, Amsterdam and London.[85] His change of hairstyle in 2010, and the consequent alterations to Bieber products, led to it being called 'the most expensive musical haircut of all time;[86] one company spent $100,000 to fix its dolls for the 2011 Christmas season.[87]
Bieber has been criticized for looking and sounding younger than his age, his teen-pop music, image, and frequent media attention.[88] He has been a frequent target of Internet bloggers and message board posters, notably by users of Internet message board 4chan and users of YouTube.[89] Nick Collins of The Daily Telegraph speculated that "Bieber's character also appears to strike a particularly sour note with his Internet critics, with many remarks commenting on his youthful appearance, his teen-pop songs, his image as a heart-throb to young teenage girls and his manner of speech".[90]
Bieber is a Christian,[91] and said he has a relationship with Jesus, talks to him and that "he's the reason I'm here".[92]
Bieber's comments in a February 2011 profile in Rolling Stone sparked controversy.[93] Asked about abstinence, Bieber responded, "I don't think you should have sex with anyone unless you love them." He said he does not "believe in abortion" and that it is "like killing a baby".[94] He described sexual orientation as "everyone's own decision."[95] Bieber has contributed to the It Gets Better Project,[96] which aims to prevent suicide among LGBT youth.[97]
Bieber has said he is not interested in obtaining United States citizenship and has criticized America's health care system. Praising Canada as being "the best country in the world", he cited its health care system as a model example.[94]
In May 2012, Bieber purchased a 10,000 square-foot mansion on 1.3 acres of land, located in the community of Calabasas, California, a suburb of Los Angeles.[98]
As of April 2012[update], Bieber's Twitter account (@justinbieber) is the second most popular celebrity account behind that of Lady Gaga.[99] By mid-April 2012, he had over 20 million followers.[100][101] His follower acquisition is one new follower every other second.[102][103] His popularity on Twitter at one point accounted for three percent of all Twitter related traffic, with a Twitter employee commenting that "racks of servers are dedicated" to Bieber.[103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110][111][112] This resulted in over 180 million page views for the service each month.[105] Bieber was frequently a trending topic on Twitter when the feature first launched[105] because his fans frequently discussed him on the network. [113] and was named the top trending star on Twitter in 2010;[114] Klout gave his account a score of 100.[115][116]
The size of Bieber's and Gaga's follower bases are cited as a reason why marketers should pay attention to Twitter:[117] with an ability to reach millions of people with a single tweet.[117] 8.3% of tweets mentioning "bieber" were semi-automated and probably Twitter related spam.[118] Research done about Twitter and the 2011 Egyptian revolution includes Bieber as he made tweets about the topic at a time when he had roughly 8 million followers. His multiple tweets resulted in 32,000 responses each, which made Bieber's Twitter account one of the single largest nodes for discussion about the uprising one of the largest on Twitter.[119][120]
In March 2012, Bieber fans launched an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Lady Gaga as the most popular celebrity on Twitter. Neither Bieber nor Lady Gaga discussed their mutual fanbase's campaigns on Twitter.[121]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
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2009 | True Jackson, VP | Himself | Guest star |
My Date With... | |||
2010 | Silent Library | ||
School Gyrls | Cameo | ||
Saturday Night Live | Guest star/performer | Ep 35.18 | |
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Jason McCann | Shock Waves (Season 11, Episode 1) | |
Hubworld | Guest star | Season 1, Episode 1 | |
The X Factor (UK) | Performer | Series 7, Week 8 | |
2011 | Extreme Makeover: Home Edition | Guest star[122] | |
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Jason McCann | Targets of Obsession (Season 11, Episode 15). | |
Khloé & Lamar | Himself | Episode:The Father In Law (uncredited) Himself playing the NBA Celebrity All Star Game | |
Saturday Night Live | Guest star | Ep. 36.14 | |
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never[123] | Himself | Film produced by MTV Films and distributed by Paramount Pictures released February 2011 in United States; and March to April worldwide[124] The official movie trailer was released on October 26[125] | |
Dancing With The Stars | Guest star | Week 7 Result Show | |
So Random! | Himself | He performed in December 2011. | |
Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade | Guest star | Performed at Walt Disney World Resort | |
The X Factor (UK) | Performer | Series 8, Week 9 | |
2012 | Men in Black 3 | Baby Alien |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Justin Bieber |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Justin Bieber |
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Born | Crescent, Oklahoma, United States |
December 17, 1987
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Service/branch | United States Army |
Years of service | Since 2007 |
Rank | Private First Class |
Unit | 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division |
Awards | National Defense Service Medal |
Parents | Brian Manning Susan Fox |
Bradley Edward Manning (born December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier who was arrested in May 2010 in Iraq on suspicion of having passed classified material to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. He was charged over the following months with a number of offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source, and aiding the enemy, a capital offense, though prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.[1]
Assigned as an intelligence analyst in October 2009 to an army unit based near Baghdad, Manning was given access to several databases used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested after Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, told the FBI that Manning had confided during online chats that he had downloaded material from these databases and passed it to WikiLeaks. The material, much of it published between April and November 2010, included videos of a 2007 helicopter gun attack in Baghdad and the 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, 250,000 United States diplomatic cables, and 500,000 army reports that came to be known as the Iraq and Afghan War logs. It was the largest set of restricted documents ever leaked to the public.[2]
Manning was held from July 2010 in the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, under Prevention of Injury status, which entailed de facto solitary confinement and other restrictions that caused international concern. In April 2011, 295 academics – many of them prominent American legal scholars – signed a letter arguing that the detention conditions violated the United States Constitution. Later that month the Pentagon transferred him to a medium-security jail at Fort Leavenworth, allowing him to interact with other detainees. He was arraigned in February 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland, where he declined to enter a plea. The trial is expected to begin in September.[3]
Reaction to his arrest, and to the news that he may face life imprisonment, was mixed. Denver Nicks writes that the material published by WikiLeaks, particularly the diplomatic cables, was widely seen as a catalyst for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, and that Manning himself was viewed as both a 21st-century Tiananmen Square Tank Man and as an embittered traitor. Several commentators, including The Washington Post, focused on why an apparently very unhappy Army private had access to classified material, and why no security measures were in place to prevent it being copied through unauthorized downloads.[4]
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Manning was born to Susan Fox, originally from Wales, and her American husband, Brian Manning, in Crescent, Oklahoma, a small town already associated with a famous whistleblower, Karen Silkwood. His father had joined the United States Navy in 1974 when he was 19 and served for five years as an intelligence analyst, meeting Susan when he was stationed in Wales at Cawdor Barracks. Manning's sister, eleven years his senior, was born in 1976. The couple returned to the United States in 1979, moving at first to California, then to a two-story house several miles north of Crescent, with an above-ground swimming pool and five acres of land where they kept pigs and chickens. Manning's father later worked as an IT manager for a rental car agency, which saw him regularly travel overseas.[5]
Manning was small for his age – as an adult, he reached just 5 ft 2 in (1.57 m) and weighed 105 lb (47.6 kg) – good at the saxophone and science, and even in elementary school said he wanted to join the army. He was a straight-A student who was particularly good with computers. Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post writes that, when he was seven or eight, his father taught him how to use the C++ programming language, and his father told PBS that Manning created his first website when he was ten years old. He taught himself how to use Powerpoint, won the grand prize three years in a row at the local science fair, and in sixth grade took top prize at a state-wide quiz bowl. By the age of 13 he was rewriting lines of video-game code to change the appearance of the characters.[6]
His mother had difficulty adjusting to life in the United States and suffered from poor health; she was living several miles out of town, never learned to drive, had not learned to read or write well, and developed a drinking problem. She was by all accounts too soft with her son, while his father veered in the opposite direction, to the point where Manning seemed to fear him. With his father away much of the time, Manning was largely left to fend for himself; Nakashima writes that he was dressing himself and preparing his own breakfast by the time he was six. His father would stock up on food for the house before his business trips, and leave pre-signed checks for the children to pay the bills. A neighbor told The New York Times that, when the school went on field trips, she would give her own son extra food or money so he could make sure Manning had something to eat.[7]
Rick McCombs, now his school's principal and then a teacher, told Denver Nicks that Manning always had an opinion about things, even in middle school, and it was clear he had a mind of his own. This sometimes translated itself into behavioral problems, and by the age of nine or ten, he had started to lose his temper and throw things when crossed, according to an aunt and a former classmate. He was openly opposed to religion; he would refuse to do homework related to the Bible, and remained silent during the parts of the Pledge of Allegiance that refer to God. His father's strictness may have contributed to his becoming introverted and withdrawn, something that deepened when at age 13 he began to question his sexual orientation.[8]
His father moved out of the family home in 1999. Manning told Lamo there had been a big fight, where his father had pulled out a gun, and social workers became involved. The couple divorced in 2000 when Manning was 13, and his father remarried; Manning and his mother moved out of the house to a rented apartment in Crescent. His father's second wife was also called Susan, and Manning apparently took it hard when the second's wife son by a previous relationship changed his surname to Manning. His mother had to call a family friend round to the apartment one day in 2001, when Manning was 13, to help calm him down when he found out about it; he started taking running jumps at the walls, and told his mother: "I'm nobody now."[9]
In November 2001 Manning and his mother left the United States and moved overseas to Haverfordwest, Wales, where his mother had family. Manning attended the town's Tasker Milward secondary school, where they nicknamed him "Bradders." A schoolfriend there, James Kirkpatrick, told Ed Caesar for The Sunday Times that Manning's personality was "unique, extremely unique. Very quirky, very opinionated, very political, very clever, very articulate." His interest in computers continued, and in 2003 he and a friend set up a website, angeldyne.com, a message board that offered games and music downloads.[10]
He became the target of bullying at the school because he was the only American. The students would imitate his accent, and they apparently abandoned him once during a camping trip. His aunt told The Washington Post: "[H]e woke up, and all the tents around him were gone. They left while he was sleeping." He was also targeted for being effeminate. Nicks writes that he had told two of his friends in Oklahoma that he was gay, but he was not open about it at school in Wales.[11]
He feared that his mother was becoming too ill to cope with him, so he decided in 2005 when he was 17 to return to the United States after sitting his General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSEs). On his way through London to renew his passport for his return home, he arrived at the King's Cross underground station on the day of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, and said he heard the sirens and the screaming. He moved in with his father in Oklahoma City, where his father was living with his second wife and her child, and got a job as a developer with a software company, Zoto. He was apparently happy for a time, but was let go after four months. His boss, Kord Campbell, told The Washington Post that on a few occasions Manning had "just locked up," and would simply sit and stare, including once when Campbell was teaching him to drive, and in the end communication became too difficult. Campbell told the newspaper he felt that "nobody’s been taking care of this kid for a really long time."[12]
Manning was by then living as a gay man, which his father accepted, but there were problems in the relationship with his stepmother. According to Fishman, she wanted Manning to pay his way, and believed he was faking being gay to get attention, to which he responded by wearing eye make-up and bringing a boyfriend back for the night. In March 2006, Manning reportedly threatened her with a knife during an argument about his failure to get another job; she called the police, and he was asked to leave the house.[13]
He decided to strike out on his own, and drove to Tulsa in a pick-up truck his father had given him, sleeping in it for a while, then moving in with a friend from school. Manning had to sleep in an upstairs closet because the friend's father was not aware that he had moved in. The two of them got jobs at Incredible Pizza in April, then Manning spent some time in Chicago, before he called his mother in desperation, having run out of money and with nowhere to stay. His mother in turn called his father's sister, Debra, a lawyer in Potomac, Maryland, and it was agreed that Manning could stay there for awhile. Nicks writes that the 15 months he spent with his aunt were among the most stable of his life. He had a boyfriend, took several low-paid jobs – including in July 2007 with Starbucks, then Abercrombie & Fitch – and spent a semester studying history and English at Montgomery College, though he left after failing an exam.[14]
In October 2007, he decided to enlist in the army. His father had spent weeks persuading him to consider it because he was concerned about his son's future, and Manning, for his part, hoped to gain a college education and saw no other way to get it – according to Ellen Nakashima he wanted to study for a PhD in physics. When he told his aunt his plans, she tried to stop him, but he had already signed up.[15]
He went through basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, but six weeks after enlisting was sent to the discharge unit after doubts arose about his stability. He was allegedly being bullied, and in the opinion of a soldier who spent time with him there, he was having a breakdown. The soldier told The Guardian: "The kid was barely five foot ... He was a runt, so pick on him. He's crazy, pick on him. He's a faggot, pick on him. The guy took it from every side. He couldn't please anyone." Nicks writes that Manning, who was used to being bullied, fought back – if the drill sergeants screamed at him, he would scream at them – to the point where they started calling him "General Manning."[16]
The decision to discharge him was revoked, and he was "recycled," because the army needed his IT skills. He started basic training again in January 2008 and after graduating in April moved to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he trained as an intelligence analyst, receiving a TS/SCI security clearance (Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information"). According to Nicks, this security clearance, combined with the digitization of classified information and the American government's policy of sharing it widely, gave Manning access to an unprecedented amount of classified material. Nicks writes that he was reprimanded while at Fort Huachuca for posting three video messages to friends on YouTube, in which he described the inside of the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility," or SCIF, that he was working in.[17]
In August 2008, he was sent to Fort Drum in Jefferson County, New York, where he joined the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, and trained for deployment to Iraq. It was while stationed there in the fall of 2008 that he met Tyler Watkins, who was studying neuroscience and psychology at Brandeis University, near Boston. Watkins was his first serious relationship, and he posted happily on Facebook about it, regularly traveling 300 miles to Boston on visits.[18]
Watkins introduced him to a network of friends and the university's hacker community. He also visited Boston University's "hackerspace" workshop, known as "Builds," and met its founder, David House, the computer scientist and MIT researcher who was later allowed to visit him in jail. In November 2008, he gave an anonymous interview to a high-school reporter during a rally in Syracuse in support of gay marriage, telling her: "I was kicked out of my home and I once lost my job. The world is not moving fast enough for us at home, work, or the battlefield. I've been living a double life. ... I can't make a statement. I can't be caught in an act. I hope the public support changes. I do hope to do that before ETS [Expiration of Term of Service]."[19]
Nicks writes that Manning would travel back to Washington, D.C. for visits, where an ex-boyfriend helped him find his way around the city's vibrant gay community, introducing him to lobbyists, activists, and White House aides. Back at Fort Drum, he continued to display emotional problems and by August 2009 had been referred to an Army mental-health counselor, a chaplain. A friend told Nicks that Manning could be emotionally fraught, describing an evening they had watched two movies together – The Last King of Scotland and Dancer in the Dark – which reduced Manning to tears for hours. By September 2009, his relationship with Watkins was in trouble, and although they reconciled for a short time, it was effectively over.[20]
After several few weeks engaging in simulations at the Joint Readiness Training Center in Fort Polk, Louisiana, he was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, near Baghdad, arriving in October 2009. From his workstation there, he had access to SIPRNet (the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) and JWICS (the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System). Two of his superiors had discussed not taking him to Iraq – one of them said it was felt he was "a risk to himself and possibly others," according to a statement later issued by the army – but again the shortage of intelligence analysts held sway.[21]
A month later, in November 2009, he was promoted from Private First Class to Specialist. That same month, according to his chats with Lamo, he made his first contact with WikiLeaks, shortly after it posted 570,000 pager messages from the 9/11 attacks, which it released on November 25.[22] Also in November, Manning wrote to a gender counselor in the United States, said he felt female, and discussed having sex reassignment surgery. The counselor told Steve Fishman of New York Magazine that it was clear Manning was in crisis, partly because of his gender confusion, but also because he was opposed to the kind of war he found himself involved in.[23]
He was by all accounts unhappy and isolated. Because of the army's "don't ask, don't tell" policy (known as DADT and repealed in September 2011), he was not allowed to be openly gay, though he apparently made no secret of it – his friends told reporters that he kept a fairy wand on his desk. When he told his roommate he was gay, the roommate responded by suggesting they not speak to each other. The working conditions did not help his mental health. He was doing 14–15 hour night shifts in a secure room, which he described to a friend as "a dimly lit room crowded to the point you cant move an inch without having to quietly say 'excuse me sir,' 'pardon me sergeant major' ... cables trip you up everywhere, papers stacked everywhere ..."[24]
On December 20, 2009, after being told he would lose his one day off a week for being persistently late, he overturned a table in a conference room in what witnesses described as a fit of rage, damaging a computer that was sitting on it – and in the view of one soldier looked as though he was about to grab a rifle from a gun rack, before his arms were pinned behind his back. Several of those who witnessed the incident believed his access to sensitive material ought to have been withdrawn at that point. The following month, he began posting on Facebook that he felt alone and hopeless.[25]
Army investigators told a pre-trial hearing (see below) that they believed Manning downloaded the Iraq and Afghan war logs around this time, in January 2010. WikiLeaks tweeted on January 8 that they had obtained "encrypted videos of US bomb strikes on civilians," and linked to a story about the May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. During the same month, he traveled to the United States via Germany for a two-week holiday, arriving on January 24, and attended a party at Boston University's hacker space. It was during this visit that Manning first lived for a few days as a woman, dressing in women's clothes, wearing a wig and going out. After his arrest, his former partner, Tyler Watkins, told Kevin Poulsen of Wired that Manning had said during the January visit that he had found some sensitive information and was considering leaking it.[26]
Manning later told Lamo he had passed the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral murder") video to WikiLeaks shortly after this, in February 2010. In April, just as WikiLeaks published the video, Manning sent an e-mail to his master sergeant, Paul Adkins, saying he was suffering from gender identity disorder and attaching a photograph of himself dressed as a woman. Captain Steven Lim, Manning's commander, said he first saw the e-mail after Manning's arrest – when information about hormone replacement therapy was found in his room in Baghdad – and learned that Manning had been calling himself Breanna.[27]
Manning told Adrian Lamo that his commander had found out about the gender confusion before his arrest, after looking at his medical files at the beginning of May. He told Lamo he had set up Twitter and YouTube accounts in Breanna's name to give her a digital presence, writing in the chat: "i wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me ... plastered all over the world press ... as [a] boy ... the CPU is not made for this motherboard ..."[28]
On April 30, he posted on Facebook that he was utterly lost, and over the next few days that "Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment," that he was "beyond frustrated," and "livid" after being "lectured by ex-boyfriend despite months of relationship ambiguity ..." On May 7, he seemed to spiral out of control. According to army witnesses, he was found curled into a fetal position in a storage cupboard, with a knife at his feet, and had cut the words "I want" into a vinyl chair. A few hours later, he had an altercation with a female intelligence analyst, Specialist Jihrleah Showman, during which he punched her in the face. The brigade psychiatrist referred to an "occupational problem and adjustment disorder," and recommended a discharge. His master sergeant removed the bolt from his weapon, and he was sent to work in the supply office, though at this point his security clearance remained in place. He was demoted from Specialist to Private First Class just two days before his arrest on May 26.[29]
Ellen Nakashima writes that, on May 9, Manning contacted Jonathan Odell, a gay American novelist in Minneapolis, via Facebook, leaving a message that he wanted to speak to him in confidence, saying he had been involved in some "very high-profile events, albeit as a nameless individual thus far." On May 19, according to army investigators, he e-mailed Eric Schmiedl, a mathematician he had met in Boston, and told him he had been the source of the "Collateral Murder" video. Two days later, he began the series of chats with Adrian Lamo that led to his arrest.[30]
WikiLeaks was set up in late 2006 as a disclosure portal, initially using the Wikipedia model, where volunteers would write up and analyze classified or restricted material submitted by whistleblowers, or material that was in some other way legally threatened. It was Julian Assange – an Australian Internet activist and journalist, and the de facto editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks – who had the idea of creating what Ben Laurie called an "open-source, democratic intelligence agency." The open-editing aspect was soon abandoned, but the site remained open for anonymous submissions.[31]
According to Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks spokesman, part of the WikiLeaks security concept was that they did not know who their sources were. The New York Times wrote in December 2010 that the U.S. government was trying to discover whether Assange had been a passive recipient of material from Manning, or had encouraged or helped him to extract the files; if the latter, Assange could be charged with conspiracy. Manning told Lamo in May 2010 that he had developed a relationship with Assange, communicating directly with him using an encrypted Internet conferencing service, but knew little about him. WikiLeaks did not identify Manning as their source. Army investigators told a pre-trial hearing that they had found 14–15 pages of chats between Manning and someone they believed to be Assange, but Nicks writes that no decisive evidence was found of Assange offering Manning any direction.[32]
On February 18, 2010, WikiLeaks posted the first of the material allegedly from Manning, a diplomatic cable dated January 13, 2010, from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, a document now known as Reykjavik13. In the chat log, Manning called it a "test" document. On March 15, WikiLeaks posted a 32-page report written in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Defense about WikiLeaks itself. On March 29, it posted U.S. State Department profiles of politicians in Iceland.[33]
Manning told Lamo that he had found and passed on the video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike, which WikiLeaks named the "Collateral Murder" video. He told Lamo: "At first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter. No big deal ... about two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer’s directory. So I looked into it."[35]
On April 5, Julian Assange called a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and released the video. It showed an American helicopter firing on a group of around 12 men in Baghdad; one of the men was carrying an anti-tank grenade launcher (an RPG-7), and two were Reuters employees carrying cameras that the pilots mistook for guns. The helicopter also fired on a van that stopped to help the injured members of the first group; two children in the van were wounded and their father killed. The Washington Post wrote that it was this video, viewed by millions, that put WikiLeaks on the map. According to Nicks, Manning e-mailed one of his superiors after the video aired and tried to persuade her that it was the same version as the video of the attack that was stored on SIPRnet; Nicks writes that it seemed as though Manning wanted to be caught.[36]
On July 25, WikiLeaks and its three partners – The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel – began publishing the 91,731 documents that became known as the Afghan War logs, and on October 22 the Iraq War logs, 391,832 classified military reports covering the period January 2004 to December 2009. Nicks writes that the publication of the former was a watershed moment, the "beginning of the information age exploding upon itself." Manning told Lamo he was also responsible for the leak, known as "Cablegate", of 251,287 State Department cables, written by 271 American embassies and consulates in 180 countries, dated December 1966 to February 2010. The cables were passed by Assange to his three media partners, plus El País and others, and published in stages from November 28, 2010, with the names of sources removed. WikiLeaks said it was the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain.[37]
The rest of the cables were published unredacted by WikiLeaks on September 1, 2011, after David Leigh and Luke Harding of The Guardian inadvertently published the passphrase for a file that was still online; Nicks writes that one Ethiopian journalist had to leave his country and the U.S. government said it had to relocate several sources. Manning is also thought to have been the source of the Guantanamo Bay files leak, originally obtained by WikiLeaks in 2010 and published by The New York Times over a year later on April 24, 2011.[38]
On May 20, 2010, Manning contacted Adrian Lamo, a former "grey hat" hacker convicted in 2004 of having accessed The New York Times computer network two years earlier without permission. Lamo had been profiled that day by Kevin Poulsen in Wired magazine; the story said he had been involuntarily hospitalized and diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.[40]
Poulsen, by then a reporter, was himself a former hacker who had used Lamo as a source several times since 2000.[39] Indeed, it was Poulsen who in 2002 had told The New York Times, on Lamo's behalf, that Lamo had gained unauthorized access to its network. Poulsen then wrote the story up for SecurityFocus. Lamo would often hack into a system, tell the organization he had done it – using Poulsen as an intermediary – then offer to fix their security.[41]
According to Fishman, Lamo had worked on an LGBT youth task force, and this, combined with his fame as a hacker, would have encouraged Manning to confide in him.[42] Lamo said Manning sent him several encrypted e-mails on May 20 after seeing a tweet from Lamo about WikiLeaks. Lamo said he was unable to decrypt the e-mails but replied anyway, not knowing the recipient or being able to read the content, and invited the e-mailer to chat on AOL IM. Manning sent him more e-mails, also encrypted. Lamo said he later turned the e-mails over to the FBI without having read them.[43]
In a series of chats from May 21 until May 25/26, Manning – using the handle "bradass87" – told Lamo that he had leaked classified material. He began by introducing himself as an army intelligence analyst, and within 17 minutes, without waiting for a reply, began a tentative discussion about the leaks.[44]
(1:41:12 PM) bradass87: hi
(1:44:04 PM) bradass87: how are you?
(1:47:01 PM) bradass87: im an army intelligence analyst, deployed to eastern baghdad, pending discharge for "adjustment disorder" in lieu of "gender identity disorder"
(1:56:24 PM) bradass87: im sure you're pretty busy…
(1:58:31 PM) bradass87: if you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?[44]
Lamo replied several hours later. At first they chatted about Manning's gender confusion. Before Manning started discussing the leaks, Lamo told him: "I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection." They talked about restricted material in general, then Manning made his first explicit reference to the leaks: "This is what I do for friends." He linked to a section of the May 21, 2010, version of Wikipedia's article on WikiLeaks, which described the WikiLeaks release in March that year of a Department of Defense report on WikiLeaks itself. He added "the one below that is mine too"; the section below in the same article referred to the leak of the Baghdad airstrike ("Collateral Murder") video.[45]
Manning told him he felt isolated and fragile, and was reaching out to someone he hoped might understand: "im very isolated atm ... lost all of my emotional support channels ... family, boyfriend, trusting colleagues ... im a mess."[44]
(11:49:02 AM) bradass87: im in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger happy ignorant rednecks as neighbors... and the only safe place i seem to have is this satellite internet connection
(11:49:51 AM) bradass87: and i already got myself into minor trouble, revealing my uncertainty over my gender identity ... which is causing me to lose this job ... and putting me in an awkward limbo [...]
(11:52:23 AM) bradass87: at the very least, i managed to keep my security clearance [so far] [...]
(11:58:33 AM) bradass87: and little does anyone know, but among this "visible" mess, theres the mess i created that no-one knows about yet [...]
(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign [sic] over classified networks for long periods of time ... say, 8–9 months ... and you saw incredible things, awful things ... things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC ... what would you do? [...]
(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say ... a database of half a million events during the iraq war ... from 2004 to 2009 ... with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures ...? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective? [...]
(12:26:09 PM) bradass87: lets just say *someone* i know intimately well, has been penetrating US classified networks, mining data like the ones described ... and been transferring that data from the classified networks over the “air gap” onto a commercial network computer ... sorting the data, compressing it, encrypting it, and uploading it to a crazy white haired aussie who can't seem to stay in one country very long =L [...]
(12:31:43 PM) bradass87: crazy white haired dude = Julian Assange
(12:33:05 PM) bradass87: in other words ... ive made a huge mess :’([44]
Manning said he had started to help WikiLeaks around Thanksgiving in November 2009 – which fell on November 26 that year – after WikiLeaks had released the 9/11 pager messages; the messages were released on November 25. He told Lamo he had recognized the messages had come from an NSA database, and that it had made him feel comfortable about stepping forward. Lamo asked what kind of material he was dealing with, and Manning replied: "uhm ... crazy, almost criminal political backdealings ... the non-PR-versions of world events and crises ..." Although he said he dealt with Assange directly, he also said Assange had adopted a deliberate policy of knowing very little about him, telling Manning: "lie to me."[44]
He told Lamo that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds [sic] an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public ... everywhere there's a US post ... there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed ... Iceland, the Vatican, Spain, Brazil, Madascar, if its a country, and its recognized by the US as a country, its got dirt on it."[44]
(1:11:54 PM) bradass87: and ... its important that it gets out ... i feel, for some bizarre reason
(1:12:02 PM) bradass87: it might actually change something
(1:13:10 PM) bradass87: i just ... dont wish to be a part of it ... at least not now ... im not ready ... i wouldn't mind going to prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn't for the possibility of having pictures of me ... plastered all over the world press ... as [a] boy ...
(1:14:11 PM) bradass87: i've totally lost my mind ... i make no sense ... the CPU is not made for this motherboard ... [...]
(1:39:03 PM) bradass87: i cant believe what im confessing to you :’([44]
At that point, Lamo again assured him that he was speaking in confidence. Manning wrote: "but im not a source for you ... im talking to you as someone who needs moral and emotional fucking support," and Lamo replied: "i told you, none of this is for print."[44]
He said the incident that had affected him the most was when 15 detainees had been arrested by the Iraqi Federal Police for printing anti-Iraqi literature. He was asked by the army to find out who the "bad guys" were, and discovered that the detainees had printed what he called a scholarly critique of the Iraqi prime minister that followed what Manning said was a corruption trail within the Iraqi cabinet. He reported this to his commanding officer, but said "he didn't want to hear any of it"; he said the officer told him to help the Iraqi police find more detainees. Manning said it made him realize, "i was actively involved in something that i was completely against ..." He explained that "i cant separate myself from others ... i feel connected to everybody ... like they were distant family," and cited Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Elie Wiesel. He said he hoped the material would lead to "hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. if not ... than [sic] we're doomed as a species."[44]
He said he had downloaded some of the material onto music CD-RWs that he had brought to work; he would erase the music and replace it with a compressed split file. Part of the reason no-one noticed, he said, was that staff were working 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and "people stopped caring after 3 weeks."[44]
May 25:
(02:12:23 PM) bradass87: so ... it was a massive data spillage ... facilitated by numerous factors ... both physically, technically, and culturally(02:13:02 PM) bradass87: perfect example of how not to do INFOSEC
(02:14:21 PM) bradass87: listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltratrating [sic] possibly the largest data spillage in american history [...]
(02:17:56 PM) bradass87: weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis ... a perfect storm [...]
(02:22:47 PM) bradass87: i mean what if i were someone more malicious
(02:23:25 PM) bradass87: i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?
(02:23:36 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: why didn't you?
(02:23:58 PM) bradass87: because it's public data [...]
(02:24:46 PM) bradass87: it belongs in the public domain
(02:25:15 PM) bradass87: information should be free [...][44]
Nicks writes that, with this last point – "information should be free" – Manning was echoing the hackers' ideal, first expressed at a conference in 1984 by Steward Brand as "information wants to be free." The phrase summed up the view that information ought to be widely available to encourage collaboration and competition, whether it be science, software, or state secrets. Nicks argues that Manning's use of the phrase supports the view that his motivation was altruistic.[46]
Lamo told Wired he had given money to WikiLeaks in the past, and that the decision to go to the authorities had not been an easy one. He said he believed lives were in danger. He told Ed Caesar of The Sunday Times: "I get approached by people [hackers] on pretty much a daily basis confessing to crimes. I don't turn them in, because most of them are crimes of curiosity and have no real impact on people's lives or livelihoods. It's when someone comes to me and says, 'Hi, my name's Brad, and I'd like to tell you about my state treason' that the issue becomes fuzzy. I believed he was leaking stuff that was endangering lives."[47] Lamo was largely ostracized by the hacker community for reporting Manning, as well as for becoming a confidential informant for the government afterwards. Nicks argues, on the other hand, that it was thanks to Lamo that the government had months to prepare for the release of the diplomatic cables, and to ameliorate any harm they might have caused.[48]
Lamo contacted the FBI shortly after the first chat with Manning on May 21. Lamo had discussed the chat with Chet Uber of the volunteer group, Project Vigilant, which researches cyber crime, and a friend who had worked in military intelligence. The friend asked Lamo about a code word Manning had used. Ed Caesar writes that the friend replied: "[N]ever repeat those words again," at which point Lamo knew Manning was the real thing. Both men advised Lamo to go to the FBI, and they reported what he had told them to the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command.[47]
On May 25, Lamo met with FBI and Army officers at a Starbucks near his home in California, where he showed them the chat logs. On or around that date, he also passed the story to Kevin Poulsen of Wired, and on May 27 gave him the chat logs and Manning's name under embargo. He saw the FBI again that day, at which point they told him Manning had been arrested in Iraq the day before. Poulsen and Kim Zetter broke the news of the arrest in Wired on June 6, described by Daniel Domscheit-Berg as the worst moment in the history of WikiLeaks.[50] Wired published around 25 percent of the chat logs on June 6 and June 10, saying the remainder either infringed Manning's privacy or compromised sensitive military information. Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post published excerpts on June 10 that she obtained from Lamo, and on June 19 BoingBoing published what it said was a more complete version.[49]
Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon in December 2010, called the failure by Wired to publish the logs in full "easily one of the worst journalistic disgraces of the year," writing that Poulsen and Wired were, in effect, shielding Lamo and the government from having the sequence of events scrutinized.[49] Greenwald wrote this before material had leaked out about Manning's gender identity confusion; Wired's editor, Evan Hansen, replied that there was sensitive personal information in the logs, without elaborating. Wired eventually published the full logs in July 2011, after some of the personal material had appeared elsewhere.[51]
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Manning was arrested on May 26, 2010, and held at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.[52] He was charged on July 5, 2010, with a number of offences, which were replaced on March 1, 2011, by 22 charges, including violations of Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and of the Espionage Act. The most serious of the charges is "aiding the enemy," a capital offense. Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty, but if convicted he would face life imprisonment.[53]
On July 29, 2010, Manning was moved from Kuwait to the Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and classified as a maximum custody detainee. He was assigned Prevention of Injury (POI) status, though according to a letter from Manning to the army, the brig psychiatrist repeatedly recommended that the POI status be removed. Manning complained that he regarded the decision to prolong his POI status as pre-trial punishment.[54]
POI status is one stop short of suicide watch, entailing checks by guards every five minutes. His lawyer, David Coombs, a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army Reserve and former military attorney, said he was not allowed to sleep between 5 am (7 am at weekends) and 8 pm, and was made to stand or sit up if he tried to. He was required to remain visible at all times, including at night, which entailed no access to sheets, no pillow except one built into his mattress, and a blanket designed not to be shredded. He was required to sleep in boxer shorts, and said he had experienced chafing of the skin from the heavy blanket.[55]
His cell was 6 x 12 ft with no window, containing a bed, toilet, and sink. The jail had 30 cells built in a U shape, and although detainees could talk to one another, they were unable to see each other. His lawyer said the guards behaved professionally, and had not tried to harass or embarrass Manning. He was allowed to walk for up to one hour a day, meals were taken in the cell, and he was shackled during visits. There was access to television when it was placed in the corridor, and he was allowed to keep one magazine and one book – Nicks writes that he had a subscription to Scientific American, and that one book on his request list was Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Because he was in pre-trial detention, he received full pay and benefits.[55]
On January 18, 2011, the jail classified him as a suicide risk after an altercation with four of the guards. There had been a protest outside the jail the previous day, and Manning wrote in a letter to the army that he believed the guards were responding to that. He said the guards began issuing conflicting commands, such as "turn left, don't turn left," and upbraiding him for responding to commands with "yes" instead of "aye." Shortly afterwards, he was placed on suicide risk, had his clothing and eyeglasses removed, and was required to remain in his cell 24 hours a day. The suicide watch was lifted on January 21 after a complaint from his lawyer, and the brig commander who had ordered it was replaced.[56]
On March 2, 2011, he was informed that his request to be removed from maximum custody and Prevention of Injury status had been denied. His lawyer said Manning joked to the guards that, if he wanted to harm himself, he could do so "with the elastic waistband of his underwear or with his flip-flops." The comment resulted in him having his clothes removed again at night, though he was not formally classified as a suicide risk – the brig psychiatrist subsequently deemed him at low risk of suicide – and had to present himself outside his cell naked one morning for inspection, reports of which triggered more protests.[57]
The detention conditions prompted national and international concern. The army said he was being held under a Prevention of Injury order for his own safety; President Obama confirmed he had received assurances from the Pentagon to this effect. A Quantico spokesman said Manning was able to talk to guards and other prisoners, though he could not see the prisoners from his cell, and left his cell for a daily hour of exercise, as well as for showers, phone calls, meetings with his lawyer, and weekend visits by friends and relatives. Nevertheless, there were allegations of impropriety. Daniel Ellsberg, the Marine veteran who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers – a Department of Defense study of the United States involvement in Vietnam – and himself a WikiLeaks supporter, said the treatment amounted to "no-touch torture" intended to demoralize Manning so he would implicate Julian Assange.[59]
Juan E. Mendez, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, requested a meeting with the State Department, later publishing a report that the detention conditions had been "cruel, inhuman and degrading." In January 2011, Amnesty became involved, asking the British government to intervene because of Manning's status as a British citizen by descent, and the case was raised in the British parliament, though Manning's lawyer said he did not regard himself as a British citizen.[60] The controversy claimed a casualty in March 2011, when State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley, speaking to a small audience, called Manning's treatment "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid," and resigned two days later.[61]
In early April 2011, 295 academics (most of them American legal scholars) led by Yochai Benkler of Harvard Law School and Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School, signed a letter arguing that the treatment was a violation of the United States Constitution, specifically the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against punishment without trial. On April 20, the Pentagon transferred Manning to the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, a new medium-security facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was placed in an 80-square-foot cell with a window and a normal mattress, able to mix with other pre-trial detainees, write whenever he wanted, and keep personal objects in his cell.[62]
In April 2011, a panel of experts ruled that Manning was fit to stand trial. An Article 32 hearing, presided over by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Almanza, was convened on December 16, 2011, at Fort Meade, Maryland, to determine whether to proceed to a court martial. The hearing resulted in Almanza recommending that Manning be referred to a general court-martial. He was arraigned on February 23, and declined to enter a plea.[63]
The prosecution, led by Captain Ashden Fine, presented 300,000 pages of documents in evidence, including chat logs and classified material.[64] The court heard from two army investigators, Special Agent David Shaver, head of the digital forensics and research branch of the army's Computer Crime Investigative Unit (CCIU), and Mark Johnson, a digital forensics contractor from ManTech International, who works for the CCIU. They testified that they had found 100,000 State Department cables on a workplace computer Manning had used between November 2009 and May 2010; 400,000 military reports from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan on an SD card found in his basement room in his aunt's home in Potomac, Maryland; and 10,000 cables on his personal MacBook Pro and storage devices that they said had not been passed to WikiLeaks because a file was corrupted. They also recovered 14–15 pages of encrypted chats, in unallocated space on Manning's MacBook's hard drive, between Manning and someone believed to be Julian Assange. Two of the chat handles, which used the Berlin Chaos Computer Club's domain (ccc.de), were associated with the names Julian Assange and Nathaniel Frank.[65]
Johnson said he found SSH logs on the MacBook that showed an SFTP connection, from an IP address that resolved to Manning's aunt's home, to a Swedish IP address with links to WikiLeaks.[65] There was also a text file named "Readme" attached to the logs, a note apparently written by Manning to Assange, which called the Iraq and Afghan War logs "possibly one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century assymmetric warfare."[66] The investigators testified they had also recovered an exchange from May 2010 between Manning and Eric Schmiedl, a Boston mathematician, in which Manning said he was the source of the Baghdad helicopter attack ("Collateral Murder") video. Johnson said there had been two attempts to delete material from the MacBook. The operating system was re-installed in January 2010, and on or around January 31 an attempt was made to erase the hard drive by doing a "zero-fill," which involves overwriting material with zeroes. The material was overwritten only once, which meant it could be retrieved.[65]
Manning's lawyers argued that the government had overstated the harm the release of the documents had caused, and had overcharged Manning to force him to give evidence against Assange. The defense also raised the issue of his gender identity disorder, whether it had affected his judgment, and whether the "don't ask, don't tell" policy had made it difficult for Manning to serve in the army.[67]
The publication of the leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, attracted in-depth coverage across the globe, with several governments blocking websites that contained embarrassing details. Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, one of several news outlets that entered into an agreement with Assange to publish the material, said of the diplomatic cable leaks: "I can't think of a time when there was ever a story generated by a news organisation where the White House, the Kremlin, Chávez, India, China, everyone in the world was talking about these things. ... I've never known a story that created such mayhem that wasn't an event like a war or a terrorist attack."[69]
Nicks writes that Manning's name "appended like a slogan to wholesale denunciations and exultations alike" – he was either a "Tiananmen Square Tank Man," or "the worst kind of traitor," someone had betrayed his country out of personal anger with the military. United States Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the leaks had placed the lives of American soldiers and Afghan informants in danger. The Washington Post wrote that grass-roots activists saw Manning as a hero, while Glenn Greenwald argued that he was the most important whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. A Washington Post editorial asked why an apparently unstable Army private had been able to access and transfer sensitive material in the first place. According to Nicks, Manning's sexuality came into play too. "Don't ask, don't tell" was repealed not long after his arrest, with Manning illustrating for a right-wing fringe that gays were not fit for military service, while the mainstream media presented him as a gay soldier driven mad by bullying.[70]
Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters threatened or toppled rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption. Heather Brooke writes that, in Tunisia, where the uprisings began on December 17 with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in protest at being unable to make a living, one of the cables – published around 10 days earlier – showed that the President's daughter and her husband had their ice-cream flown in from Saint-Tropez. As Time magazine designated "the protester" as its 2011 person of the year, Brooke writes that WikiLeaks came under tremendous pressure, experiencing distributed denial-of-service attacks that shut down their servers, and finding themselves unable to receive donations when PayPal, banks, and credit card companies refused to process them.[71]
Mike Gogulski, an American expatriate in Slovakia, formed the Bradley Manning Support Network in June 2010, and was soon joined by a friend of Manning's, Danny Clark, freedom of information activist Nadim Kobeissi, and several notable figures, including Daniel Ellsberg and filmmaker Michael Moore. Rallies were held, as well as protests outside the jail – Ellsberg, by then in his 80s, was one of 30 protesters arrested during one of them – and by May 2012 over 11,000 people had donated $600,000, including $15,100 from WikiLeaks. Manning also had support from the hacker group, Anonymous, which threatened in March 2011 to disrupt activities at Quantico by cyber-attacking communications if he was not given access to clothing, bed clothes, reading material, and a ball. They called it "Operation Bradical."[72]
Manning was one of 241 candidates listed for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, and was nominated again in 2012 by the Oklahoma Center for Conscience and Peace Research and three members of the Icelandic parliament. Graham Nash and James Raymond wrote a song in his support in 2011, naming it after a phrase Manning's lawyer had used to describe his mental health – "Almost Gone."[73]
"Lamo, however, told me that Manning found him not from the Wired article – which Manning never mentioned reading – but from searching the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, which led him to a tweet Lamo had written that included the word "WikiLeaks." Even if Manning had really found Lamo through a Twitter search for "WikiLeaks," Lamo could not explain why Manning focused on him, rather than the thousands of other people who have also mentioned the word "WikiLeaks" on Twitter, including countless people who have done so by expressing support for WikiLeaks."
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bradley Manning |
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Taylor Swift | |
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Swift performing during the Australian leg of her Speak Now Tour in 2012 |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Taylor Alison Swift |
Born | Reading, Pennsylvania, United States |
December 13, 1989
Genres | Country-pop, pop, country, alternative rock |
Occupations | Singer-songwriter, actress |
Instruments | Vocals, guitar, banjo, ukulele, piano |
Years active | 2006–present |
Labels | Big Machine |
Website | TaylorSwift.com |
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of fourteen to pursue a career in country music. She signed to the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's self-titled debut album in 2006 established her as a country music star. "Our Song", her third single, made her the youngest sole writer and singer of a number one song on the country chart. She received a Best New Artist nomination at the 50th Grammy Awards.
Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in late 2008. Buoyed by the chart success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless attracted a crossover audience and became the top-selling album of 2009. The record won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest ever Album of the Year winner. Fearless also received Album of the Year plaudits at the American Music Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards and Country Music Association Awards, making it the most awarded album in country music history. In 2010, Swift released her third album, Speak Now, which sold over one million copies in its first week. She then embarked on the 111-date Speak Now World Tour, which was attended by over 1.6 million fans and has become one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time. The album's third single, "Mean", won two Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Swift is currently recording her fourth studio album, due for release in the fall of 2012.
Swift's work has earned her numerous accolades, including six Grammy Awards, ten AMAs, seven CMAs, six ACMs and 13 BMI Awards. She has sold over 22 million albums and 50 million song downloads worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Swift has endorsement deals with Target, CoverGirl, Sony, Elizabeth Arden, Walmart and American Greetings. As a philanthropist, Swift has placed particular emphasis on arts education, children's literacy and natural disaster relief funds. In addition to her music career, Swift has appeared as an actress in the crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2009), the romantic comedy Valentine's Day (2010) and the animated film The Lorax (2012).
Contents |
Taylor Alison Swift was born on December 13, 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania.[1] She is the daughter of Scott Swift, a Merrill Lynch financial adviser,[2][3] and Andrea (née Gardner), a homemaker who previously worked as a mutual fund marketing executive.[1][4] Swift was named after singer James Taylor; her mother believed a gender-neutral name would help her forge a successful business career.[5][6] She has a younger brother, Austin, who attends Vanderbilt University.[7] She spent the early years of her life on an eleven-acre Christmas tree farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and was educated at the fee-paying Wyndcroft School.[8] When Swift was nine years old, the family moved to Wyomissing, Pennsylvania,[9][10] where she attended Wyomissing Area Junior/Senior High School.[11] Swift spent her summers at her parent's vacation home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey[12] and has described it as the place "where most of my childhood memories were formed".[10]
Swift's first hobby was English horse riding. Her mother Andrea put her in a saddle when Swift was nine months old and she later competed in horse shows.[13][14] Her family owned several Quarter horses and a Shetland pony.[14] At the age of nine, Swift turned her attention to musical theatre and performed in Berks Youth Theatre Academy productions of Grease, Annie, Bye Bye Birdie and The Sound of Music.[15][8] She travelled regularly to Broadway, New York for vocal and acting lessons. However, "after a few years of auditioning in New York and not getting anything”, Swift became interested in country music.[16] She was inspired by LeAnn Rimes's Blue[17] and her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, an opera singer.[8] When she was in fourth grade, Swift won a national poetry contest with a three-page poem, "Monster in My Closet".[18] At the age of eleven, after many attempts,[19] Swift won a local talent competition by singing a rendition of LeAnn Rimes’s “Big Deal”, and was given the opportunity to appear as the opening act for Charlie Daniels at a Strausstown amphitheater.[15] She spent her weekends performing at local festivals, fairs, coffeehouses, karaoke contests, garden clubs and Boy Scout meetings.[20][4] This interest in country music isolated Swift from her middle school peers.[21][22]
After watching a Behind the Music episode about Faith Hill,[23] Swift recorded a demo of karaoke covers, and travelled with her mother to Nashville, Tennessee for spring break to leave a copy of the demo with record labels along Music Row. She received label rejections and realized that "everyone in that town wanted to do what I wanted to do. So, I kept thinking to myself, I need to figure out a way to be different".[23] Swift began performing the "The Star Spangled Banner" at many sporting events, hoping she would be offered a recording contract. On one occasion, an eleven-year-old Swift high-fived Jay-Z after singing the national anthem at a 76ers game in Philadelphia.[24] At the age of twelve, Swift was shown by a computer repairman how to play three chords on a guitar, inspiring her to write her first song, "Lucky You".[25][26] She then recorded a second demo of original songs.[15] In 2003, Swift and her parents began working with music manager Dan Dymtrow, after he spotted her singing at the US Open.[27] Swift's second demo then caught the attention of RCA Records, who offered the eight-grader an artist development deal. In 2004, Swift modelled for Abercrombie and Fitch as part of their "Rising Stars" campaign and had an original song included in a Maybelline Cosmetics compilation CD.[28]
When Swift was fourteen, her father transferred to the Nashville office of Merrill Lynch and the family relocated to a lake-shore house in Hendersonville, Tennessee.[1] Swift has said her parents "presented it as a move to a nice community" rather than as her chance to become a star.[29] Her mother has said, "We've always told her that this is not about putting food on our table or making our dreams come true."[30] In Tennessee, Swift attended Hendersonville High School for her freshman and sophomore years.[31] Later, to accommodate her touring schedule, Swift transferred to the Aaron Academy, a private Christian school which offered homeschooling services, and earned her high school diploma in 2008.[32]
Swift moved to Nashville at the age of fourteen, having secured an artist development deal with RCA Records. Her musical influences included the Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, LeAnn Rimes, Faith Hill,[29] Tom Petty,[33] Sheryl Crow,[34] Melissa Etheridge, Pat Benatar,[35] Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks,[36] Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette.[37] Swift had writing sessions with experienced songwriters such as Troy Verges, Brett Beavers, Brett James, Mac McAnally and the Warren Brothers,[38][39] but eventually formed a lasting working relationship with Liz Rose.[40] Swift saw Rose performing at an RCA songwriter event and suggested that they write together.[41] They began meeting for two-hour writing sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school.[42] Rose has said that the sessions were "some of the easiest I've ever done. Basically, I was just her editor. She'd write about what happened in school that day. She had such a clear vision of what she was trying to say. And she'd come in with the most incredible hooks".[43][42] Swift also began recording demos with producer Nathan Chapman.[41] After performing at a BMI Songwriter's Circle showcase at The Bitter End, New York,[39] Swift became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house.[44]
Swift left RCA Records when she was fifteeen; the company wanted her to record the work of other songwriters and wait until she was eighteen to release an album, but she felt ready to launch her career with her own material.[45][19] She also parted ways with manager Dan Dymtrow, who later took legal action against Swift and her parents.[28] At an industry showcase at Nashville's The Bluebird Café in 2005, Swift caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, a Dreamworks Records executive who was preparing to form his own independent record label, Big Machine Records.[40] Swift was one of the new label's first signings.[40] As an introduction to the country music business, Borchetta arranged for Swift to intern at the CMA Music Festival; she acted as the artist escort for Darryl Worley.[46][47]
Swift began working on her self-titled debut album shortly after signing her record deal. After experimenting with veteran Nashville producers, Swift persuaded Big Machine to hire her demo producer Nathan Chapman.[19] It was his first time to record a studio album but Swift felt they had the right "chemistry".[19] In the end, Chapman produced all but one of the tracks on Taylor Swift.[19] She has described the album as the "diary" of her early teens[48] and most songs were written during her freshman year of high school.[19] As a result, the songs describe coming of age experiences such as insecurity, young love, and teenage angst.[19] She has said that, although "it sounds like I've had 500 boyfriends", a lot of the songs are observational.[19] Swift wrote three of the album's songs alone, including two singles, and co-wrote the remaining eight with writers such as Liz Rose, Robert Ellis Orrall and Angelo Petraglia.[49] Musically, the album has been described as "a mix of trad-country instruments and spry rock guitars".[50]
Taylor Swift was released in October 2006 and received generally positive reviews from music critics.[51] PopMatters hoped Swift would be "able to find an accomodation between the country tradition and her very obvious pop sensibilities, because Taylor Swift suggests she has much to offer".[52] The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones described Swift as a "prodigy". She noted that "Our Song" "stop[ed] me in my tracks" and praised the lyrics: “He’s got a one-hand feel on the steering wheel, the other on my heart".[53] Country Weekly felt Swift demonstrated "an honesty, intelligence and idealism with which listeners of any age will be able to connect" and noted that "the more thoughtful material suggests a talent poised to last well past high school".[54] AllMusic stated that, while listening to the album, it was "never in doubt" that "Swift is a talent to be reckoned with".[55] Rolling Stone described Swift as "bright-eyed but remarkably seasoned", and admired "Our Song"'s "insanely hooky sing-song melody that's as Britney as it is Patsy".[50]
Big Machine Records was still in its infancy upon the release of the lead single "Tim McGraw" in June 2006, and Swift and her mother helped "stuff the CD singles into envelopes to send to radio".[30] She spent much of 2006 promoting Taylor Swift in a radio tour and later commented, "Radio tours for most artists last six weeks. Mine lasted six months."[19] Swift painted canvases (inspired by Jackson Pollock) to gift to radio station managers who played her music.[56] She took part in "GAC Short Cuts", a part-documentary, part-music-video series designed to introduce her to country music fans.[57][58] She also made television appearances on Good Morning America,[59] The Megan Mullally Show,[59] America's Got Talent,[60] and TRL.[61] Swift, a self-described "kid of the internet",[62] used MySpace to build a fanbase. She wrote her own blog posts, left comments on her fans' accounts and personally respond to the messages that were sent to her.[63] This was, at the time, "revolutionary in country music".[64][57] Borchetta has said that his decision to sign a sixteen year old singer-songwriter initially raised eyebrows among his record industry peers[57] but Swift tapped into a previously unknown market: teenage girls who listen to country music.[1][57]
Following "Tim McGraw", four further singles were released throughout 2007 and 2008: "Teardrops on My Guitar", "Our Song", "Picture to Burn" and "Should've Said No". All were highly successful on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, with "Our Song" and "Should've Said No" both reaching number one. "Our Song" made Swift the youngest sole writer and singer of a number one country song.[65] "Teardrops on My Guitar" became a minor pop hit; it reached number thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100.[66][67] The album sold 39,000 copies during its first week[68] and, as of March 2011, has sold over 5.5 million copies worldwide.[69] Swift also released a holiday album, Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection, in October 2007 and an EP, Beautiful Eyes, in July 2008.[70][71]
Swift toured extensively in support of Taylor Swift. In addition to festival and theater dates, Swift performed as an opening act for several country artists' concert tours. She opened for Rascal Flatts on several dates in late 2006.[59][72] In 2007, she served as the opening act on twenty dates for George Strait's 2007 United States tour,[73] several dates on Kenny Chesney's tour[74] and selected dates on Brad Paisley's Bonfires & Amplifiers Tour.[75][76] Also in 2007, Swift appeared as the opening act on several dates for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's joint Soul2Soul II Tour.[77] Swift again opened for Flatts for their Still Feels Good Tour in 2008.[78] In addition to performing her own material, Swift played covers of songs by Beyoncé and Rihanna.[79] She conducted meet-and-greet sessions with fans before and after her concerts; these lasted for up to four hours.[80][81]
In 2007, Swift and Alan Jackson were jointly named the Nashville Songwriters Association's "Songwriter/Artists of the Year". Swift was the youngest person ever to be honored with the title.[82] She also won the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award for Best New Artist.[83] In 2008, she won Top New Female Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music Awards[84] and Favorite Country Female Artist at the American Music Awards.[85] She won seven BMI Awards for songs featured on Taylor Swift.[86] Swift was also nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse.[87]
Swift's second studio album, Fearless, was released in November 2008.[88] She wrote seven of the album's songs alone, including two singles, and co-wrote the remaining six with songwriters Liz Rose, John Rich, Colbie Caillat and Hillary Lindsey.[49] While Swift wrote many of the songs on tour, she made a conscious effort not to include "road songs": "As a 16-year-old girl, I could never relate to those songs about playing a different city every night. I want to write about feelings and love and the lack of love".[89] She has said that the album title "means you’re afraid of a lot of things, but you jump anyway".[90] She co-produced the album with Nathan Chapman.[49] Musically, the record is characterized by "loud, lean guitars and rousing choruses", with the occasional "bit of fiddle and banjo tucked into the mix".[91]
Fearless received generally positive reviews from music critics.[92] The New York Times described Swift as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country’s foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults".[93] The Village Voice felt she displayed "preternatural wisdom and inclusiveness", "masterfully avoiding the typical diarist's pitfalls of trite banality and pseudo-profound bullshit".[94] Rolling Stone described her as "a songwriting savant with an intuitive gift for verse-chorus-bridge architecture" whose "squirmingly intimate and true" songs seemed to be "literally ripped from a suburban girl's diary".[95] USA Today found it "a pleasure to hear a gifted teenager who sounds like a gifted teenager, rather than a mouthpiece for a bunch of older pros' collective notion of adolescent yearning."[96] The New Yorker described it as an album "without a bad track", adding that "the album’s finest effort, "Fifteen", will feature in yearbook quotes for years".[97] Entertainment Weekly noted that the album would appeal mainly to young girls – "she sounds like a real teen, not some manufactured vixen-Lolita" – but predicted it would be "exciting to watch her precocious talent grow".[98] Music critic Robert Christgau described Swift as "an uncommonly-to-impossibly strong and gifted teenage girl".[99]
Swift promoted Fearless heavily upon its release. An episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show was dedicated to the album launch[57] and Swift appeared on many other chat shows.[100] She communicated with fans using social media platforms such as twitter and personal video blogs.[57] In October 2008, she appeared at the CMT Giants: Alan Jackson event, performing a cover of Jackson's "Drive (For Daddy Gene)".[101] In November 2008, Swift took part in a joint, televised concert with rock band Def Leppard in Nashville.[102][103] She performed her song "Fifteen" with Miley Cyrus at the 51st Grammy Awards in February 2009.[104] In April 2009, she performed a cover of George Strait's "Run" at a televised ACM event honoring Strait as Artist of the Decade.[105] Swift hosted and appeared as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in November 2009.[106] The lead single from the album, "Love Story", was released in September 2008 and became the second best-selling country single of all time, peaking at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[67][107] Four more singles were released throughout 2008 and 2009: "White Horse", "You Belong with Me", "Fifteen" and "Fearless". "You Belong with Me" was the album's highest-charting single, peaking at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.[108] The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 Album Chart with sales of 592,304 and has since sold over 8.6 million copies worldwide.[109][110] It was the top-selling album of 2009 and brought Swift much crossover success.[111]
Swift carried out her first headlining tour from April 2009 to June 2010. As part of the 105-date Fearless Tour, Swift played 90 dates in North America, six dates in Europe, eight dates in Australia and one date in Asia.[112] The stage show included multiple costume changes, dancers and a fairy-tale castle set.[113] She sang a cover of Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around... Comes Around" nightly, intertwined with her own "You're Not Sorry".[114] Swift invited John Mayer, Faith Hill and Katy Perry to perform one-off duets with her at various dates during the North American tour.[115][116][117] Justin Bieber, Kelly Pickler and Gloriana were the support acts.[118] The tour was attended by more than 1.1 million fans and has grossed over $63 million.[119] Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless, a concert film, was aired on television and later released on DVD and Blu-ray.[120] Also in 2009, Swift performed as a supporting act for Keith Urban.[121]
In September 2009, Swift became the first country music artist to win an MTV Video Music Award when "You Belong with Me" was named Best Female Video.[122] Her acceptance speech was interrupted by rapper Kanye West, who had been involved in a number of other award show incidents.[123] West declared Beyoncé's video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", nominated in the same category, to be "one of the best videos of all time." Many audience members booed West,[124][125] prompting him to flip off the crowd.[126][124] He then handed the microphone back to a speechless Swift.[124][127] Backstage, Swift was seen "hysterically crying".[124] According to Rolling Stone, when Swift's mother confronted West, he gave "a half-hearted apology in which he added he still thought Beyoncé's video was superior".[128] West was removed from the event.[124][126][129] When Beyoncé later won the award for Video of the Year, she invited Swift onstage to finish her speech.[124][130] In the event's press room, Swift, who in 2008 had expressed a desire to sing a hook on a Kanye West rap song,[131] was asked if she had "any hard feelings" towards West: "I don’t know him, and I’ve never met him, so... I don’t want to start anything because I had a great night tonight."[128][132]
The incident received much media attention and inspired many Internet memes.[133] President Barack Obama, in an "off the record" comment, called West a "jackass".[134] Former US President Jimmy Carter said West's interruption was "completely uncalled for".[135] West's behavior was criticized by celebrities, including Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Lady Gaga.[126][136][137][128] The following day, West apologized for his verbal outburst both in a blog entry and during an appearance on The Jay Leno Show.[124][125] He maintained that, while Swift was "very talented", "Beyoncé's video was the best of this decade!!!! ... I gave my awards to Outkast when they deserved it over me ... I'm not crazy y'all, I'm just real."[138] Two days after the VMAs, Swift told an interviewer that West had not spoken to her since the ceremony.[139] West then contacted her to offer a personal apology, which Swift accepted: "Kanye did call me, and he was very sincere in his apology."[122][139] It has been said that the incident and subsequent media attention turned Swift into "a bona-fide mainstream celebrity".[140]
Swift released a cover of Tom Petty's "American Girl", exclusively through Rhapsody in June 2009[141] and continues to make her stage entrance to Petty's recording of the song.[142] Swift contributed backing vocals to John Mayer's "Half of My Heart", featured on his fourth album, in November 2009.[143] Mayer wrote the song as a tribute to Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac: "I thought, 'Well, if this is going to be my love letter to that style of music, who's going to be the Stevie Nicks in this equation?' And I thought, 'This Taylor Swift girl is going to be around for a long time."[144] The song received positive reviews from music critics.[145][146][147] Swift and Mayer performed the song live at Madison Square Garden, New York in December 2009.[148] It was released as the album's third single in June 2010 and peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.[149] Swift collaborated with a number of other artists in 2008 and 2009. She co-wrote and recorded "Best Days of Your Life" with Kelly Pickler.[150] She co-wrote two songs for the Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack – "You'll Always Find Your Way Back Home" and "Crazier" – with Martin Johnson and Robert Ellis Orrall, respectively.[151] Swift also provided vocals for Boys Like Girls's "Two Is Better Than One", written by Martin Johnson.[152][153][154][155] In January 2010, Swift contributed two songs – including "Today Was a Fairytale" – to the Valentine's Day soundtrack[156] and recorded a cover of Better Than Ezra's "Breathless" for the Hope for Haiti Now album.[157]
In November 2009, Swift became the youngest ever artist, and one of only six women, to be named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association.[158] Fearless also won the Association's Album of the Year award.[158] The album won many other accolades and has become the most awarded album in country music history.[159] Swift was the youngest ever artist to win the Academy of Country Music's Album of the Year honor.[160] The American Music Awards honored Swift with Artist of the Year and Favorite Country Album plaudits.[161] She was awarded the Hal David Starlight Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame[162] and was named Songwriter/Artists of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association.[163] She won four BMI Awards.[164] Billboard named her 2009's Artist of the Year.[165] Swift was included in Time's annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in 2010.[166]
In January 2010, Swift won four Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, Best Country Album, Best Female Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Song, from a total of eight nominations.[167][168] She was the youngest ever artist to win Album of the Year.[169] During the ceremony, Swift sang "Rhiannon" and "You Belong with Me" with Stevie Nicks. Her vocal performance received negative reviews and sparked a widespread media backlash.[140][170] Her vocals were described variously as "badly off-key", "strikingly bad" and "incredibly wretched".[171][172] While The New York Times found it "refreshing to see someone so gifted make the occasional flub" and described Swift as "the most important new pop star of the past few years",[169] music critic Bob Lefsetz predicted that her career would end "overnight".[173][174] In April 2010, Stevie Nicks, writing in Time, defended the singer: "Taylor reminds me of myself in her determination and her childlike nature. It's an innocence that's so special and so rare. This girl writes the songs that make the whole world sing, like Neil Diamond or Elton John ... The female rock-'n'-roll-country-pop songwriter is back, and her name is Taylor Swift. And it's women like her who are going to save the music business."[166]
Swift released her third studio album, Speak Now, in October 2010.[175] She wrote all twelve songs alone: "I'd get my best ideas at 3 a.m. in Arkansas and I didn't have a co-writer around."[176] Album recording sessions took place in California, Tennessee and Kentucky over a two year period.[177][178] Swift, who co-produced the record with longtime collaborator Nathan Chapman,[179] has described it as "a collection of confessions—things I wish I had said when I was in the moment".[180] She originally intended to call the album Enchanted but Scott Borchetta, her record label's CEO, felt the title did not reflect the album's more adult themes: "She had played me a bunch of the new songs. I looked at her and I'm like, 'Taylor, this record isn't about fairy tales and high school anymore. That's not where you're at'".[181] Musically, it has been said that the album "expands beyond country-pop to border both alternative rock and dirty bubblegum pop".[182]
Speak Now received generally positive reviews from music critics.[183] USA Today felt that Swift's songwriting skills would remind listeners "what all the fuss was about in the first place", with the album capturing "the sweet ache of becoming an adult".[184] The Los Angeles Times praised her ability as a songwriter to "hit on common experiences that feel unique".[182] The New York Times described the album as savage, musically diverse and "excellent too, possibly her best".[179] The Village Voice found that the album demanded "a true appreciation of Swift's talent, which is not confessional, but dramatic: Like a procession of country songwriters before her, she creates characters and situations—some from life—and finds potent ways to describe them."[185] Entertainment Weekly noted that while love may confound her, "the art of expert songcraft clearly doesn't".[186] Music critic John Christgau found the album's songs "overlong and overworked" but remarked that "they evince an effort that bears a remarkable resemblance to care—that is, to caring in the best, broadest, and most emotional sense".[99] Rolling Stone described Swift as one of the best songwriters in "pop, rock or country": "Swift might be a clever Nashville pro who knows all the hitmaking tricks, but she's also a high-strung, hyper-romantic gal with a melodramatic streak the size of the Atchafalaya Swamp".[187]
Swift carried out an extensive promotional campaign prior to Speak Now's release.[188] She appeared on various talk shows and morning shows, and gave free mini-concerts in unusual locations, including an open-decker bus on Hollywood Boulevard and a departure lounge at JFK airport.[189][190] She took part in a "guitar pull" alongside Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill and Lionel Ritchie at LA's Club Nokia; the musicians shared the stage and took turns introducing and playing acoutic versions of their songs to raise money for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.[191][192] The album's lead single, "Mine", was released in August 2010 and five further singles were released throughout 2010 and 2011: "Back to December", "Mean", "The Story of Us", "Sparks Fly" and "Ours".[193] Speak Now was a major commercial success, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart. Its sales of 1,047,000 copies made it the sixteenth album in United States history to sell one million copies in a single week.[194] As of February 2012, Speak Now has sold over four million copies in the US[195] and over 5.7 million copies worldwide.[196][197] In her career, as of May 2012, Swift has sold over 22 million albums[198] and 50 million digital tracks worldwide.[199]
In September 2010, Kanye West's 2009 VMA interruption once again became newsworthy when West used his twitter account to apologize to Swift, referring to her as "just a lil girl with dreams like the rest of us": ""I wrote a song for Taylor Swift that's so beautiful and I want her to have it. If she won't take it then I'll perform it for her." Later that month, both artists performed at the 2010 VMAs. Swift sang "Innocent", a song widely believed to be about West, which The Washington Post has described as "a small masterpiece of passive aggressiveness, a vivisection dressed up as a peace offering".[200] Music critics found Swift's performance overly serious and "petty".[201][202] Speaking in November 2010, West said he failed to see what was "so arrogant about that moment" and described his actions as "selfless". He added that "if it was the other way around" and Swift were an established artist who had "made the video of her career, do you think she would have lost to a brand new artist? Hell no!"[203][204] Also that month, he claimed that, "If I wasn't drunk, I would have been on stage longer ... Taylor never came to my defense at any interview. And rode the waves and rode it and rode it".[205][206] At the Costume Institute Gala in May 2011, Swift and West came face-to-face on the red carpet. West was observed to hold "a hand out, and the two exchanged a studiedly casual, “down low” high five".[1]
Swift toured throughout 2011 and early 2012 in support of Speak Now. As part of the thirteen-month, 111-date world tour, Swift played seven shows in Asia, twelve shows in Europe, 80 shows in North America and twelve shows in Australasia.[207] Three dates on the US tour were rescheduled after Swift fell ill with bronchitis.[208] The stage show was inspired by Broadway musical theatre, with choreographed routines, elaborate set-pieces, pyrotechnics and numerous costume changes.[209][210] Swift invited many musicians to join her for one-off duets during the North American tour. Appearances were made by James Taylor, Jason Mraz, Shawn Colvin, Johnny Rzeznik, Andy Grammer, Tal Bachman, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj, Nelly, B.o.B., Usher, Flo Rida, T.I., Jon Foreman, Jim Adkins, Hayley Williams, Hot Chelle Rae, Ronnie Dunn, Darius Rucker, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney.[211][212] The tour was attended by over 1.6 million fans and has grossed over $123 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing concert tours of all time.[207] Swift's first live album, Speak Now World Tour: Live, featuring all seventeen performances from the North American leg of the tour, was released in November 2011.[213]
During the North American and Australasian tour legs, Swift wrote different song lyrics on her left arm for each performance. She has said that the lyrics should be viewed as a nightly "mood ring"[214] and The New Yorker has cited the practice as an example of Swift's "keen understanding of what fuels fan obsession in the first place: a desire for intimacy between singer and listener".[1] Artists quoted include Tom Petty, Carole King, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Joni Mitchell, Ryan Adams, Patty Griffin, Band of Horses, Jimmy Eat World, Death Cab For Cutie, Alanis Morrissette, Rachael Yamagata, Erin McCarley, Mindy Smith and Martina McBride.[215][216] Swift also performed many acoustic cover versions during her North American tour. In each city, she paid tribute to a homegrown artist.[217] She has said the cover versions allowed her to be "spontaneous" in an otherwise well-rehearsed show: "You'll have a lot of people who will come to more than one show, and I want them to get a different experience every time."[218] Artists covered include Justin Timberlake, Tori Amos, TLC, Pink, Fall Out Boy, Dave Matthews Band, Michelle Branch, Jordin Sparks, Maroon 5, Train, John Mellencamp, Kim Carnes, Avril Lavigne, The Jackson 5, Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Gwen Stefani, All American Rejects, Britney Spears and Eminem.[219]
At the 54th Grammy Awards in February 2012, Swift's song "Mean" won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance.[220] She also performed "Mean" during the ceremony. The song is believed to be a rebuttal to Bob Lefsetz, one of the most vocal critics of her 2010 Grammy performance.[174] Lefsetz had previously been a supporter of the singer's career,[221] and Swift and Lefsetz had corresponded occasionally by email and telephone.[174] Time felt she "delivered her comeback on-key and with a vengeance"[222] while USA Today remarked that the criticism in 2010 seemed to have "made her a better songwriter and live performer".[223]
Swift was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Association in both 2010 and 2011. During the 2011 ceremony, she played an acoustic version of "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" in honor of Alan Jackson, a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee,[224] who later thanked Swift in his speech for "the prettiest version I've ever heard".[225] Swift won various other awards for Speak Now. She was named Entertainer of the Year by the Academy of Country Music in both 2011 and 2012[226] and was named Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association in 2011.[227] Swift was the American Music Awards's Artist of the Year in 2011, and Speak Now was named Favorite Country Album.[228] She was also the recipient of two BMI Awards.[229] Billboard named Swift 2011's Woman of the Year.[230] Also that year, Billboard ranked her at number 15 in a list of the Top 20 Hot 100 Songwriters 2000–2011; she was the second highest ranking woman.[231] Swift was ranked second on Rolling Stone's list of the Top 16 "Queen Of Pops" of the decade.[232]
Swift contributed two original songs to The Hunger Games soundtrack album in March 2012. "Safe & Sound" was co-written and recorded with The Civil Wars and T-Bone Burnett.[233] John Paul White has said working with Swift was "a revelation. She had some great ideas. We had complete freedom. It truly was a collaboration. We brought the melancholy and the darker angle. Taylor was bringing the melody and the chords."[234] Rolling Stone described the song as "Swift's prettiest ballad" and wondered whether the alt-country folk song was "a one-off novelty, a trial balloon cred-move, or the stirrings of a "grown-up" style".[235] Swift and The Civil Wars debuted a live version of the song at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville in January 2012.[236] It was released as the album's lead single and, as of April 2012, has sold 970,000 copies in the United States.[237] Swift's second contribution to the album, "Eyes Open", was written solely by the singer and produced by Nathan Chapman.[238] In May 2012, Swift contributed vocals to "Both of Us", a Dr. Luke-produced song on B.o.B's second album Strange Clouds.[239][240][241][242]
Swift is currently working on her fourth album with producer Nathan Chapman.[243][244] It is scheduled for release in the fall of 2012.[245] Swift intends to keep writing and recording throughout 2012 "because I'm having so much fun".[246] After writing her third album alone, Swift is now collaborating with people "from all different places in music",[246] including songwriters Lori McKenna,[247][248] Butch Walker,[249][250] Ed Sheeran,[251] and Dan Wilson.[252] The album will detail "the rise and fall of a relationship",[253] as well as the resulting "absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak".[254] She has described the album's mood as "sad, if I'm being honest."[255]
Swift has said she writes songs as an "open letter".[256] She has said songwriting is "is a way of verbalizing those things that I feel that I can’t say".[47] Swift has said she is "very interested in any writing from a child's perspective" and has cited To Kill a Mockingbird as one of her favorite books.[257] Neil Young has described Swift as "a great writer" and follows her career.[258][259] Kris Kristofferson has said that "she blows me away. It's amazing to me that someone so young is writing such great songs. She's got a great career ahead of her".[260][261] Dolly Parton has said her songs are "great" and that she has "the qualities that could last a long time".[262] Stevie Nicks has said Swift writes "songs that make the whole world sing, like Neil Diamond or Elton John".[166]
In studio recordings, the Los Angeles Times identifies Swift's "defining" vocal gesture as "the line that slides down like a contented sigh or up like a raised eyebrow, giving her beloved girl-time hits their air of easy intimacy".[182] In a review of Speak Now, The Village Voice noted that her phrasing was previously "bland and muddled, but that's changed. She can still sound strained and thin, and often strays into a pitch that drives some people crazy; but she's learned how to make words sound like what they mean".[185] Slate, reviewing Speak Now, described Swift as "a technically poor singer": "Though she does vary her phrasing in ways that attempt to mask her limited voice (the way she sneers, "She looks at me like I'm a trend/And she's so over it," on "Better Than Revenge" is especially effective), Swift is still noticeably off-pitch at least once on every song on the album".[263]
In an interview with The New Yorker, Swift characterized herself primarily as a songwriter: “I write songs, and my voice is just a way to get those lyrics across”.[1] "I'm not trying to go out there and do vocal acrobatics. I'm just trying to write good songs".[264] However, her vocal presence is something that concerns her and she has "put a lot of work" into improving it.[265] She has said that she only feels nervous performing "if I'm not sure what the audience thinks of me, like at award shows".[266]
Swift has been described as "America's sweetheart" and "a role model".[267][268] The singer considers it her "responsibility" to be conscious of her influence on young fans.[269] However, she insists that "I don't live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free".[270] Swift does not drink alcohol because she worries that "I might come off in a way that I can't control. Maybe I should just lighten up!" "It's not like I judge people who [drink] or that I don't hang out with people who drink".[270] She refuses to take part in overly sexualised photo-shoots.[9] The lyrical content of her songs is regarded as appropriate for young audiences. A New Yorker journalist who attended a Swift concert recounted watching "sixteen-year-old girls holding hands and swaying, and a girl in a hijab sobbing as she sang the words. It was hard not to be a little moved, and not to feel relieved that the words being sung were, more or less, safe ... One can attend a concert by Katy Perry and listen to a stadium full of thirteen-year-olds chant along with the song “Peacock” which goes, “I want to see your peacock-cock-cock! Your peacock-cock!"[1]
A Rolling Stone journalist who profiled Swift in 2009 remarked upon her polite manners: "If this is Swift's game face, it must be tattooed on because it never drops".[271] A 2012 Vogue cover story described Swift as "clever and funny and occasionally downright bawdy" in person, but noted that she "asks if her cursing can be off the record".[272] Grantland.com describes Swift as "talkative and openly neurotic in a way you'd never see from a blonde country princess like Faith Hill or Carrie Underwood. She is more like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall: overly gracious and eager to please but full of a nonstop, nervous, fluttering energy".[273]
There has been much media commentary about Swift's reactions when she is recognized at award ceremonies.[274] In 2011, The Hollywood Reporter remarked that she "seems to be consistently shocked and wonderstruck by each awards win, despite racking up an ever-growing collection of Grammys, CMAs, MTV Moonmen and AMAs".[275] Kristen Wiig parodied Swift's surprised facial expressions during a Saturday Night Live sketch in February 2012.[276] Swift later said she had seen the sketch: “I was laughing the entire time and then I realized that, as I was watching it, I was making the face she was making”.[277] At the Academy of Country Music Awards in April 2012, the ceremony's host Blake Shelton joked in his opening monologue that Swift should release a perfume called "I can't believe I smell this good". When Swift later presented Shelton with the Academy's Best Male Vocalist award, "the two faced off, showing each other their ultra-surprised looks".[278][279]
The merits of Swift as a feminist have been widely discussed.[280] She has been described by Jezebel as "a feminist's nightmare": "Her image of being good and pure plays right into how much the patriarchy fetishizes virginity, loves purity, and celebrates women who know their place as delicate flowers".[281] However, a Village Voice music critic dismissed this criticism as "shallow and gross, in that special way that things get gross when you cram shaded and living work through an ideological sieve like you're mechanically separating chicken".[282] He continued: "Criticisms include: She's a conformist stooge of the patriarchy (she's now had two hits about defying fathers); she idolizes chastity (she's coy about sex, but only the willful could miss the fucking in the new "Sparks Fly," which includes the line "Gimme something that'll haunt me when you're not around"); and she sells girls corrupt and shallow fairy-tale notions of romance (one of the two fairy-tale songs on Fearless mocked a guy for trying to white-knight her, and the only mention of such things on Speak Now is "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you"—note the tense)."[282]
The song Fifteen has been the subject of particular scrutiny. It has been said that the song contains a "feminist message" in the lyrics "Back then I swore I was gonna marry him some day, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine” and "In your life you'll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team".[283] Feminist critics claim the use of the word "everything" in the lyric "Abigail gave everything she had to a boy, who changed his mind, and we both cried" is a reference to virginity: "Songs like "Fifteen" dig up the ancient Puritan ideal that girls can only access power by confidently and heterosexually denying access to their pants."[284] However, others interpret "everything" as trust: "Abigail trusted and opened up to a boy for the first time, only to be let down. Maybe that includes sex, maybe it doesn’t."[283]
When asked by The New York Times in 2010 whether she considered herself a feminist, Swift replied, "I have never really thought about that".[285] In December 2011, Billboard's Tom Roland asked Swift whether the marginalization of women in country music, prevalent in the 1950s, was still an issue: "I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn't feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you've got to work as hard as them. I was always playing just as many shows as they were and playing on the same shows as they were. I was willing to pay my dues as an opening act, playing in clubs and bars and playing in tiny venues. The new male artists were doing the same thing, so I never saw an issue there."[286]
In September 2010, Swift donated $75,000 to Nashville's Hendersonville High School to help refurbish the school auditorium's sound and lighting systems.[287] In May 2012, she pledged $4 million to fund a new education center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. The two-storey, 7,500-square foot space will have its own exterior entrance and museum officials have decided to name it The Taylor Swift Education Center.[288] It will feature three classrooms and a children's exhibit gallery, and will house interactive activities such as a musical petting zoo and a “wet” classroom space to make concert posters and other art projects. New programs and workshops for teenagers and senior citizens will also be accommodated within the space. The Center is scheduled to open in early 2014 and Swift will be involved in an advisory capacity.[289]
In December 2009, Swift donated $250,000 to various schools around the country that she had either attended or had other associations with. The money was used to buy books, fund educational programs and pay teachers' salaries.[290] In October 2010, she took part in a live webcast, Read Now! with Taylor Swift, broadcast exclusively in US schools to celebrate Scholastic's Read Every Day campaign.[291][292] In October 2011, Swift donated 6,000 Scholastic books to Reading Public Library, Pennsylvania[293] and, in February 2012, she donated 14,000 books to Nashville Public Library, Tennessee.[294] Most of the books were placed in circulation; the rest were gifted to children from low-income families, preschools and daycare centers.[294] In March 2012, she co-chaired the National Education Association's Read Across America campaign and recorded a PSA encouraging children to read.[295][296]
In June 2008, Swift donated all the proceeds from her merchandise sales at the 2008 Country Music Festival to the Red Cross's disaster relief fund.[297] Swift donated $100,000 to the Red Cross in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to help the victims of the Iowa flood of 2008.[298] Swift lent her support to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal by joining the lineup at Sydney's Sound Relief concert,[299] reportedly making the biggest contribution of any artist playing at Sound Relief to the Australian Red Cross.[300]
In response to the May 2010 Tennessee floods, Swift donated $500,000 during a flood relief telethon hosted by WSMV, a Nashville television station.[301] In August 2010, she donated $100,000 to help rebuild a playground in Hendersonville, Tennessee, which was damaged by floodwater.[302] In May 2011, Swift transformed what was to have been the final dress rehearsal for the North American leg of her Speak Now tour into a benefit concert for victims of recent tornadoes in the United States southeast region, raising more than $750,000 from proceeds from ticket sales, merchandise and other facets of the show.[303] The benefit concert for tornado relief was subsequently honored at the 2011 Do Something Awards.[304] In July 2011, Swift further aided the cause by donating $250,000 to Alabama football coach Nick Saban's charity Nick's Kids to aid in the tornado relief efforts of West Alabama.[305] In April 2012, Swift donated $1,500 to a fund to help a man left permanently paralyzed by the tornado to make his house wheelchair-accessible.[306]
In September 2007, Swift helped launch a campaign to protect children from online predators, in partnership with the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police.[307] In January 2008, Swift donated a pink Chevy pick-up truck given to her by her record label to the Victory Junction Gang Camp.[308] Swift has teamed up with Sound Matters to make listeners aware of listening "responsibly".[309] Swift supports @15, a teen-led social change platform underwritten by Best Buy to give teens opportunities to direct the company's philanthropy through the newly-created @15 Fund.[310] She appeared in a Got Milk campaign in July 2010.[311]
Swift donated her prom dress, which raised $1,200 for charity, to DonateMyDress.org.[312] In November 2009, after a live performance on BBC's Children in Need night, she donated $20,000 to the cause.[313] Swift donated a pair of her shoes to the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation's Hero in Heels fundraiser for auction to raise money to benefit women with cancer. In June 2011, as the Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year, Swift donated $25,000 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Tennessee. This figure was matched by the Academy.[314]
Swift made her acting debut in a 2009 episode of CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, playing a rebellious teenager.[315] The New York Times noted that the character allowed Swift to be "a little bit naughty, and credibly so".[316] Rolling Stone felt she "held her own" and "does a good job with the script"[317] while the Chicago Tribune said she "acquits herself well".[318] Later that year, Swift both hosted and performed as the musical guest for an episode of Saturday Night Live.[319] Entertainment Weekly described her as "this season’s best Saturday Night Live host so far", noting that she "was always up for the challenge, seemed to be having fun, and helped the rest of the cast nail the punchlines". Proving "admirably resilient in a wide variety of sketch roles", "Swift inspired more of a female, girly-in-the-best-sense sensibility in SNL than it’s shown since the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler days".[320]
In 2010, Swift made her feature film acting debut in the romantic comedy Valentine's Day and won the Teen Choice Award for Movie Female Breakout.[321] In 2012, she voiced the character of Audrey in the animated film The Lorax.[322] Swift is in talks to star as Joni Mitchell in the film adaptation of Sheila Weller's Girls Like Us, which follows the careers of Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carole King.[323]
Jakks Pacific released a celebrity doll of Swift in late 2008.[324] Swift was the face of L.E.I. jeans in 2008.[325] In 2007, Swift launched a line of sundresses at Wal-Mart.[326][327] In 2009, Swift became the National Hockey League's newest celebrity spokesperson and appears in commercials for the Nashville Predators.[328] In 2011, Swift partnered with Elizabeth Arden to launch a fragrance, "Wonderstruck".[329] Swift works with American Greetings, Inc.[330] She also has endorsement deals with companies including Target, CoverGirl and Sony.[331]
In May 2009, Swift filed a lawsuit (kept sealed until August 2010) against numerous sellers of unauthorized counterfeit merchandise bearing her name, likeness, and trademarks, where she demanded a trial by jury, sought a judgement for compensatory damages, punitive damages, three times the actual damages sustained, and statutory damages, and sought for recovery of her attorney's fees and prejudgement interest.[332] Nashville's U.S. District Court granted an injunction and judgment against the sellers, who had been identified at Swift's concerts in several states. The court ordered merchandise seized from the defendants to be destroyed.[333][334][335]
Swift's main residence is a duplex penthouse in Midtown Nashville, Tennessee.[336][1] She also owns a house in Beverly Hills, California.[337][338] According to Forbes, Swift earned $18 million in 2009,[339] $45 million in 2010,[340] $45 million in 2011[341] and $57 million so far in 2012.[342]
Swift writes autobiographical songs and has said that, "I've never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record".[343] Listening to music as a child, Swift felt confused "when I knew something was going on in someone’s personal life and they didn’t address it in their music".[344]
Swift dated singer Joe Jonas from July to October 2008.[345][346] She dated actor Taylor Lautner from October to December 2009.[347][348] She was romantically linked to musician John Mayer from late 2009 until June 2010.[349][350] They first met in 2008 and recorded a duet, "Half of My Heart", in late 2009.[351][352] Swift dated actor Jake Gyllenhaal from October 2010 to December 2010.[353][354][355][356][357] On December 9, 2011, Gyllenhaal called the LAPD for assistance, after a large number of photographers followed the couple's car in Los Angeles.[358] Following their break-up, they were seen together in January and February 2011.[359][360]
On her eighteenth birthday, "the first thing" Swift did was register to vote.[361][362] After casting her vote in the 2008 US presidential election, Swift declined to inform journalists which candidate she had supported.[363] However, following Barack Obama's inauguration, she told Rolling Stone: "I've never seen this country so happy about a political decision in my entire time of being alive. I'm so glad this was my first election."[364] In 2009, after Swift's MTV VMA acceptance speech was interrupted by Kanye West, President Obama described West's behaviour as "really inappropriate. The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She’s getting her award. What is he doing up there? He’s a jackass."[365] Former US President Jimmy Carter said West's interruption was "completely uncalled for".[366]
In 2010, former U.S. President George H. W. Bush attended the taping of a Swift television special in Kennebunkport, Maine,[367] and later described Swift as "unspoiled" and "very nice".[368] In 2012, Swift was presented with a Kids' Choice Award in recognition of her charitable work by Michelle Obama, who praised her as someone who "has rocketed to the top of the music industry but still keeps her feet on the ground, someone who has shattered every expectation of what a 22-year old can accomplish".[369] Swift later described the First Lady as "a role model".[370]
Swift is an admirer of the Kennedy family and has spent time with Rory, Caroline and, particularly, Ethel Kennedy.[371] When asked about her friendship with Swift, Ethel replied, "Oh, she is amazing! Such good company."[372] Rory has said, "There is a mutual admiration society between my mother and Taylor Swift and I just love it! I think it says so much about Taylor – she has that ability to connect and cross generations ... She's terrific and such a great role model for young girls, as well as for all women, really. ... She's just so curious and interested".[372] In January 2012, Swift travelled to Utah to attend the Sundance premiere of the HBO documentary Ethel.[373]
In a 2012 interview, Swift remarked that she was "very cautious" about using her public profile to address political issues, adding that she hoped to "gradually" become more outspoken: "I don't feel that I am in a place to sing about politics or anything like that. I don't know enough at this point".[374]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience | Herself | Cameo |
2009 | CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Haley Jones | Episode: "Turn, Turn, Turn" |
2009 | Hannah Montana: The Movie | Herself | Cameo |
2009 | Saturday Night Live | Host | Also appeared as the Musical Guest |
2010 | Valentine's Day | Felicia | Movie acting debut |
2012 | The Lorax | Audrey | Voice only |
Swift has won 109 awards from a total of 162 nominations. She has been the recipient of ten American Music Awards, six Grammy Awards, seven Country Music Association Awards, six Academy of Country Music Awards and 13 BMI Awards.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Taylor Swift |
Awards | ||
---|---|---|
Preceded by Carrie Underwood |
Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance 2010 |
Succeeded by Miranda Lambert |
Preceded by N/A |
Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance 2012 |
Succeeded by incumbent |
Preceded by Miranda Lambert |
Academy of Country Music Award for Top New Female Vocalist 2008 |
Succeeded by Julianne Hough |
Preceded by Carrie Underwood |
Academy of Country Music Award for Entertainer of the Year 2011–2012 |
Succeeded by incumbent |
Preceded by Carrie Underwood |
Country Music Association Award for Horizon Award 2007 |
Succeeded by N/A |
Preceded by Carrie Underwood |
Country Music Association Award for Female Vocalist of the Year 2009 |
Succeeded by Miranda Lambert |
Preceded by Kenny Chesney |
Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the Year 2009 |
Succeeded by Brad Paisley |
Preceded by Brad Paisley |
Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the Year 2011 |
Succeeded by incumbent |
Preceded by Rihanna |
American Music Award for Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist 2009 |
Succeeded by Lady GaGa |
Preceded by Carrie Underwood |
American Music Award for Favorite Country Female Artist 2008–2011 |
Succeeded by incumbent |
Preceded by Chris Brown |
American Music Award for Artist of the Year 2009 |
Succeeded by Justin Bieber |
Preceded by Justin Bieber |
American Music Award for Artist of the Year 2011 |
Succeeded by incumbent |
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Sir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE (born 25 September 1927) is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.
He studied as a clarinettist, but was intent on becoming a conductor. After struggles as a freelance conductor from 1949 to 1957, he gained a series of appointments with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He has been associated with the London Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years, including over ten years as its principal conductor. He has also held the musical directorships of Sadler's Wells Opera and the Royal Opera House, where he was principal conductor for over fifteen years. His guest conductorships include the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Dresden Staatskapelle, among many others.
As a teacher, Davis holds posts at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Carl Maria von Weber High School of Music in Dresden. He made his first gramophone recordings in 1958, and his discography built up in the succeeding five decades is extensive, with a large number of studio recordings for Philips Records and a growing catalogue of live recordings for the London Symphony Orchestra's own label.
Contents |
Davis was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the youngest of three sons among seven siblings, to Reginald George and Lillian Davis.[1][2] The family was musical, and Davis was exposed to music from his early years. He recalled, "I can still see Sargent conducting the first concert I ever attended. I can still hear Melchior in the final scene of Siegfried – an old 78 playing on my father's gramophone. … I can also remember the moment I decided to make music my life. I was 13 or 14 at the time and the performance was of Beethoven's Eighth. Doors were suddenly opened. I became totally involved, even obsessed by music, although I was frightfully enclosed by my likes and dislikes. Today I'm game for anything."[3]
Davis was educated at Christ's Hospital and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston.[4] As a clarinettist he was overshadowed by his fellow-student Gervase de Peyer, but he had in any case already set his mind to conducting. He was, however, not eligible for the conducting class at the college, because he could not play the piano.[5]
His ambitions to conduct were further disrupted by compulsory military service, which was in force in Britain at that time. After leaving the college, Davis served as a clarinettist in the band of the Household Cavalry. Stationed at Windsor he had continual opportunities to attend concerts in London under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter. After completing his military service, he launched himself in 1949 into what he later described as the "freelance wilderness", where he remained until 1957.[2] His first conducting work was with the Kalmar Orchestra, which he co-founded with other former students of the Royal College. He made a good impression and was invited to conduct the recently founded Chelsea Opera Group in Don Giovanni. In the early years of his career he also took some engagements as an orchestral clarinettist.[6] What seemed at first to be a full-time conducting appointment, for the Original Ballet Russe in 1952, came to an abrupt end after three months, when the company collapsed. In between sparse conducting engagements, Davis worked as a coach and lecturer, including spells at the Cambridge University Musical Society and the Bryanston Summer School, where a performance of L'enfance du Christ awakened his love of Berlioz's music.[7]
His first breakthrough came in 1957, when at his third attempt he secured the post of assistant conductor of the BBC Scottish Orchestra (now the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). The chief conductor of the orchestra generally chose to conduct the standard repertoire pieces himself, leaving Davis with modern works and non-standard repertoire works including those of Berlioz.[8] By 1959 he had developed to the extent that, after a concert of Stravinsky and Mozart with the London Mozart Players, the chief music critic of The Observer, Peter Heyworth, wrote, "Mr Davis conducted two works in a manner that showed that he is not only outstanding among our younger conductors, but probably the best we have produced since Sir Thomas Beecham, his senior by forty-eight years."[9]
Davis first found wide acclaim when he stood in for an ill Otto Klemperer in a performance of Don Giovanni, at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959. A year later, Beecham invited him to collaborate with him in preparing The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne. Beecham was taken ill, and Davis conducted the opera. After the Don Giovanni, The Times wrote, "A superb conductor of Mozart declared himself last night at the Festival Hall…. Mr Davis emerged as a conductor ripe for greatness."[10] Neville Cardus in The Guardian was less enthusiastic but nevertheless considered that Davis "had his triumphs" in the performance.[11] After The Magic Flute, The Times called Davis "master of Mozart's idiom, style and significance",[12] although Heyworth in The Observer was disappointed by his tempi, judging them to be too slow.[13]
In 1960 Davis made his début at the Proms in a programme of Britten, Schumann, Mozart and Berlioz.[14] In the same year, he was appointed chief conductor of Sadler's Wells Opera, and in 1961 he was made musical director of the company, with whom he built up a large repertoire of operas, conducting in London and on tour.[15] Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians wrote of this period, "He excelled in Idomeneo, The Rake's Progress and Oedipus rex, and Fidelio; his Wagner, Verdi and Puccini were less successful. He introduced Weill's Mahagonny, and Pizzetti's Assassinio nella cattedrale to the British public and conducted the première of Bennett's The Mines of Sulphur (1965)."[16] Together with the stage director Glen Byam Shaw, he worked to present operas in a way that gave due weight to the drama as well as the music.[17] In his early years, Davis was known as something of a firebrand with a short fuse in rehearsals, and his departure from Sadler's Wells in 1965 was not without acrimony.[18]
After he left Sadler's Wells it was widely expected that he would be offered the chief conductorship of the London Symphony Orchestra, but the post went to István Kertész. Soon afterwards Davis was offered the post of chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though the appointment was not effective until September 1967.[19] At first, so far as the public was concerned, his tenure was overshadowed, at least during the orchestra's most conspicuous concert seasons, the Proms, by the memory of Sir Malcolm Sargent, who had been an immensely popular figure as chief conductor of the Proms until 1966. Sargent had been "a suave father figure"[20] to the promenaders, and it took some time for the much younger Davis to be accepted.[19] The BBC's official historian of the Proms later wrote, "Davis never really identified himself with the Proms in the way that Sargent had done.[20] Davis was uncomfortable with the traditional hullabaloo of the Last Night of the Proms and attempted, unsuccessfully, to modernise it.[21] The BBC's Controller of Music, William Glock, was a long-standing admirer of Davis, and encouraged him to put on adventurous programmes, with a new emphasis on modern music, both at the Proms and throughout the rest of the orchestra's annual schedule.[22]
In 1970, Sir David Webster, who ran the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet companies at Covent Garden, invited Davis to succeed Georg Solti as principal conductor of the opera.[23] At about the same time, the Boston Symphony Orchestra invited him to become its musical director, but Davis felt that if Covent Garden needed him, it was his duty to take on the post.[17] Webster's vision was that Davis and the stage director Peter Hall, formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company, would work in equal partnership as musical director and director of productions. After early successes together, including the première of Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden in December 1970, Hall left to succeed Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theatre. Webster had retired by that time, leaving Davis, together with Webster's successor as General Administrator, John Tooley, to run the Royal Opera.[23]
Davis's early months in charge at Covent Garden were marked by dissatisfaction among some of the audience, and booing was heard at a "disastrous" Nabucco in 1971, and his conducting of Wagner's Ring was at first compared unfavourably with that of his predecessor.[24] Among his successes were Berlioz's massive Les Troyens and Benvenuto Cellini, Verdi's Falstaff, the major Mozart operas, and, as one critic put it, he "confirmed his preeminence as a Britten and Stravinsky interpreter" with productions of Peter Grimes and The Rake's Progress.[24] Davis conducted more than 30 operas during his fifteen-year tenure,[16] but "since people like Maazel, Abbado and Muti would only come for new productions", Davis yielded the baton to these foreign conductors, giving up the chance to conduct several major operas, including Der Rosenkavalier, Rigoletto and Aida.[24]
In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, Davis conducted a number of atonal and other modern operas, including Alban Berg's Lulu and Wozzeck, Tippett's The Knot Garden and The Ice Break (of which he is the dedicatee),[16] and Alexander Zemlinsky's The Dwarf and Eine Florentinische Tragödie.[25] With later stage directors at Covent Garden, Davis preferred to work with those who respected the libretto: "I have a hankering for producers who don't feel jealous of composers for being better than they are, and want to impose their, often admittedly clever, ideas on the work in hand."[26] Davis hoped that Goetz Friedrich, with whom he worked on Wagner's Ring cycle, would take on the role of principal producer vacated by Hall, "but it seemed that nobody wanted to commit themselves."[24]
During his Covent Garden tenure, Davis was also principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1975 and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1984.[2] Another guest conducting engagement was in 1977, when he became the first English conductor to appear at Bayreuth, where he conducted the opening opera of the festival, Tannhäuser. Despite the Bayreuth habitués' suspicion of newcomers,[27] Davis's Tannhäuser was "highly successful".[28] He debuted at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1969, the Vienna State Opera in 1986 and the Bavarian State Opera in 1994.[2]
From 1983 to 1993, Davis was chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom he developed his concert hall repertoire, including symphonies by Bruckner and Mahler.[18] He was offered but declined the chief conductorships of the Cleveland Orchestra in succession to Maazel and the New York Philharmonic in succession to Zubin Mehta.[29] As a principal guest conductor he was associated with the Dresden Staatskapelle, which appointed him honorary conductor (Ehrendirigent) in 1990, the first in the orchestra's 460-year-history.[30] From 1998–2003, he was principal guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic.[2]
In 1995, Davis was appointed principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. It was the culmination of a long association with the orchestra. He had first conducted the LSO in 1959, and in 1964 he headed the orchestra's first world tour. He became principal guest conductor in 1975 and was at the helm in the LSO's first major series at its new home, the Barbican Centre, in a Berlioz/Tippett festival in 1983.[30] In 1997 he conducted the LSO's first residency at Lincoln Center in New York City.[30] Davis was the longest-serving principal conductor in the history of the LSO holding the post from 1995 until 2006, after which the orchestra appointed him President of the LSO, an honour previously held only by Arthur Bliss, William Walton, Karl Böhm and Leonard Bernstein.[31] On 21 June 2009, 50 years to the day after his first LSO performance, a special concert was given at the Barbican, at which present-day players were joined by many past members of the orchestra.[30] Davis's programme for the concert was Mozart's Symphony No 40 in G minor, and Brahms's Piano Concerto No 2, with Nelson Freire as soloist.[32]
During his time with the LSO, both as principal conductor and later as president, Davis has conducted series and cycles of the music of Sibelius, Berlioz, Bruckner, Mozart, Elgar, Beethoven, and Brahms,[30] and in 2009 began presenting a cycle of the symphonies of Carl Nielsen.[33] Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians wrote, "He conducted a Sibelius cycle in 1992 and a concert performance of Les Troyens the following year, both of which have become the stuff of legend. More recently he has added grand performances of Bruckner, Richard Strauss and Elgar, the première of Tippett's last major work, The Rose Lake (1995), and a Berlioz cycle begun with Benvenuto Cellini in 1999 and crowned by an incandescent Les Troyens in December 2000, all confirming his partnership with the LSO as one of the most important of its time."[16]
Davis is president of the Landesgymnasium für Musik "Carl Maria von Weber" in Dresden,[34] and holds the International Chair of Orchestral Studies at the Royal Academy of Music, London.[35] Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, principal of the academy, wrote of Davis, "As the Academy's International Chair of Conducting over 25 years, Sir Colin has helmed six opera productions and over sixty concerts, classes and chamber music projects. Such extraordinary generosity from a major international conductor is surely unique. He has inspired a whole generation here, as did Henry Wood and John Barbirolli before him."[30]
Davis's discography is extensive. He made his first records in 1958 for the World Record Club: three Mozart symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with Leon Goossens. He made several records for the small independent label L'Oiseau Lyre, including a 1960 L'enfance du Christ and a 1962 Béatrice et Bénédict which, at January 2010, were both still available on CD. For EMI he made both operatic and orchestral recordings, the former with Sadler's Wells forces, including excerpts from Carmen and a complete Oedipus Rex, and the latter including Harold in Italy with Yehudi Menuhin, and what remains one of his best-known recordings, a 1961 Beethoven Seventh Symphony.[36][37]
In the 1960s, Davis signed as an exclusive artist for Philips Records, with whom he made an extensive range of recordings in the symphonic repertoire and a large number of operatic recordings, including the major Mozart operas; operas by Tippett, Britten, Verdi and Puccini; and a comprehensive survey of the operas of Berlioz, culminating in an award-winning first recording of the complete Les Troyens issued in May 1970.[18][38]
Davis's 1966 Philips recording of Handel's Messiah was regarded as revelatory at the time of its issue for its departure from the large-scale Victorian-style performances that had been customary before then.[39] Other Philips recordings included a 1982 set of Haydn's twelve London Symphonies with the Concertgebouw Orchestra "distinguished by performances of tremendous style and authority, and a sense of rhythmic impetus that is most exhilarating";[40] and a 1995 Beethoven symphony cycle with the Dresden Staatskapelle, of which The Gramophone wrote, "There has not been a Beethoven cycle like this since Klemperer's heyday."[41]
Davis made a number of records with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Philips, including the first of his three Sibelius cycles, which remains in the CD catalogues. They also recorded works by Debussy, Grieg, Schubert, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky.
For RCA, Davis recorded complete symphony cycles of Sibelius (with the LSO), Brahms (Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, 1989–98), and Schubert (Dresden Staatskapelle, 1996).
Davis's terms as chief conductor, and latterly president, of the LSO have coincided with the orchestra's decision to launch its own record label, issuing live recordings (patched where necessary with takes from rehearsals) at budget prices. Davis's recordings on the LSO Live label include Beethoven's opera Fidelio (2006), a wide range of Berlioz works, including a second recording of Les Troyens (2000), La Damnation de Faust (2000), Roméo et Juliette (2000), Béatrice et Bénédict (2000), Harold en Italie (2003), and the Symphonie Fantastique (2000); Britten's Peter Grimes (2004); Dvořák's Symphonies Nos. 6–9 (1999–2004); five Elgar sets: the Enigma Variations (2007) and the Introduction and Allegro for Strings (2005), the three symphonies (2001), and The Dream of Gerontius (2005); Handel's Messiah (2006); Haydn's Die Schöpfung (2007); Holst's The Planets (2002); James MacMillan's St John Passion, (2008) The World's Ransoming and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie (2007); Mozart's Requiem (2007); Nielsen's Symphonies Nos. 4-5 (2011); a third Sibelius symphony cycle (2002–2008); Smetana's Má vlast (2005); Tippett's A Child of our Time (2007), Verdi's Falstaff (2004), Requiem (2009), and Otello (2010); and Walton's First Symphony (2005).[42]
Davis was appointed CBE in 1965,[43] knighted in 1980[44] and appointed Companion of Honour in 2001.[45] He was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's gold medal in 1995,[2] the Queen's Medal for Music, 2009,[46] and has numerous international awards, including Commendatore of the Republic of Italy, 1976; Commander's Cross, Order of Merit (Germany), 1987; Commandeur, l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), 1990; Commander, Order of the Lion (Finland), 1992; Order of Merit (Bavaria), 1993; Officier, Légion d'Honneur (France), 1999 (Chevalier, 1982); Order of Maximilian (Bavaria), 2000.[2]
Other awards include Pipe Smoker of the Year in 1996,[47] Male Artist of the Year in the Classical Brit Awards 2008,[47] and the Grammy Award in 2006 for Best Opera for his LSO Live recording of Verdi's Falstaff.[30]
In 1949, Davis married the soprano April Cantelo. They had two children, Suzanne and Christopher. Their marriage ended in 1964, and in that same year, Davis married Ashraf Naini, known as Shamsi. To satisfy both the Iranian and British authorities, the couple were married three times, once in Iran and twice in the UK, in the Iranian Embassy as well as in a regular UK civil ceremony; they had five children.[48] One of their children is the conductor Joseph Wolfe, who chose a different surname, because he wanted to "create some space to grow and develop my own identity as a musician."[49] Lady Davis died in June 2010.[50]
Cultural offices | ||
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Preceded by Alexander Gibson |
Musical director, Sadler's Wells 1961–1965 |
Succeeded by Bryan Balkwill and Mario Bernardi |
Preceded by Georg Solti |
Music director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 1971–1987 |
Succeeded by Bernard Haitink |
Preceded by Rafael Kubelík |
Chief conductor, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra 1983–1993 |
Succeeded by Lorin Maazel |
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