Oracular Spectacular

Oracular Spectacular is the first major label studio album by American rock band MGMT, released digitally October 2, 2007 on RED Ink Records and physically on January 22, 2008 by Columbia Records. The album, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide, was nominated for best international album in the 2009 BRIT Awards. It features new versions of both "Kids" and "Time to Pretend", songs from their previous release, Time to Pretend EP (2005), the opening track serving as a "mission statement" and theme continued through the proceeding tracks. Though Oracular Spectacular never sold more than 17,000 in a week, it has been a consistent seller since January 2008, selling at least 2,000 copies per week through April 2010.

In 2012, Rolling Stone ranked the album at number 494 on its list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Reception

Oracular Spectacular has received mostly positive reviews. On the review aggregate site Metacritic, the album has a score of 76 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

MGMT

MGMT is an American rock band formed in 2002 by Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden. After the release of their first album, the members of their live band, Matthew Asti, James Richardson and Will Berman, joined the core band in the studio. Formed at Wesleyan University and originally with Cantora Records, they signed with Columbia Records and Red Ink in 2006.

On October 5, 2007, Spin.com named MGMT "Artist of the Day." On November 14, 2007, Rolling Stone pegged MGMT as a top ten "Artist to Watch" in 2008. The band was named ninth in the BBC's Sound of 2008 Top Ten Poll. They were also named as Last.fm's most played new artist of 2008 in their Best of 2008 list.

MGMT's first album, Oracular Spectacular, debuted at No. 12 on the UK album chart, No. 13 after 34 weeks in the New Zealand RIANZ charts, number six on the Australian ARIA Charts, and hit number one on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. It has also been named the 18th best album of the 2000s by Rolling Stone magazine. It was named the best album of 2008 by NME. MGMT also appeared prominently in Australia's Triple J Hottest 100 2008, coming in 2nd with "Electric Feel", 5th with "Kids" and 18th with "Time to Pretend".

Workweek and weekend

The workweek and weekend are those complementary parts of the week devoted to labour and rest, respectively. The legal working week (British English), or workweek (U.S. English), is the part of the seven-day week devoted to labour. In most of the Western world it is Monday to Friday; the weekend is a time period including Saturday and Sunday. A weekday is any day of the working week. As well as places of work, other institutions often follow the same days, such as places of education.

Some people extend the weekend to Friday nights as well. In some Christian traditions, Sunday is the "Lord's Day" and the day of rest and worship. Jewish Shabbat or Biblical Sabbath lasts from sunset on Friday to the fall of full darkness on Saturday, leading to a Friday–Saturday weekend in Israel. Some Muslim-majority countries historically had a Thursday–Friday or Friday–Saturday weekend; however, recently many such countries have shifted from Thursday–Friday to Friday–Saturday, or to Saturday–Sunday. The French Revolutionary Calendar had ten-day weeks (called décades) and allowed décadi, one out of the ten days, as a leisure day.

War

War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme collective aggression, destruction, and usually high mortality. The set of techniques and actions used to conduct war is known as warfare. An absence of war is usually called "peace". Total war is warfare that is not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, and can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant casualties.

While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue that it is only a result of specific socio-cultural or ecological circumstances.

In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths down from 72,000 deaths in 1990. The deadliest war in history, in terms of the cumulative number of deaths since its start, is the Second World War, from 1939 to 1945, with 60–85 million deaths, followed by the Mongol conquests which was greater than 41 million. Proportionally speaking, the most destructive war in modern history is the War of the Triple Alliance, which took the lives of over 60% of Paraguay's population, according to Steven Pinker. In 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth (of ten) biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. War usually results in significant deterioration of infrastructure and the ecosystem, a decrease in social spending, famine, large-scale emigration from the war zone, and often the mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilians. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, and increased revenues by weapons manufacturers.

And I

"And I" is a song written by American R&B singer Ciara, and produced by Adonis Shropshire for Ciara's first album, Goodies (2004). It was released as the album's fourth and final single on August 30, 2005 (see 2005 in music) in North America.

The song was originally the third choice for the fourth single. Ciara has mentioned in an interview that "Thug Style", "Hotline" or "Pick up the Phone" would be the fourth single, but when Ciara suggested "And I" to executives at her previous record label LaFace, they were unhappy because they wanted "Next to You" to be the fourth single.

Chart performance

At the time of the U.S. release of "And I", Ciara's collaboration with Bow Wow, "Like You", and her collaboration with Missy Elliott, "Lose Control", were at the height of their popularity. "And I" peaked at 96 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and 27 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart, which were poor positions compared to those attained by the first three singles from the album Goodies. It was not released outside North America because of this, and it is Ciara's least successful single.