Babyface (song)

"Babyface" is a song by U2 and the second track from their 1993 album Zooropa.

Composition

"It's about how people play with images, believing you know somebody through an image and think that by manipulating a machine that, in fact, controls you, you can have some kind of power."

"Babyface" was written by Bono during the Zooropa recording sessions in late 1992/early 1993. The song contains themes of desire, voyeurism, image, celebrity and technology. It involves a man having an obsession with a famous woman, whose image he keeps on a televised recording. Through the course of production, U2 and producer Brian Eno incorporated a toy piano into the melody of the song. The Edge sings the vocals with Bono during the verses and chorus.

Reception

"Babyface" received mixed reviews from critics. The New York Times critic Jon Pareles described the song as U2 combining "'With or Without You' and Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes'" while praising the "tinkling countermelody" of the song.The Boston Globe's Jim Sullivan called it "the most conventional song" on the album and "a smooth-glider where the subversiveness is half-buried in the rolling rhythms and the soft, seductive melody." In contrast, Parry Gettelman of Orlando Sentinel felt the song was "tediously repetitive" and caused the album to falter.

Babyface (musician)

Babyface (born Kenneth Brian Edmonds; April 10, 1959) is an American R&B musician, singer-songwriter, and record producer. He has written and produced over 26 No. 1 R&B hits throughout his career, and has won 11 Grammy Awards.

Early life

Edmonds was born on April 10, 1959, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Marvin and Barbara Edmonds. Barbara was a production operator at a pharmaceutical plant. Edmonds, who is the fifth of six brothers (including future After 7 band members Melvin and Kevon Edmonds, the latter of whom went on to have a modestly successful solo career), attended North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana, and as a shy youth, wrote songs to express his emotions. When he was in eighth grade, Edmonds' father died of lung cancer, leaving his mother to raise her sons alone. At this stage, Edmonds became determined to have a career in music.

Music career

Edmonds later played with funk performer Bootsy Collins, who tagged him "Babyface" because of his youthful look. He also performed in the group Manchild (which had a 1976 hit "Especially for You" with band member Daryl Simmons), as he was a guitarist for the band. Then, as a keyboardist in the light-funk and R&B group the Deele (which also included drummer Antonio "L.A." Reid, with whom he would later form a successful writing and producing partnership). One of his first major credits as a songwriter for outside artists came when he wrote the tune "Slow Jam" for the R&B band Midnight Star in 1983. The tune was on Midnight Star's double-platinum No Parking on the Dance Floor album, and while it never was a single, it received massive radio airplay and the song is still played on quiet storm radio stations. Babyface remained in the Deele until 1988, when both he and Reid left the group.

Face (professional wrestling)

In professional wrestling, a face, babyface is a heroic or a "good guy" wrestler, booked (scripted) by the promotion with the aim of being cheered by fans. Faces, traditionally, will wrestle within the rules and avoid cheating (in contrast to the heels that use illegal moves and call in additional wrestlers to do their work for them) while behaving positively towards the referee and the audience.

Such characters are also referred to as a blue-eye in British wrestling, and a técnico in lucha libre. The face character will be portrayed as a hero relative to the heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains. Not everything a face wrestler does must be heroic: faces need only to be cheered by the audience to be effective characters. The vast majority of wrestling storylines involving faces will place a face against a heel, although more elaborate set-ups (such as two faces being manipulated by a nefarious outside party into fighting) often happen as well.

In the world of lucha libre wrestling, they're generally known for using moves requiring technical skill, particularly aerial maneuvers, and wearing outfits using bright colors with positive associations (such as solid white). This is contrasted with the villainous rudos that are generally known for being brawlers, using physical moves that emphasize brute strength and/or size while often having outfits akin to demons or other nasty characters.

Prelude

A prelude is a musical form.

Prelude may also refer to:

Music

Musical works

'Prelude' is a very common term as a title of a musical piece, both classical and popular. Some specific preludes are:

Prelude (band)

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Prelude are an English based vocal harmony group, who in their most famous line-up consisted of Brian Hume (vocals, guitar), his wife Irene Hume (vocals) and Ian Vardy (guitars, vocals). They formed in their native Gateshead in 1970.

Career

Prelude began to write their own material and built a following on the folk circuit and in 1973 they recorded their first album, How Long Is Forever?, on Dawn Records at Rockfield recording studios in Wales. From it came their best known recording, an a cappella version of the Neil Young song "After the Gold Rush", on Dawn. In the UK, it entered the Top 50 on 26 January 1974, had a nine-week stay, peaking at Number 21. In America, it entered the Billboard Hot 100 on 11 February 1974, and had a five-week stay, peaking at #22.

Hume explained (in 1974) how the song came about: “We were standing at a bus stop in Stocksfield and we just started singing it. There was no particular reason, it was just a nice song. The way we do it now is really no different from the way we did it at the bus stop. We included it in our act and it went down really well – even the rowdier clubs listened to it. We certainly never thought of it as a possible single. In any case we always thought of ourselves as an album group rather than making singles and included the song on the album How Long Is Forever as an afterthought”.

The Party Scene

The Party Scene is the debut full-length studio album by American pop punk band All Time Low, released on July 19, 2005 via regional imprint Emerald Moon Records. Music videos were released for "Circles" and "The Girl's a Straight-Up Hustler". Tracks 2, 3, 8, 9 and 12 were re-recorded for the band's next EP, Put Up or Shut Up.

Track listing

All music and arrangements by All Time Low; except where noted. All lyrics by Alex Gaskarth. Additional arrangements by Paul Leavitt.

Personnel

Personnel per booklet.

References