In Blue

In Blue is the third album by Irish Celtic folk rock band The Corrs, released in 2000 which saw the band become known in the United States. The title of the album comes from a lyric in the song "Give Me a Reason". As well as the UK number one single "Breathless", the album also contains new versions of "Radio" and "At Your Side" which had previously appeared on their previous album The Corrs Unplugged. Mutt Lange co-wrote three songs from the album and Tim Martin was the engineer for the album's tracks for their recordings at Westland Studios and Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin.

Several of the tracks were used in various television programmes and films: "Rebel Heart" as the theme for the TV miniseries of the same name; "One Night" in Mad About Mambo; "At Your Side" in Say It Isn't So and the trailer for the film The Holiday; and "All the Love in the World" in the film America's Sweethearts.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by The Corrs, with additional writing by Robert John "Mutt" Lange on track 1, 5 & 7. 

Rhapsody in Blue

Rhapsody in Blue is a 1924 musical composition by American composer George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects.

Commissioned by bandleader Paul Whiteman, the composition was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé several times, including the original 1924 scoring, "theater orchestra" setting published in 1926, and the symphony orchestra scoring published in 1942, though completed earlier. The piece received its premiere in the concert, An Experiment in Modern Music, which was held on February 12, 1924, in Aeolian Hall, New York, by Whiteman and his band with Gershwin playing the piano.

The editors of the Cambridge Music Handbooks opined that "The Rhapsody in Blue (1924) established Gershwin's reputation as a serious composer and has since become one of the most popular of all American concert works."

History

Commission

After the success of an experimental classical-jazz concert held with French-Canadian singer Eva Gauthier at Aeolian Hall (New York) on November 1, 1923, band leader Paul Whiteman decided to attempt something more ambitious. He asked Gershwin to contribute a concerto-like piece for an all-jazz concert he would give in Aeolian Hall in February 1924. Whiteman became interested in featuring such an extended composition by Gershwin in the concert after he had collaborated with Gershwin in the Scandals of 1922, impressed by the original performance of the one-act opera Blue Monday, which was nevertheless a commercial failure. Gershwin declined on the grounds that, as there would certainly be need for revisions to the score, he would not have enough time to compose the new piece.

George Gershwin

George Gershwin (/ˈɡɜːrʃ.wɪn/; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928) as well as the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).

Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark and Henry Cowell. He began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, where he began to compose An American in Paris. After returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century.

Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a brain tumor.

Eiffel 65

Eiffel 65 is an Italian musical group consisting of Jeffrey Jey, Gabry Ponte, and Maurizio Lobina. They are known chiefly for their high-charting singles, "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", and their 1999 studio album Europop. Their next two albums, Contact! (2001) and their 2003 self-titled album, did not have much international success but still managed to chart in Italy.

History

Formation

Randone, Ponte and Lobina met each other at Bliss Corporation, which was founded in 1992 by Massimo Gabutti. A computer chose the name Eiffel randomly from a group of words the three liked. The number 65 was added mistakenly to an early pressing of their first single, Blue (Da Ba Dee). Jeffrey Jey explained:

1998–2005

Eiffel 65 is best known for using pitch correction and Auto-Tune and for their international chart-topping hits "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" and "Move Your Body", which appeared on their album Europop, released in late 1999.

Eiffel 65 achieved considerable success in Italy, the rest of Europe, United States, and Canada. Europop peaked in the top five on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million units. "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Blue

Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres. Blues with a higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometres. In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments, along with red and yellow, which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Blue is also a primary colour in the RGB colour model, used to create all the colours on the screen of a television or computer monitor.

The modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word blao. The clear sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. Rayleigh scattering also explains blue eyes; there is no blue pigment in blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective.