Alex North

Alex North (December 4, 1910 – September 8, 1991) was an American composer best known for his many film scores, including A Streetcar Named Desire (one of the first jazz-based film scores), Viva Zapata!, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He was the first composer to receive an Honorary Academy Award.

Early life

North was born Isadore Soifer in Chester, Pennsylvania to Russian Jewish parents.

Career

North managed to integrate his modernism into typical film music leitmotif structure, rich with themes. One of these became the famous song, "Unchained Melody". Nominated for fifteen Oscars but unsuccessful each time, North is one of only two film composers to receive the Lifetime Achievement Academy Award, the other being Ennio Morricone. North's frequent collaborator as orchestrator was the avant-garde composer Henry Brant. He won the 1968 Golden Globe award for his music to The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968).

His best-known film scores include A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Viva Zapata!, The Rainmaker, Spartacus, The Misfits, Cleopatra, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Dragonslayer and Under the Volcano. His music for The Wonderful Country makes use of Mexican and American motifs.

Kanye West

Kanye Omari West (/ˈkɑːnjeɪ/; born June 8, 1977) is an American recording artist, record producer, fashion designer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the record label GOOD Music and creative content company DONDA. West is one of the most acclaimed musicians of the 21st century. He has attracted both praise and criticism for his work and his controversial, outspoken public persona.

Raised in Chicago, West first became known as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the early 2000s, producing hit singles for musical artists such as Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, before pursing a solo career as a rapper. In 2004, he released his debut album The College Dropout, to widespread commercial and critical success, and founded record label and management company GOOD Music. He went on to explore a variety of different musical styles on subsequent albums that included the baroque-inspired Late Registration (2005), the electronic-tinged Graduation (2007), and the starkly polarizing 808s & Heartbreak (2008). In 2010, he released his critically acclaimed fifth album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. He collaborated with Jay-Z on Watch the Throne (2011), and released his sixth album, Yeezus, to further critical praise in 2013. Following a series of recording delays and work on non-musical projects, West's seventh album, The Life of Pablo, was released in 2016.

William Singe

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William Anthony Singe (born 2 July 1992), better known by his stage name William Singe, is an Australian singer, songwriter and producer. He is most notable for his online videos that have amassed hundreds of millions of YouTube and Facebook views.

Singe started his career as a member of The Collective, an Australian boy band which was formed during the fourth season of The X Factor Australia in 2012, finishing in third place. The Collective subsequently signed with Sony Music Australia and released seven singles and a self-titled album. They disbanded after Singe left the group in 2015.

In 2014 and 2015, Singe recorded numerous R&B, pop, hip-hop and rap covers in his bedroom. In less than a year, he accumulated over two million Facebook fans, reached a #1 position on Spotify, twenty million Spotify streams, and earned more than fifty million video views and half a million subscribers on YouTube.

Early life

Singe was raised in Forestville, a suburb of northern Sydney. He is of Māori Australian descent.

Raise Your Weapon

"Raise Your Weapon" is a song by Canadian electronic music producer deadmau5. It was released on May 23, 2011 as the fourth single from his fifth studio album 4×4=12. The song was written by Joel "deadmau5" Zimmerman, Cydney Sheffield and Sonny "Skrillex" Moore, and features contributing vocals from Greta Svabo Bech. Musically, "Raise Your Weapon" is a progressive house song that begins with a piano melody and Bech's vocals and ends with dubstep beat with the vocals repeated. The song received generally positive reviews from music critics, with some highlighting it as a standout track from the album. It reached number 100 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it his first song to make an entry on the chart. It also reached number 117 on the UK Singles Chart. The song was nominated at the 54th Grammy Awards for Best Dance Recording, where he also performed the song in a sequence with David Guetta, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Foo Fighters, with the songs being "I Can Only Imagine" and "Rope."

Galway Girl

"Galway Girl" or "The Galway Girl" is a song written by Steve Earle and recorded with Irish musician Sharon Shannon, which was featured on Earle's 2000 album Transcendental Blues.

A cover version of the song by Mundy and Shannon reached number one and became the most downloaded song of 2008 in Ireland, and has gone on to become the eighth highest selling single in Irish chart history.

Plot

"Galway Girl" tells the semi-autobiographical story of the singer's reaction to a beautiful black haired blue eyed girl he meets in Galway, Ireland. Local references include Salthill and The Long Walk.

References in popular culture

"Galway Girl" featured in the 2008 Bulmers cider advertising campaign.

The song appears in the 2007 film P.S. I Love You, where Gerard Butler's character sings the song for Hilary Swank's character. This was also sung by Jeffrey Dean Morgan's character to Swank.

The song featured in the TV series Treme (in episode 9 of the second series, entitled "What Is New Orleans?"). It was performed by Steve Earle (in his role of Harley, a street musician) with Lucia Micarelli and Spider Stacy (of The Pogues) accompanying him on violin and pennywhistle.