Gummy bear

A gummy bear (German: Gummibär) is a small, fruit gum candy, similar to a jelly baby in some English-speaking countries. The candy is roughly 2 cm (0.8 in) long and shaped in the form of a bear. The gummy bear is one of many gummies, popular gelatin-based candies sold in a variety of shapes and colors.

History

The gummy bear originated in Germany, where it is popular under the name  Gummibär  (gum or gummy bear) or in the endearing form  Gummibärchen  ([little] gum or gummy bear), gum arabic was the original base ingredient used to produce the gummy bears, hence the name gum or gummy. Hans Riegel, Sr., a confectioner from Bonn, started the Haribo company in 1920. In 1922, inspired by the trained bears seen at street festivities and markets in Europe through to the 19th century, he invented the Dancing Bear (Tanzbär), a small, affordable, fruit-flavored gum candy treat for children and adults alike, which was much larger in form than its later successor, the Gold-Bear (Goldbär). Even during Weimar Germany's hyperinflation period that wreaked havoc on the country, Haribo's fruit-gum Dancing Bear treats remained affordably priced for a mere 1 Pfennig, in pairs, at kiosks. The success of the Dancing Bear's successor would later become Haribo's world-famous Gold-Bears candy product in 1967.

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for singles, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play, online streaming, and sales (physical and digital).

The weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015, this has been changed from Friday to Thursday. Radio airplay, which unlike sales figures and streaming data, is readily available on a real-time basis and is tracked on a Monday to Sunday cycle (it was previously Wednesday to Tuesday). A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by Billboard on Tuesdays. Example:

I Feel Pretty

"I Feel Pretty" is a song from the 1957 musical West Side Story.

Production

The New York Times explained that "Mr. Sondheim...has said he was never particularly fond of his lyrics in “West Side Story,” especially “I Feel Pretty”", later expressing that “The idea of the song is so simple”.

Synopsis

in the musical, Maria is not yet aware that her love, Tony, has just killed her brother Bernardo, while in the film version, the song occurs before Bernardo's death. In the bridal shop where she works, Maria sings about being happy and feeling beautiful because she is "loved by a pretty wonderful boy", while her coworkers tease her about her silly behavior. Robert Cummings of AllMusic comments that the song "features one of Bernstein's more memorable melodies: its first four notes, deliciously rhythmic in their rising contour, repeat, then are reduced to three, then to two. ... Bernstein's instrumentation colors the music with a Latin character ... and so does the girls' chorus that enters midway through. Stephen Sondheim's lyrics deftly capture Maria's bliss and newfound sense of confidence".

Amy Schumer

Amy Beth Schumer (born June 1, 1981) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actress, and producer. She is the creator, co-producer, co-writer and star of the sketch comedy series Inside Amy Schumer, which debuted on Comedy Central in 2013. Inside Amy Schumer has received a Peabody Award and Schumer has been nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards for her work on the series, winning for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series in 2015. That same year, she wrote and starred in the comedy Trainwreck (2015), receiving nominations for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.

Early life

Schumer was born on June 1, 1981 in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, to Sandra (née Jones) and Gordon Schumer, who owned a baby furniture company. She has a younger sister, Kimberly, who is a comedy writer and a producer, and a brother, Jason Stein, who is a musician in Chicago, Illinois. Her father is second cousin to U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer's father is Jewish and her mother is from a Protestant background. Schumer was raised Jewish, and experienced antisemitism as a child.

Music recording sales certification

Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies. The threshold quantity varies by type (such as album, single, music video) and by nation or territory (see List of music recording certifications).

Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories, which are named after precious materials.

The number of sales or shipments required for these awards depends upon the population of the territory in which the recording is released. Typically, they are awarded only to international releases and are awarded individually for each country in which the album is sold. Different sales levels, some perhaps 10 times lower than others, may exist for different music media (for example: videos versus albums, singles, or downloads).

History

The original gold record awards were presented to artists by their own record companies to publicize their sales achievements. The first of these was awarded by RCA Victor to Glenn Miller in February 1942, celebrating the sale of 1.2 million copies of "Chattanooga Choo Choo". Another example of a company award is the gold record awarded to Elvis Presley in 1956 for one million units sold of his single "Don't Be Cruel". The first gold record for an LP was awarded by RCA Victor to Harry Belafonte in 1957 for the album Calypso (1956), the first album to sell over 1,000,000 copies in RCA's reckoning.