Album of the Year, often abbreviated to AOTY, may refer to:
Benjamin Charles Harper is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Harper plays an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae, and rock music, and he is known for his guitar-playing skills, vocals, live performances, and activism. He has released twelve studio albums, mostly through Virgin Records, and has toured internationally.
Leslie Sebastian Charles, known professionally as Billy Ocean, is a Trinidadian-born British singer and songwriter. Between 1976 and 1988, he had a series of hit songs in the UK and internationally.
Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim, also known as Tom Jobim, was a Brazilian composer, pianist, guitarist, songwriter, arranger, and singer. Considered as one of the great exponents of Brazilian music, Jobim merged Samba with Cool jazz in the 1960s to create Bossa nova, with worldwide success. As a result, he is widely regarded as the "father of bossa nova".
Aldo Nova is the stage name of Aldo Caporuscio, a Canadian hard rock musician and music producer. He is a guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist. He gained recognition with his 1982 debut album Aldo Nova, which peaked at Billboard's number 8 position, and its accompanying single, "Fantasy", which reached number 23 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and boosted sales for its parent album. In 1997, he won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year as co-producer of Celine Dion's 1996 album Falling into You. He co-wrote four songs on the 2000 album Uno by La Ley, which won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album.
Sheena Shirley Easton is a Scottish singer and actress who achieved recognition in an episode of the reality television series The Big Time: Pop Singer, which recorded her attempts to gain a record deal and her eventual signing with the EMI label. Her first two singles, "Modern Girl" and "9 to 5", both entered the top ten of the UK Singles Chart simultaneously. She became one of the most successful British female recording artists of the 1980s. Easton became the first and only recording artist in Billboard history to have a top five hit on each of Billboard's primary singles charts: "Morning Train ", "We've Got Tonight" with Kenny Rogers and "Sugar Walls".
Kim Carnes is an American singer and songwriter born and raised in Los Angeles. She began her career as a songwriter in the 1960s, writing for other artists while performing in local clubs and working as a session background singer with the famed Water Sisters. After she signed her first publishing deal with Jimmy Bowen, she released her debut album Rest on Me in 1971. Carnes' self-titled second album primarily contained self-penned songs, including her first charting single "You're a Part of Me", which reached No. 35 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in 1975. In the following year, Carnes released Sailin', which featured "Love Comes from Unexpected Places". The song won the American Song Festival and the award for Best Composition at the Tokyo Song Festival in 1976.
"Garota de Ipanema", "The Girl from Ipanema", is a Brazilian bossa nova and jazz song. It was a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s and won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965. It was written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinícius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.
Richard Wright Nowels Jr. is an American songwriter, record producer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger. He has co-written and co-produced over 90 hit singles with multiple artists and albums his songs have appeared on have sold over 250 million copies. In 2020, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Olga Teresa Tañón Ortiz is a Puerto Rican singer-songwriter. Over the course of her career, she has earned two Grammy Awards, three Latin Grammy Awards, and 29 Premio Lo Nuestro Awards.
Walter Afanasieff, formerly nicknamed Baby Love in the 1980s, is an American record producer and songwriter. He was a collaborator with Mariah Carey on her first six studio albums. He won the 1999 Grammy Award in the Record of the Year category for producing "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, and the 2000 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.
Jota Quest is a Brazilian pop rock band. The band was founded in 1993 in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais as J. Quest, but due to trademark issues with Hanna-Barbera, they renamed themselves Jota Quest. The band members include: Rogério Flausino (vocals), Marco Túlio Lara (guitar), Márcio Buzelin (keyboards), PJ (bass) and Paulinho Fonseca (drums). Jota Quest initially stood apart from Minas Gerais' musical tradition by garnering national success with pop rock and blue-eyed soul-tinged pop. Eventually the band exposed its Clube da Esquina influences, including collaborations with Minas Gerais exponents Paulinho Pedra Azul and Milton Nascimento in Oxigenio as well as jams with 14 Bis and a collaboration with Roberto Carlos over his hit single "Alem do Horizonte". Jota Quest sold over 4,000,000 copies in Brazil, Latin America and Portugal.
Ivan Guimarães Lins is a Latin Grammy-winning Brazilian musician. He has been an active performer and songwriter of Brazilian popular music (MPB) and jazz for over thirty years. His first hit, "Madalena", was recorded by Elis Regina in 1970. "Love Dance", a hit in 1989, is one of the most recorded songs in contemporary music.
Lauren Christy is a British singer, songwriter and record producer. Originally a solo artist, she found success as part of the writing production trio the Matrix. The Matrix was nominated for the Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards.
Falling into You is the fourteenth studio album and fourth English-language album by Canadian singer Celine Dion, released on 11 March 1996 by Sony Music. The follow-up to her blockbuster album The Colour of My Love (1993) and French-language D'eux (1995), Falling into You showed a further progression of Dion's music. Throughout the project she collaborated with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced "It's All Coming Back to Me Now", among others. Several songs were produced by David Foster, including Diane Warren's "Because You Loved Me". In total, Dion worked on the album with fourteen producers and a variety of songwriters and musicians.
Eliane Elias is a Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger.
Rey Ruiz is a salsa singer from Cuba. Ruiz reached international fame across Latin America, Europe and among Hispanic music fans in the United States.
"The Look of Love" is a popular song composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and originally popularized by English pop singer Dusty Springfield. The song is notable for its sensuality and its relaxed bossa nova rhythm. The song was featured in an extended slow-motion interlude to the 1967 spoof James Bond film Casino Royale. In 2008, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It also received a Best Song nomination at the 1968 Academy Awards. The song partially inspired the film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997).
Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças, known professionally as Céu, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter whose first American album was released on the Six Degrees Records label in April 2007.
"Fruta Fresca" is a vallenato song written and performed by Colombian recording artist Carlos Vives and produced by Emilio Estefan and Juan Vicente Zambrano as the lead single from his studio album El Amor de Mi Tierra (1999). The song incorporates the sound of Latin pop and Colombian vallenato music. In the song, he compares his lover's kisses to fresh fruit. The track was well received by critics who praised the production of the record. "Fruta Fresca" became Vives' first number-one hit on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart. It is recognized as one of his signature songs.