Alicia Augello Cook, known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American singer and songwriter. A classically trained pianist, Keys began composing songs when she was the age of 12 and was signed by Columbia Records at the age of 15. After disputes with the label, she signed with J Records to release her debut studio album, Songs in A Minor (2001). Met with critical acclaim and commercial success, the album sold over 12 million copies worldwide and won five awards at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards. It contained the Billboard Hot 100-number one single "Fallin'." Her second album, The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003), was met with continued success, selling eight million units worldwide and spawning the singles "You Don't Know My Name", "If I Ain't Got You", and "Diary". Its release earned an additional four Grammy Awards.
Clyde Jackson Browne is an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 22 million albums in the United States.
Kristoffer Kristofferson was an American country music singer, songwriter, and actor. He was a pioneering figure in the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, moving away from the polished Nashville sound and toward a more raw, introspective style. During the 1970s, he also embarked on a successful career as a Hollywood actor.
Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice is an English lyricist and author. He is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote, among other shows, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Evita; Chess ; Aida ; and, for Disney, Aladdin, The Lion King, both the stage adaptation of Beauty and the Beast and the live-action film adaption. He also wrote lyrics for the Alan Menken musical King David, and for DreamWorks Animation's The Road to El Dorado.
James Chambers, OM, known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievements in the arts and sciences.
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980), in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Known for working slowly, Williams released her fourth album, Sweet Old World, four years later in 1992. Sweet Old World was met with further critical acclaim and was voted the 11th best album of 1992 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent music critics. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 6th on his own year-end list, later writing that the album as well as Lucinda Williams were "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant".
Deanie Ip is a Hong Kong singer and actress. She has won the Hong Kong Film Awards once for Best Actress and three times for Best Supporting Actress. Deanie also won the Golden Horse Awards once for Best Leading Actress and twice for Best Supporting Actress; she also won a Coppa Volpi for the Best Actress at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. Her Cantopop albums were released by Universal Music Group and several local labels. A Hakka of Huiyang ancestry, she speaks Cantonese, Dapeng dialect, Mandarin and English.
Björn Svante Afzelius was a Swedish singer-songwriter and guitar player. He was an outspoken socialist, known for his support for Olof Palme. His songs are about love, politics and joys and sadness in life.
Kasseem Daoud Dean, known professionally as Swizz Beatz, is an American record producer, rapper, and DJ. Born and raised in the Bronx borough of New York City, Dean initially embarked on his musical career as a DJ. At the age of 18, he gained recognition in the music industry through his family's record label Ruff Ryders Entertainment and his affiliation with its flagship artist, Yonkers-based rapper DMX. Working with DMX as his producer, DJ, and hype man helped Dean gain prominence as a high-profile figure in hip hop in the following years.
Jesse Harris is an American singer-songwriter, producer, and guitarist. He has worked with Norah Jones, Melody Gardot, Madeleine Peyroux, and Lizz Wright.
As well as his work with Queen, Freddie Mercury released one solo album, one collaborative album, and several singles. Although his solo work was not as commercially successful as most Queen albums, the two off-Queen albums and several of the singles debuted in the top 10 of the UK Music Charts. Following Mercury's death in 1991, several posthumous box sets and compilation albums have been released.
Lady A, known until 2020 as Lady Antebellum, is an American country music group formed in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2006. The group is composed of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley, and Dave Haywood. Scott is the daughter of country music singer Linda Davis, and Kelley is the brother of pop singer Josh Kelley. The band abbreviated the name to "Lady A" in June 2020 during the George Floyd protests in an attempt to blunt the name's associations with slavery and the Antebellum South, inadvertently causing a dispute with Black blues and gospel singer Anita White, who had been using the name Lady A for more than 20 years.
Roger Lucey is a South African musician, journalist, filmmaker, actor, and educator. In the late 1970s and early 1980s his early career as a musician was destroyed by Paul Erasmus of the Security Branch of the South African Police, because the lyrics to Lucey's protest songs were considered a threat to the Apartheid State. Although already aware of his anti-apartheid songs, the South African Government's security apparatus only swung into action to destroy Lucey's career after he performed a radical song in a programme on Voice of America radio. The criminal methods used against Lucey formed part of the testimony given by Paul Erasmus in front of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Dean Brody is a Canadian country music artist from British Columbia. He has won 16 CCMA Awards and 2 JUNO Awards.
Esther Renay Dean, known professionally as Ester Dean, is an American R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer. She rose to prominence as a pop songwriter in the late 2000s and wrote numerous hit songs for singers including Rihanna, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, and Beyoncé through the 2010s. She has acted in numerous films, including the 2012 musical comedy Pitch Perfect and its sequels.
Kirsty Bertarelli is a British songwriter and beauty pageant titleholder who won Miss United Kingdom 1988 and represented her country at Miss World 1988 and placed 2nd Runner-up, she is former wife of Ernesto Bertarelli an Italian-Swiss businessman who was the owner of biotech giant Serono until 2007 and winner of the America's Cup in 2003 and 2007 with his yachting syndicate Alinghi.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is a Swiss-based international non-governmental organization founded in 1961 that works in the field of wilderness preservation and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the World Wildlife Fund, which remains its official name in Canada and the United States. WWF is the world's largest conservation organization, with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries and supporting around 3,000 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 65% of funding from individuals and bequests, 17% from government sources and 8% from corporations in 2020.
Alexander Shuckburgh, better known by his stage name Al Shux, is a British record producer and songwriter from London, England. He is perhaps best known for his production work on Jay-Z's 2009 single, "Empire State of Mind", which peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100. Furthermore, he has been credited on releases for Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Doja Cat, Kali Uchis, Alicia Keys, Kelela, BANKS, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Santigold, La Roux, Plan B, Tinie Tempah and Lana Del Rey, among others.
Stephan Othman Said, aka Stephan Smith, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, writer, and global activist. He hosts borderless, a docuseries about people on the front lines of change, produced by difrent:, Inc. where he travels the world, meeting people through music and discovering stories of courage and creativity.
"No Church in the Wild" is a song by American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West featuring American singers Frank Ocean and The-Dream, from the former two's first collaborative album Watch the Throne (2011). Opening the album, the song explores themes of religion and decadence. The track received highly positive reviews from music critics, who praised Ocean's vocal hooks, the depth of the verses, the cinematic production and the song's power as an opening track.
