The Eurovision Song Contest, often simply called Eurovision, is an international song competition held primarily among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union. Each participating country submits an original song to be performed on live television and radio, then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the winner. At least 50 countries are eligible to compete as of 2018, and since 2015, Australia has been allowed as a guest entrant.
The Song of Songs, also Song of Solomon or Canticles, is one of the megillot (scrolls) found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim, and a book of the Old Testament.
A song is a single work of music that is typically intended to be sung by the human voice with distinct and fixed pitches and patterns using sound and silence and a variety of forms that often include the repetition of sections. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word "song" may refer to instrumentals.
The Song dynasty was an era of Chinese history that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporary Liao and Western Xia dynasties in the north. It was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Song government was the first in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money nationally and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty also saw the first known use of gunpowder, as well as the first discernment of true north using a compass.
A songwriter is a professional that writes lyrics or composes musical compositions for songs. A songwriter can also be called a composer, although the latter term tends to be used mainly for individuals from the classical music genre and film scoring, but is also associated with writing and composing the original musical composition or musical bed. A songwriter that writes the lyrics/words are referred to as lyricist. The pressure from the music industry to produce popular hits means that songwriting is often an activity for which the tasks are distributed between a number of people. For example, a songwriter who excels at writing lyrics might be paired with a songwriter with the task of creating original melodies. Pop songs may be written by group members from the band or by staff writers – songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Some songwriters serve as their own music publishers, while others have outside publishers.
"God Bless America" is an American patriotic song written by Irving Berlin during World War I in 1918 and revised by him in the run up to World War II in 1938. The later version has notably been recorded by Kate Smith, becoming her signature song.
Randall Stuart Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer and pianist who is known for his distinctive voice, mordant pop songs and film scores.
The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. that opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of January 2017, iTunes offered over 35-40 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. When it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels. As of June 2013, iTunes Store possessed 575 million active user accounts, and served over 315 million mobile devices, including Apple Watches, iPods, iPhones, Apple TV and iPads.
Lata Mangeshkar is an Indian playback singer and music director. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in South Asia, especially India. She has recorded songs in over a thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi, Hindi, and Bengali.
Asha Bhosle, is an Indian playback singer. She is best known for her playback singing in Hindi cinema, although she has a wider repertoire. Bhosle's career started in 1943 and has spanned over six decades. She has done playback singing for over a thousand Bollywood movies. In addition, she has recorded several private albums and participated in numerous solo concerts in India and abroad. In 2006, Asha Bhosle stated that she had sung over 12,000 songs, a figure repeated by several other sources. In 2011, she was officially acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded artist in music history. The Government of India honoured her with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2008. Bhosle is the sister of playback singer Lata Mangeshkar.
Enrique Miguel Iglesias Preysler is a Spanish singer, songwriter, actor and record producer who is widely regarded as the King of Latin Pop. Iglesias started his career in the mid-1990s on an American Spanish-language record label Fonovisa Records under the stage name Enrique Martinez, before switching to his notable surname Iglesias. By the turn of the millennium, after becoming one of the biggest stars in Latin America and the Hispanic market in the United States, he made a successful crossover into the US mainstream market. He signed a multi-album deal with Universal Music Group for US$68 million with Universal Music Latino to release his Spanish albums and Interscope Records to release English albums. In 2010, he parted with Interscope Records and signed with another Universal Music Group label Republic Records to release bilingual albums. In 2015, Iglesias parted ways with Universal Music Group after being there for over a decade. He signed with Sony Music and his subsequent albums to be released by Sony Music Latin in Spanish and RCA Records in English.
The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales, radio play, and online streaming in the United States.
Brenda Song is an American actress. Song started in show business as a child fashion model. Her early television work included roles in the television shows Fudge (1995) and 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd (1999). After many commercials and television roles in the late 1990s, Song won a Young Artist Award for her performance in The Ultimate Christmas Present (2000). In 2002, Song signed a contract with Disney Channel and starred in the 2002 Disney Channel Original Movie Get a Clue and then made significant contributions to the channel, including Stuck in the Suburbs (2004) and many other productions. In 2005, Song began playing the lead female role of London Tipton in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and The Suite Life on Deck. The character is noted as one of the Disney Channel's longest continuous characters. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2009.
"Hallelujah" is a song written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, originally released on his album Various Positions (1984). Achieving little initial success, the song found greater popular acclaim through a recording by John Cale, which inspired a recording by Jeff Buckley. It is considered as the "baseline" of secular hymns.
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show. The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the soundtrack to the film of the same name, in 1938. The first soundtrack album of a film's orchestral score was that for Alexander Korda's 1942 film Jungle Book, composed by Miklós Rózsa. However, this album added the voice of Sabu, the film's star, narrating the story in character as Mowgli.
Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.
"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published in December 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Amit Kumar Ganguly is an Indian versatile film playback singer, actor, entertainer, producer and director of Hindi films. Recent years he sung songs in his own compositions. Kumar launched his own music production company, named Kumar Brothers Music. Amit released many music videos on YouTube. He has sung many Bollywood and regional film songs since the 1970s, including 170 Hindi compositions by R.D. Burman, and was actively singing in Indian films from 1970 to 1994. After Burman's death in 1994, citing a lack of quality music composition, Kumar withdrew from playback singing and concentrated on live orchestra shows. In addition to singing in Hindi, has also performed in Bengali, Bhojpuri, Odia, Assamese, Marathi and Konkani.
Arijit Singh is an Indian playback singer, music producer, recordist and music programmer. He sings predominantly in Hindi and Bengali, but has also performed in various other Indian languages. Singh is regarded as one of the most versatile and successful singers in the history of Indian music and Hindi cinema.
"Shallow" is a song performed by American singer and actor Lady Gaga and American actor and filmmaker Bradley Cooper. It was released through Interscope Records on September 27, 2018 as the lead single from the soundtrack of the 2018 musical drama film, A Star Is Born (2018). "Shallow" was written by Gaga with Andrew Wyatt, Anthony Rossomando and Mark Ronson, and produced by Gaga with Benjamin Rice. The song is heard three times throughout the film, most prominently during a sequence when Cooper's character Jackson Maine invites Gaga's character Ally to perform it onstage with him. The scene was filmed in front of a live audience at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, California.
