John Allan Jones is an American singer and actor.
Aaron Dupree Tippin is an American country music singer, songwriter and record producer. Initially a songwriter for Acuff-Rose Music, he gained a recording contract with RCA Nashville in 1990. His debut single, "You've Got to Stand for Something" became a popular anthem for American soldiers fighting in the Gulf War and helped to establish him as a neotraditionalist country act with songs that catered primarily to the American working class. Under RCA's tenure, he recorded five studio albums and a Greatest Hits package. Tippin switched to Lyric Street Records in 1998, where he recorded four more studio albums, counting a compilation of Christmas music. After leaving Lyric Street in 2006, he founded a personal label known as Nippit Records, on which he issued the compilation album Now & Then. A concept album, In Overdrive, was released in 2009.
Nicholas Valensi is an American musician, best known for his role as lead and rhythm guitarist in the American rock band The Strokes. Since 2001, the band has released six studio albums, some of which Valensi has also contributed keyboard and backing vocals to. In 2013, he founded the band CRX, for which he acts as singer, songwriter, and lead and rhythm guitarist. Their debut album, New Skin, was released in 2016, and was followed by the 2019 album Peek. Valensi has also worked as a songwriter and session guitarist with various artists, including Sia, Regina Spektor and Kate Pierson.
Cynthia Weil was an American songwriter who wrote many songs together with her husband Barry Mann. Weil and Mann were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. In 1987, she was inducted with her husband into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2011, they jointly received the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honor bestowed by that Hall of Fame.
Deborah Christine "Siedah" Garrett is an American singer and songwriter who has written songs and performed backing vocals for many recording artists in the music industry, such as Michael Jackson, the Pointer Sisters, Brand New Heavies, Quincy Jones, Tevin Campbell, Donna Summer, Madonna, Jennifer Hudson among others. Garrett has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Original Song, and won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards for co-writing "Love You I Do" for the 2006 musical film, Dreamgirls.
William Thomas Medley is an American singer best known as one-half of The Righteous Brothers. He is noted for his bass-baritone voice, exemplified in songs such as "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'". Medley produced a number of the duo's songs, including "Unchained Melody" and "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration".
Regina Ilyinichna Spektor is a Russian-born American singer, songwriter, and pianist.
Regina Belle is an American singer-songwriter who started her career in the mid-1980s. Known for her singles "Baby Come to Me" (1989) and "Make It Like It Was" (1990), Belle is most notable for two hit duets, both with Peabo Bryson: "Without You", the love theme from the comedy film Leonard Part 6, recorded in 1987; and "A Whole New World", the main theme of the Disney's animated feature film Aladdin, recorded in 1992, with which Belle and Bryson won the Grammy award. The theme song "Far Longer than Forever" from the animated movie The Swan Princess, performed with Jeffrey Osborne, was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1995 for Best Original Song.
"Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" is a Christmas song performed by English singer-songwriter David Bowie and American singer Bing Crosby. Recorded on 11 September 1977 at ATV Elstree Studios near London for Crosby's television special Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, the song features Crosby singing 1941 standard "The Little Drummer Boy" while Bowie sings the counterpoint tune "Peace on Earth", written by the special's musical supervisors Ian Fraser and Larry Grossman, and scriptwriter Buz Kohan, specifically for the collaboration. The duet was one of Crosby's final recordings before his death in October 1977.
Begin to Hope is the fourth album by Soviet-born American singer-songwriter Regina Spektor. It was released June 13, 2006. The album debuted at number 70 on the Billboard 200, but due to the popularity of the single "Fidelity", it peaked at number 20 and was labeled a "pace setter" by Billboard. Rolling Stone named it the 21st-best album of 2006. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA for shipments to U.S. retailers of 500,000 units.
Jenji Leslie Kohan is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On....
Devonté Hynes, also known as Blood Orange and formerly Lightspeed Champion, is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and director based in New York City. From 2004 to 2006, Hynes was a member of the band Test Icicles, playing guitar, synth, and occasionally performing vocals. They released one full-length album in 2005. Hynes went on to release two solo studio albums as Lightspeed Champion and subsequently five more as Blood Orange, between 2008 and 2019.
The discography of Regina Spektor, a Russian-American anti-folk musician, consists of eight studio albums, four extended plays, two live albums, and twenty-six singles.
What We Saw from the Cheap Seats is the sixth studio album by American alternative singer-songwriter Regina Spektor. On November 21, 2011, Spektor posted on her Facebook page that the album had been recorded with Mike Elizondo in Los Angeles during the summer of 2011. It was released on May 29, 2012. The album is a collection of new material alongside the first studio recordings of several songs Spektor had previously only performed live.
Orange Is the New Black is an American comedy-drama television series created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison (2010), about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum security federal prison. Produced by Tilted Productions in association with Lionsgate Television, Orange Is the New Black premiered on Netflix on July 11, 2013. Its seventh and final season was released on July 26, 2019.
"Don't Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)" is a song by Regina Spektor, from her 2012 album What We Saw from the Cheap Seats. It was released as the album's second single on March 26, 2012. Although a handful of critics assumed this was an English-language cover version of Jacques Brel's song "Ne me quitte pas", Spektor's song is different in every way except the title. The chord structure, melody, and lyrics are all completely different. Brel's song was written in the key of A minor, in 3/4 time. It is a slow, haunting story of a man trying to win back his former lover—a song about the cowardice of men according to Brel. In contrast, Spektor's song is lively, in 4/4 time, and in a major key. Its lyrics evoke a carefree jaunt through various neighborhoods of New York City, the narrator describing all the beautiful and interesting things encountered along the way. Somehow the narrator ends up in the cafés and gardens of Paris, and the song ends with repeated declarations of love for Paris in the rain.
The first season of the American comedy-drama television series Orange Is the New Black premiered on Netflix on July 11, 2013, at 12:00 am PST in multiple countries. It consists of thirteen episodes, each between 51–60 minutes. The series is based on Piper Kerman's memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison (2010), about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison. Created and adapted for television by Jenji Kohan. In July 2011, Netflix was in negotiations with Lionsgate for a 13-episode TV adaptation of Kerman's memoirs. The series began filming in the old Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center in Rockland County, New York, on March 7, 2013. The title sequence features photos of real former female prisoners including Kerman herself.
Rosa "Miss Rosa" Cisneros is a fictional character from the Netflix dramedy series Orange Is the New Black, played by Barbara Rosenblat. The character made her first screen appearance during the premiere episode titled "I Wasn't Ready", which aired on July 11, 2013. Stephanie Andujar portrayed "Young Rosa" in flashback sequences. Rosenblat originally auditioned for another character but producers asked her to portray Miss Rosa. The character is a cancer sufferer who is incarcerated in Litchfield federal prison because she committed armed bank robberies. Rosenblat did not want to shave her head for the role and a make-up artist was hired to fit a prosthetic appliance to her head creating the character's baldness. The application process took three hours, meaning that the actress had to arrive on set earlier than other cast members. Initially there was no character biography created for Miss Rosa; it was Rosenblat who gave the character a Hispanic background and accent.
"Samson" is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Regina Spektor, from her albums Songs and Begin to Hope. Despite having never been officially released as a single, it has charted in several countries, and is often considered one of Spektor's greatest songs. As of 2009 it has sold 143,000 copies in United States.
