"In the Summertime" is a song recorded in 1970 by the Britishpop-blues band Mungo Jerry. Written by the group's leader Ray Dorset,
it celebrates the carefree days of summer. Reaching Number 1 in charts
around the world (including seven weeks in the UK, two weeks in Canada)
and Number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100
singles chart in the US. It is considered one of the highest selling
singles of all time with an estimated 30 million copies sold.[1] It was also the year-end top seller of 1970 in the UK singles chart. The song took Dorset only ten minutes to compose on a second-hand Fender Stratocaster whilst taking time off work from his regular job and has been used in a campaign against drink driving in the UK due to its lyric of "have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find".[1][2]
"A Thousand Kisses Deep" CD: "Ten New Songs". Leonard Cohen's tenth studio album, released in 2001. It was co-written and produced by Sharon Robinson. She played all the instruments except for Bob Metzger's guitar work on "In My Secret Life". The album peaked at #143 on the Billboard 200, #4 in Canada (where it went platinum), #1 in Poland[5] (where it went platinum [6]) and #1 in Norway. Ten New Songs was the first Cohen album to be recorded and produced digitally. It was produced in Cohen's and Robinson's home studios in Los Angeles.
"Redemption Song" is a song by Bob Marley. It is the final track on Bob Marley & the Wailers' ninth album, Uprising, produced by Chris Blackwell and released by Island Records.[2] The song is considered one of Marley's seminal works,with Rolling Stone having listed it as #66 among The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Some key lyrics derived from a speech given by the Pan-Africanist orator Marcus Garvey.
At the time he wrote the song, circa 1979, Bob Marley had been diagnosed with the cancer in his toe that later was to take his life. According to Rita Marley,
"he was already secretly in a lot of pain and dealt with his own
mortality, a feature that is clearly apparent in the album, particularly
in this song".
Unlike most of Bob Marley's tracks, it is strictly a solo acoustic recording, consisting of Marley singing and playing an acoustic guitar, without accompaniment.
"Redemption Song" was released as a single in the UK and France in
October, 1980, and included a full band rendering of the song. This
version has since been included as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of Uprising, as well as on the 2001 compilationOne Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers.
Although in live performances the full band was used for the song the
solo recorded performance remains the take most familiar to listeners.
In 2004, Rolling Stone placed the song at #66 among The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2010, the New Statesman listed it as one of the Top 20 Political Songs.[3]
Guns n' Roses Preforming Knocking On Heavens Door at the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert in the old Wembley Stadium. "With Only Women Bleed" as the intro
The song describes the feelings and impressions of a dying deputy, who can no longer continue his role as a law enforcer. The song consists of four chords in the key of G major: G, D, Am7, and C. The basic pattern throughout the song is G-D-Am7-Am7 and then G-D-C-C, and this is repeated. Over the years Dylan has changed the lyrics, as have others who have performed this song.
Guns N' Roses (sometimes abbreviated as G N' R or GnR) is an American hard rock band. The band formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. Led by frontman and co-founder Axl Rose, the band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album while going through numerous line-up changes and controversies since its formation. Rose is the only consistent and original member of Guns N' Roses.
The band has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide,[6] including shipments of 45 million in the United States.[7] The band's 1987 major label debut album, Appetite for Destruction, has sold in excess of 28 million copies worldwide and reached No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 and is also the highest selling debut album of all time in the US. In addition, the album charted three Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including "Sweet Child o' Mine" which reached No. 1.[8] The 1991 albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II debuted on the two highest spots on the Billboard 200 and have sold a combined 14 million copies in the United States alone and 35 million worldwide. After over a decade of work and many lineup changes, the band released their follow-up album, Chinese Democracy, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum in the United States.
Guns N' Roses' mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s years have been described by individuals in the music industry as the period in which "they brought forth a hedonistic rebelliousness and revived the punk attitude-driven hard rock scene, reminiscent of the early Rolling Stones.".[9] This lineup primarily consisted of lead vocalist Axl Rose, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, lead guitarist Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler. Keyboardist Dizzy Reed was introduced in 1990, and drummer Matt Sorum and rhythm guitarist Gilby Clarke replaced Adler and Stradlin during the Use Your Illusion Tour.
"Hallelujah"
...a song written by Leonard Cohen, originally released on his studio albumVarious Positions (1984). Achieving little initial success, the song found greater popular acclaim through a cover by John Cale, which later formed the basis for a cover by Jeff Buckley. In recent years several cover versions have been performed by a large number and broad range of artists, both in recordings and in concert.
"Hallelujah", in its original version, is a song in "12/8 feel", which evokes the styles of both waltz and gospel music. Written in the key of C major, the chord progression follows the lyric "it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift": C, F, G, A minor, F.[1]
Cohen's original version contains several biblical references, most notably evoking the stories of Samson and traitorous Delilah from the Book of Judges as well as the adulterous King David and Bathsheba[2]: "she cut your hair" and "you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you".[1]
Following his original 1984 studio-album version, Cohen performed the original song on his world tour in 1985, but live performances during his 1988 and 1993 tours almost invariably contained a quite different set of lyrics with only the last verse being common to the two versions. Numerous artists mix lyrics from both versions, and occasionally make direct lyric changes, such as Rufus Wainwright, a Canadian-American singer, substituting "holy dark" and Allison Crowe, a Canadian singer-songwriter, substituting "Holy Ghost" for "holy dove". Cohen's lyrical poetry and his view that "many different hallelujahs exist" is reflected in wide-ranging covers with very different intents or tones of speech, allowing the song to be "melancholic, fragile, uplifting [or] joyous" depending on the performer:[1] The Welsh singer-songwriter John Cale, the first person to record a cover version of the song in 1991, promoted a message of "soberness and sincerity" in contrast to Cohen's dispassionate tone;[1] The cover by Jeff Buckley, an American singer-songwriter, is more sorrowful and was described by Buckley as "a hallelujah to the orgasm";[1][3] Crowe interpreted the song as a "very sexual" composition that discussed relationships;[1] Wainwright offered a "purifying and almost liturgical" interpretation to the song;[1] and Guy Garvey of the British band Elbowanthropomorphised the hallelujah as a "stately creature" and incorporated his religious interpretation of the song into his band's recordings.
Leonard Norman Cohen, CC, GOQ (born 21 September 1934) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships.[1] Famously reclusive,[2] having once spent several years in a Zen Buddhist monastery, and possessing a persona frequently associated with mystique,[3][4] he is extremely well regarded by critics for his literary accomplishments, for the richness of his lyrics, and for producing an output of work of high artistic quality over a five-decade career.[5][6][7]
Musically, Cohen's earliest songs (many of which appeared on the 1967 album, Songs of Leonard Cohen) were rooted in European folk music.[8] In the 1970s, his material encompassed pop, cabaret and world music. Since the 1980s, his high baritone voice has evolved into lower registers (bass baritone and bass), with accompaniment from a wide variety of instruments and female backup singers.
Over 2,000 renditions of Cohen's songs have been recorded. Cohen has been inducted into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen's induction into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 10 March 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the "highest and most influential echelon of songwriters."[9]
From May 2008 to December 2010, Cohen was on the major comeback world tour, the biggest in his musical career, giving 246 shows in Europe, Australia, Canada, Israel and United States. The highly successful tour was followed with two live albums, Live in London and Songs from the Road in both audio and DVD versions, and with many reissues, unauthorised releases of album compilations, DVDs, biographies and books reprints, and as well many international translations of his books and international awards and nominations (such as Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Meteor Music Awards in Ireland, Porin Award in Croatia, Songwriters Hall of Fame, Polaris Music Prize, and Mojo Honours Lists). In 2011 he received two highest award: Glenn Gould Prize and Spain's high award for literature, Prince de Asturias. Currently he is working on a new album which will possibly be released in late 2011.[10]
