Year 5, Day 141

Evening. So today's song is I'll Never Fall In Love Again by Dionne Warwick.

The family had their own musical career which I think probably contributed to her going into music. Don't quote me on that I don't know, but it makes sense to me. So a bunch of her family were in a gospel group called the Drinkard Singers, and Dionne's mother was the manager. She herself was part of the group as well as another called The Gospelaires for a time, before she had found her own success. With The Gospelaires (later the Sweet Inspirations) she got to do background vocals for a lot of very well known people. This continued all throughout her studies, until she was noticed during a background session for a song by the Drifters. Burt Bacharach approached her during the session and asked her to sing his songs for a demo. She did and when that demo made it to some record higher ups, those guys made it clear it was the signer that they needed. She signed with Bacharach's production company, who was signed to a label, which helped remove a lot of the studio red tape. Her first single come out in 1962. Fun Fact: when it was released her name was spelled wrong, but she decided to keep the misspelling. Her name is actually Marie Dionne Warrick.She was a chart topper for the rest of the decade. The British Invasion happened (spearheaded thanks to Beatlemania) and didn't rock her career too much, but the flipside pissed her off. While British artists suddenly exploded on the scene in America, the American hits she had written were being released in the UK...but sung by other people. By 1963 she was the top priority of her label, and her success kept growing and growing earning her 35 million singles and albums sold internationally by 1971. However she left the label in 1971, taking the biggest contract that had ever been rewarded to a female vocalist at the time. Her move tanked her old label, and the karma of that kind of followed her with her producer team breaking up a year later. Then she sued them for breach of contract, got 5 million dollars and the rights to basically all of her songs. It seemed like she had come out on top. Without David and Bacharach though, her career plateaued through her five year stay with the new label before leaving. In 1979 she moved to a new label, was produced by Barry Manilow and kick started her career once more. She has done a shitload more stuff, but this is a blog post not a novel so I'm going to end it there. If you want to know more about her there is a pretty good Biography about her from A&E that you can check out. Have fun!

Peace.

Year 5, Day 140

Hello. So today's song is Make You Feel My Love by Adele.

I love Adele not only because she makes incredible music, but because she's also a total loon. Just watch her carpool karaoke and you'll see. She became obsessed with music at a young age, and ended up going to an arts school (BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology) where she was classmates with some other now pretty famous people. The kicker though, is she wanted to be in the industry behind the scenes, not singing herself. She was noticed when a friend put her song project up on MySpace, and she ended up signing with a label. She released her first song in 2007, but became widely noticed in 2008 and was names the breakthrough act of the year according to British polls. Her first album started at number one and won her lots of awards. She did have a slight drinking problem and was a little skewed in what she deemed important around that time, but honestly she was nineteen and most people have a bit of that phase at that age, famous or not. By the time 21 came out, she had given up drinking and was getting into other types of music, a little more contemporary than her previous work. This album also got her a lot of recognition, and she broke a lot of records including one that was previously held by the Beatles. She had to cancel her tour when she got a vocal cord hemorrhage. It was necessary to avoid permanent damage and was definitely the right decision. She came back from the injury in 2012, dominating the Grammy's, and smashing even more records. She held off for a few years on her next album, but did some singles in the interim that top charts as usual. She released her third album in 2015, ending the trilogy of naming her albums by her age and kind of wrapping up that chapter of her life. It of course was well received, became top of the charts, broke records... not new for her career. Success seems synonymous with anything she does. And I'm patiently waiting for her next chapter to start because I'm sure it'll be incredible. In the meantime, enjoy this.

Peace.

Year 5, Day 139

Morning! So today's song is A Natural Woman by Aretha Franklin.

Just like many of the people I've been showing you lately, Aretha got her start in church. Her father was a preacher, and she took to singing solos there. Her father was actually kind of famous in the religious world, and would tour to other churches to give sermons, so he would bring her along. He actually helped her get her first recording contract, and supported her when she wanted to switch from gospel to pop music. Her album came out in 1961, singles becoming so popular that she was named as a new-star female vocalist in Down Beat magazine. I'm not going to break it down because it'll be too huge, but essentially from that moment her career just went on and up as she continued to thrive and become an icon through the next four decades. She's still going strong as far as I can tell, so this woman is a beast. She performed this song in 2015 when the co-writer Carole King was honored, which brought it back into my mind, so this is what you get today.

Peace.

Year 5, Day 138

Hey everyone. So today's song is At Last by Etta James.

She started her singing lessons at a young age through the church while she was in foster care. At the time she was physically abused by her foster dad and her music teacher, both of whom used her like a performing monkey. I've mentioned before that my teacher had pushed on my stomach once to get me to use the right muscles for singing? That's normal, but Etta's teacher was trying to achieve the same goal by punching her stomach. All the abuse gave her PTSD and she had trouble performing on command her whole life because of it. By 14, she was part of a girl group and met Johnny Otis who became their mentor. He named the group the Peaches, and he's the one that flipped her name changing Jamesetta Hawkins to Etta James. She left the group after a pop singer had redone one of her songs, topping the charts with it. She signed with a new label and kept making R&B songs until this song came out in 1961. The 60's was the peak of her career, then it declined as she started experimenting with other types of music. She actually ended up taking a 10 year hiatus, struggling with addiction before coming back to perform for the 1984 Summer Olympics. The 90's saw her releasing some more music, being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the win of her first Grammy. She kept up with all that, seeing more albums and awards through the last leg of her career, as well as releasing her autobiography. She had Alzheimer's, but ultimately it was leukemia that took her. I know it sounds horrible to say, but anything is better than Alzheimer's. It's hell to watch someone go through that and it's hell on the people taking care of someone they love who has no idea who they are. Anyway, she lived an amazing life, and if you're curious you should look into her more.

Peace.

Year 5, Day 137

Hello, today I give you I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston.

Whitney Houston started out in a gospel choir, and got a really good music education from her mom who was a gospel singer. She would hang out at some of the clubs when he mom performed, and would even join her on stage for a song or two. A talent scout saw them sing together one night, and recruited her into modeling, which she made quite the career at. She did some vocals on the side while modeling. In 1983, once again someone saw her performing with her mom, a record guy this time, and she was offered a worldwide recording contract. Fun Fact: she is actually the cousin of Dionne Warwick, and her "aunt" (like how your parents best friends were your aunts and uncles) is Aretha Franklin, both of whom I have slated to show you in a couple days. Her debut album was released in 1985, earning her immediate success, and winning her seven awards in the next two years. Her second album had lots of success too, but critics wanted to see more growth from her. Her third album gave that growth in the sound, but didn't please everyone. In 1991, Whitney performed the national anthem at the Superbowl and despite controversy of lip syncing, her performance is considered the standard that others singers should aspire to. I'll admit that I, as a young-ish child, saw her in The Bodyguard and so thought she had died then. Her character was basically her just with a different name so my dumb brain was all "oh she was shot, how sad" and moved on. I didn't quite grasp the concept of acting yet I guess. I could go on and on about her long career until she really did die in 2012, but then this post will be mega huge. So let's just leave off on a few other key things from her life. She was a big advocate for charities throughout her career which is very inspiring, and even led to her meeting with the president about an action plan for one of her causes. And she married Bobby Brown who was a talented musician in his own right. So there you have it!

Peace.

Year 5, Day 136

Hey guys. So today's song is Proud Mary by Ike and Tina Turner.

I'm out of the musical week, but the last song was a pretty soulful, powerful number, so I thought I'd continue that trend with some impressive vocals. I've always wondered why only one of them had a last name is the duo title, but I was mistaken, they both have the last name Turner because they were married. Who knew? (Probably everyone, I just suck.) So Ike was originally in a group called the Kings of Rhythm and met Tina (named Anna Mae Bullock) when she came to one of the shows. Fun Fact: she didn't start with Ike. She actually dated and had a kid with the saxophone player in the band. Her music career came around by him putting her on a track of his after the artist he wrote it for never showed up. He knew she could sing because he'd brought her on stage before then. The studio loved it and convinced him to keep her voice, so Ike dubbed her Tina Turner and the background singers The Ikettes, then trademarked it so she couldn't run off with the name. They became a duo, they started sleeping together (even though Ike said it felt like sleeping with his sister), and they got married (although Ike basically said it didn't count). So far in the story, Ike sounds like a douche. As they got more famous, things got harder for them. Ike started doing cocaine and Tina attempted suicide at least once. Tina won a solo Grammy, then was nominated for a second when both of them were doing solo projects. By 1976, Tina had managed to get herself in a better place mentally by discovering religion, while Ike was so far into his cocaine abuse that he burned a hole through his septum. They were looking into a new record deal that Ike planned to sign, which would tie her to him for another five years, but they got in a huge brawl (best term I can use) which led to her escaping in the night and divorcing him. Ike apparently believes she egged that fight into existence so she could leave him. Honestly though, the more I read about him, the more I think he's full of shit. They fought in the divorce settlement (of course) but in exchange for the stage name, Tina gave up all financial earnings of which there was a shit ton. Both their careers took a hit, and while Ike struggled to make it work around his drug problem, Tina (obviously) made such a comeback that she became a legitimate record breaker. He signed the rights to portray him over to have their life story made into a biopic (he says against his will) and after that his musical contributions were ignored because he was only ever known for the domestic violence he put her through over their whole career.Ike died in 2007.At that point the two hadn't talked in decades and honestly? Fuck him. Manipulative, controlling bastard. I've never really known anything about Tina Turner until I looked up her life story for this and I find I have so much respect for her. I, myself, have never been in an abusive relationship (never been in any relationships, but whatever) but I have lived in a house where domestic violence was an issue when I was in high school. It's a shitty situation and all you can really do is wait for the abused to decided enough is enough, and I'm glad she had the strength to get the fuck out of there eventually. Man, this is a long one... okay well I'll shut up now so you can enjoy the song.

Peace.

Year 5, Day 135

Hi. Today's song is And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going from Dreamgirls.

I haven't seen Dreamgirls, but it's on my list. It's actually kind of crazy that I haven't seen it yet considering it's based on the music industry following the career of a singing trio. The book was written Tom Eyen and music by Henry Krieger.  They first started working together in 1975 when converting a play called The Dirtiest Show in Town written by Eyen into a musical. A singer's performance in that inspired them to work on what would become Dreamgirls. This show is pretty notable for being a mostly African American cast. Broadway has the problem that most other entertainment products do in that its very white-centric. This show (along with In the Heights, and famously Hamilton) creates a place for people typically cast in minority roles. The show premiered on Broadway in 1981 and has had tour runs pretty consistently since then. Most people are more familiar with the movie adaption starring Jennifer Hudson. That's where the clip is from too. She impressed a lot of people with her role in this and its easy to see why. Hope you enjoy the song!

Peace.