Word: singings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...going to be my very great privilege to sing for you a song that's never been sung before... It?s something more than a song - I feel it's one of the most beautiful compositions ever written, a song that will never die. The author: Mr. Irving Berlin. The song: 'God Bless America...
...course, lyrics are naked on a page; if you don't know the tune and the setting for, say, "Anything You Can Do" from "Annie Get Your Gun," the words won't make it sing ("Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you. No you can't. Yes I can. No you can't. Yes I can. No you can't. Yes I can, yes I can!" Huh?) But the book makes the best case for what showbiz historian Ethan Mordden has described as a "casual timelessness" of Berlin's songs...
...Puttin? on the Ritz," 1930. This instant standard, with one of Berlin's most intricately syncopated choruses, is associated with Fred Astaire, who danced to it in the 1946 "Blue Skies." But Astaire was the third star to sing it on film. First was Harry Richman, who had a #1 hit when he premiered the song in a 1930 film of the same name. Dear Mr. Gable "sang" it in "Idiot?s Delight," in 1939; then Astaire made it his own. For Mel Brooks fans, the definitive rendition is by Peter Boyle, as the top-hatted monster...
...Recently, Utada has started taking charge of her work. "I wasn't trying to exert that much control over the musical production in the first (album)," she says. "I would write the song and sing it, but then I left much of the arrangement up to my father and the arranger and the producers who were working on it. I'd just go in and like, say, 'Yeah, I think that's good. Maybe you can do that.' Whatever. But, for the second album, I was a lot more involved...
...Utada, is a producer and musician who now runs her management company. Her mother, Keiko Fuji, was a popular enka (Japanese ballad) singer in the 1970s who broke her fans' hearts by giving up her career and moving to the U.S. to find a little peace. ("I don't sing anymore," is all Fuji says now, smiling.) Utada says she got her own start when she followed her parents into the studio and began to make recordings around age 7. ("No, younger!" shouts her father from nearby.) Like her mother, Utada plans to retire young?as early...