Falling Out gp4 Guitar Pro Tab is free to download. Tablature file Falling Out opens by means of the Guitar PRO program.

-4 5 -5 6 4
More than I could feel
-4 -6 6 -5 5 -5
And touch-ing what is real
-4 5 -5 6 4 -4 -4
All my mind is reel-in’ round
-4 -6 6 -5 5 -5 6 6 6 -6 5’
Cause Car-o-lin-a’s feel-in’ down to-da-ay

5 5 5 5 -4 4 4 3 5
Fall-in’ in and out of love with you
5 5 5 5 -4 4 4 3 5
Fall-in’ in and out of love with you
5 5 5 -4 -4 4 -66
Don’t know what I’m gon-na do
4 4 5 5 5 5 -4 4 4
I keep fall-in’ in and out of love

-5 5 4 -4 -4
Oh, I tried to find
-4 5 -5 6 4 -4 -4
Think-in’ just the o-ther day
-6 6 -5 5 -5 6 6
Some-thing that would ease your mind
-6 6 -5 5 -5 -5 -5 6 -65’
Some-thing that I meant to say to her

5 5 5 5 -4 4 4 3 5
Fall-in’ in and out of love with you
5 5 5 5 -4 4 4 3 5
Fall-in’ in and out of love with you
5 5 5 -4 -4 4 -66
Don’t know what I’m gon-na do
4 4 5 5 5 5 -4 4 4 3 -44
I keep fall-in’ in and out of love with you

5 5 -4 4 4 4 4
I think I could stay with you
-3 4 -4 -4 -4 -4 4 -3 4 -4
For a-while may-be long-er if I do

-7 -5 -5 5 -5 6 -5
Won’t you come see about me?
-4 -5 -5 -5 6 6 -5 -5 6 -5 -5
I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby
-7 -5 -5 7 -6* 6 -5
Tell me your troubles and doubts
-4 -5 -5 6 6 -5 6 6 -5 -5 -5
Giving me everything inside and out and

-7 -5 -5 -6 -6 6 -5
Love’s strange so real in the dark
-4 -5 -5 6 6 -5 6 6 -5 -5 6 -5
Think of the tender things that we were working on
-7 -5 -5 7 7 7 7
Slow change may pull us apart
7 7 7 -6* 7 -6* 7 -7 -5 -5
When the light gets into your heart, baby

-7 -5 7 7 -6* 6 -5
Don’t You Forget About Me
7 7 7 -7
Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t
-7 -5 7 7 -6* 6 -5
Don’t You Forget About Me

-5 -6 6 5 -5 -5
Will you stand above me?
-6 7 -7 5 -6 7 -7 5
Look my way, never love me
6 6 -5 5 6 6 -5 5
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
-5 3 3 3
Down, down, down

Will you recognise me?
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Don’t you try to pretend
It’s my feeling we’ll win in the end
I won’t harm you or touch your defenses
Vanity and security

Don’t you forget about me
I’ll be alone, dancing you know it baby
Going to take you apart
I’ll put us back together at heart, baby

Don’t You Forget About Me
Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t
Don’t You Forget About Me

8 -7 8 8 -7
As you walk on by
8 -7 8 8 -7 7
Will you call my name?
8 -7 8 8 -7
As you walk on by
8 -7 8 8 -7 7
Will you call my name?
8 -7 8 8 -7
When you walk away

Words and Music: Jim Steinman
Sounds good in A and Bb (And other lower keys)

7 7 7 8 8 8 8 -8
It was a hot summer night~~~
-8 -8 -8 7 7 7 -6
And the beach~~ was burning
7 7 8 9 9 9 9 9 8 -8
There was fog crawling over the sand~~
7 7 -8 8 8 8 8
When I listen to your heart
-8 -8 -8 -8 7 7 -6
I hear the whole world turning
7 -8 -8 -8 -8 -8
I see the shooting stars
-8 -8 -9 8 7 -8 7
Falling through your trembling hands

Chorus
7 7 7 8 8 8 8
While you were licking your lips
-8 -8 -8 7 7 -6
And your lipstick shining
7 7 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 8
I was dying just to ask for a taste
-6 7 7 8 8 8 8 -8 -8 -8 -8 7 7 7 -6
Oh we were lying together in a sil~~ver lining
7 7 -8 -8 -8 -8
By the light of the moon
-8 -8 -8 -9 -9 8 8 7 -8
You know there’s not another moment
-9 -9 8 8 7 7
Not another moment
-9 -9 8 8 7 7 -8 7 7
Not another moment to~~ waste

7 7 7 -10 -10 -10 9 9 8
Oh well you hold me so ~~ close~~
8 8 -9 -9 8
That my knees grow weak
7 7 -8 -8 8 -8 7 -6 7 7 7
And my soul is flying high above the ground
-10 -10 -10 -10 -10 8 8 8 -9 -9 -9 -9 8
I’m try-ing to speak~~ but no matter what I do
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 -8
I just can’t seem to make any sound
6 6 6 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
And then you took the words right out of my mouth
9 9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 8 -8
Oh it must have been while you were kissing me
7 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
You took the words right out of my mouth
8 8 8 -9 8 -8
Oh and I swear it’s true
7 -8 -9 -8 8 -8 8 8 -8 7 7
I was just about to say I love~~ you
6 6 6 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
And then you took the words right out of my mouth
9 9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 8 -8
Oh it must have been while you were kissing me
7 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
You took the words right out of my mouth
8 8 8 -9 8 -8
Oh and I swear it’s true
7 -8 -9 -8 8 -8 8 8 -8 7 7
I was just about to say I love~~ you

Next Verse

7 7 8 8 8 8 -8
Now my body is shaking
-8 -8 -8 7 7 7 -6
Like a wave on the water
7 7 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 8 -8
And I guess that I’m beginning to grin~~
7 7 8 8 8 8 -8
Oh we’re fin’lly alone~~~~
-8 -8 -8 -8 7 7 7 -6
And we can do what we want to
7 7 -8 -8 -8
Ooh the night is young
-8 -9 -9 8 8 7 -8 8
Aint no one gonna know where you
-9 -9 8 8 7 -8 8
No one’s gonna know where you
-10 -10 9 9 9 9 9 9
No one’s gonna know where you’ve been

Chorus

7 7 7 8 8 8 8
While you were licking your lips
-8 -8 -8 7 7 -6
And your lipstick shining
7 7 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 8
I was dying just to ask for a taste
-6 7 7 8 8 8 8 -8 -8 -8 -8 7 7 7 -6
Oh we were lying together in a sil~~ver lining
7 7 -8 -8 -8 -8
By the light of the moon
-8 -8 -8 -9 -9 8 8 7 -8
You know there’s not another moment
-9 -9 8 8 7 7
Not another moment
-9 -9 8 8 7 7 -8 7 7
Not another moment to~~ waste

7 7 7 -10 -10 -10 9 9 8
Oh well you hold me so ~~ close~~
8 8 -9 -9 8
That my knees grow weak
7 7 -8 -8 8 -8 7 -6 7 7 7
And my soul is flying high above the ground
-10 -10 -10 -10 -10 8 8 8 -9 -9 -9 -9 8
I’m try-ing to speak~~ but no matter what I do
8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 -8
I just can’t seem to make any sound
6 6 6 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
And then you took the words right out of my mouth
9 9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 8 -8
Oh it must have been while you were kissing me
7 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
You took the words right out of my mouth
8 8 8 -9 8 -8
Oh and I swear it’s true
7 -8 -9 -8 8 -8 8 8 -8 7 7
I was just about to say I love~~ you
6 6 6 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
And then you took the words right out of my mouth
9 9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 -9 9 8 -8
Oh it must have been while you were kissing me
7 -10 -10 -10 -10 -10 10 10 9
You took the words right out of my mouth
8 8 8 -9 8 -8
Oh and I swear it’s true
7 -8 -9 -8 8 -8 8 8 -8 7 7
I was just about to say I love~~ you

Repeat Chorus to fade

-6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
-6 6 6 5 5 5 -4 5 6
Telling me just what a fool I’ve been
-2 -6 6 6 5 5 -4-4 4 -4 4 4
I wish that it would go away and let me cry
-3b 4 -4 4 -4 -3b -3 4
And let me be alone again

-2 -6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
The only girl I care about has gone away
-6 6 6 5 5 6 6
Looking for a brand-new start
4 -6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
But little does she know that when she left that day
-3b 4 -4 4 -4 -3b -3 4
Along with her she took my heart

-6 -6 -6 -6 -6 7 -7 6 6
Rain please tell me now does that seem fair
5 -5 5 -5 5 -5 5 -5 -6 6 5 5
For her to steal my heart away when she don’t care
4 4 4 -3 4 -3b 4 5 -4 4 -3b -2 -3b 4
I can’t love another when my heart’s somewhere far away

-2 -6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
The only girl I care about has gone away
-6 6 6 5 5 6 6
Looking for a brand-new start
4 -6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
But little does she know that when she left that day
-3b 4 -4 4 -4 -3b -3 4
Along with her she took my heart

-6 -6 6 -6 -6 -6 7 -7 6 6
Rain won’t you tell her that I love her so
5 -5 5 -5 5 -5 -6 6 5 5
Please as the sun has set her heart aglow
4 4 -3 4 -3b 4 5 -4 4 -3b -2 -3b 4
Rain in her heart and let the love we knew start to grow

-6 6 6 5 5 -4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain
-6 6 6 5 5 5 -4 5 6
Telling me just what a fool I’ve been
-2 -6 6 6 5 5 -4-4 4 -4 4 4
I wish that it would go away and let me cry
-3b 4 -4 4 -4 -3b -3 4
And let me be alone again

-6 6 5 -4 4 -4 4 4
Oh, listen to the falling rain
5 6 6 5 5 6 -6 6 -6
Pitter Patter Pitter Patter

7 -6 6 -6 6 6 5 -4 4 -4 4 4
5 6 6 5 5 6 -6 6 -6 7 -6

4 -4 5 -4
I don’t know you
4 -4 -5 5
But I want you
4 -4 5 -4 4
All the more for that
4 -4 5 -4
Words fall through me
4 4 -4 -5 5
And always fool me
4 -4 5 -4 4
And I can’t re act
-3 4 5 -4 4 -3 -2
And games that never amount
5 -4 4 -3 3
To more than they’re meant
5 -4 4 -3 3 (4)
Will play themselves out

(Chorus)
4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Take this sinking boat and point it home
-4 -3 4 6(-5)
We’ve still got time
4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
-4 -3 4 6(-5)
You’ll make it now

(same tabs as first verse)
Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can’t go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I’m painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It’s time that you won

(Chorus)
4 -4 -34 4 -4 -344
Falling slowly sing your melody
-4 -3 46(-5)
I’ll sing along

Falling Slowly – please rate if you like it!

4 -4 -5 5 4 -4 -5 5
I don´t know you but I want you

4 -4 5 -4 4
All the more for that

4 -4 -5 5 4 -4(-4) -5 5
Words fall through me and always fool me

4 -4 5 -4 4
And I cant react

2 5 -4 4 -3 2
Games that never amount

5 -4 4 -3 2
to more than their worth/meant

5 -4 4 -3 2
Will play themselves out

(Chorus)

4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Take this sinking boat and point it home

-4 -3 4 6
We’ve still got time

4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice

-4 -3 4 6
You’ve made it known

4 -4 -5 5 4 -4 -5 5
Falling slowly, eyes that know me

4 -4 5 -4 4
And I can´t go back

4 -4 -5 5 4 -4 -5 5
Moods that take me and erase me

4 -4 5 -4 4
And i’m painted black

2 5 -4 4 -3 3 5 -4 4 -3 2
You have suffered enough and warred with yourself

5 -4 4 -3 2
It’s time that you won

(Chorus)

1, 2, 3, 4….

4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Take this sinking boat and point it home

-4 -3 4 6
We’ve still got time

4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice

-4 -3 4 6
You’ve made it now

4 -4 -3 4 4 -4 -3 4 4
Falling slowly, sing your melody

-4 -3 4 6
I’ll sing it loud

FALLING IN LOVE WITH LOVE
By Rogers and Hart
From The Boys From Syracuse
Bernadette Peters
Key: Bb

1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Fall-ing in love with love
-1 -1 -1* -2 -2 3 1
is fall-ing for make be-lieve
-1* -2 -2 -2 -2 -2
Fall-ing in love with love
-2 -2 3 -3 -5
is play-ing the fool
5 -5 -5 -5
Car-ing too much
-5 -5 -5 -5 4 -3* -1 -1
is such a ju-ve-nile fan-cy
-3* 4 4 4 4 4
Learn-ing to trust is just
4 4 -3* -3 1
for child-ren in school

1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
I fell in love with love
-1 -1 -1* -2 -2 3 1
one night when the moon was full
-1*-2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 -2 3 -3 -5
I was un-wise with eyes un-a-ble to see
5 -5 -5 -5 -5 -5
I fell in love with love
-5 -5 4 -3* -1 -1
with love ev-er-last-ing
-5 5 -5 -5* -6 -6
But love fell out with me

FALLING IN LOVE hi-lo
By: Bob McDill, Wayland Holyfield
Don Williams, Juice Newton
Key: F

3 3 -3” 4 5 5 -4 4
6 6 -6 7 8 8 -8 7
I thought by now I was too smart

5 6 6 -6 6 6 6 -6
8 9 9 -10 9 9 9 -10
thought I was through giv-ing my heart

5 5 5 -4 5 -3” 3 -3” -3” 3 -3”-2”
8 8 8 -8 8 -6 6 -6 -6 6 -6-5
It’s on-ly a game that tears you a-part

4 4 -3”3 -3
7 7 -6 6 -7
Fall-ing in love

3 -3” 4 5 5 -4 -4 4
6 -6 7 8 8 -8 -8 7
My poor soul was a-bout to mend

5 6 6 6 -6 6 6 6 -6
8 9 9 9 -10 9 9 9 -10
Hon-ey then you smiled at me and then

5 5 -4 5 -3” 3 -3”3 -3”-2”
8 8 -8 8 -6 6 -6 6 -6-5
Lord, help me here I go a-gain

-4 -4 5 5 4
-8 -8 8 8 7
fall-ing in love.

4 4 6 6 5 6 6 -6
7 7 9 9 8 9 9 -10
Fall-ing in love, fall-ing in love

5 -4 5-4 5 -3” 3 -3” 3 -3” -3”-2”
8 -8 8-8 8 -6 6 -6 6 -6 -6 -5
When-‘ll I learn, I bet I get burned

-4 -4 5 5 4…
-8 -8 8 8 7…
Fall-ing in love.

FALLING IN LOVE chrom
By: Bob McDill, Wayland Holyfield
Don Williams, Juice Newton
Key: F

5 5 -5 -6 -7 -7 7 -6
I thought by now I was too smart
-7 8 8 -9 9 9 9 -9
thought I was through giv-ing my heart
-7 -7 -7 7 -7-5 5 -5 -5 5 -5-3*
It’s on-ly a game that tears you a-part
-6 -6 -5 5 6
Fall-ing in love
5 -5 -6 -7 -7 7 7 -6
My poor soul was a-bout to mend
-7 8 8 8 -9 9 9 9 -9
Hon-ey then you smiled at me and then
-7 -7 7 -7 -5 5 -5 5 -5-3*
Lord, help me here I go a-gain
7 7 -7 -7-6
fall-ing in love.
-6 -6 8 8 -7 8 8 -9
Fall-ing in love, fall-ing in love
-7 7 -77 -7-5 5 -5 5 -5 -5 -3*
When-‘ll I learn, I bet I get burned
7 7 -7 -7-6…
Fall-ing in love.

-=Verse One=-
5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5 -44
I’m so cool, too bad I’m a loser

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -44 4 77 -7 -66 6
I’m so smart, too bad I can’t get anything figured out

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5 -44
I’m so brave, too bad I’m a baby

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 4 4
I’m so fly, that’s probably why it

-6 5 -4 4 3 4 4 3 -4 4
Feels just like I’m falling for the first time

-=Verse Two=-
5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5-44
I’m so green, it’s really amazing

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -44 4 7 7 -7 -6 6 6
I’m so clean, too bad I can’t get all the dirt off of me.

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5 -4 4
I’m so sane, it’s driving me crazy

5 6 -4 -4-4 -44 4
It’s so strange, I can’t believe it

-6 5 -4 4 3 4 4 3 -4 4
Feels just like I’m falling for the first time

-=Refrain=-
33 4 -4 4 -4 5 -44 33 4 -44 -4 4 4
Anyone perfect must be lying, anything easy has its cost

33 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 33 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Anyone pla-ain can be lovely, anyone lo-oved can be lost

3 3 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 3 3 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
What if I lo-ost my direction? What if I lo-ost sense of time?

3 3 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 3 3 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
What if I nu-ursed this infection? Maybe the wo-orst is behind

-6 -6 5 -4 4 3 4 4 3 -4 4
It feels just like I’m falling for the first time

-6 -6 5 -4 4 3 4 4 3 -4 4
It feels just like I’m falling for the first time

-=Verse Three=-
5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5 -4 4
I’m so chill, no wonder it’s freezing

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 4 4 7 7 -7 -7 -66 6
I’m so still, I just can’t keep my fingers out of a-nything

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -4 5 -4 4
I’m so thrilled to finally be failing

5 6 -4 -4 -4 -44 4 4
I’m so done, turn me o-ver cause it

-6 5 -4 4 3 4 4 3 -4 4
Feels just like I’m falling for the first time

-=Interlude=-
33 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 33 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Anything pla-ain can be lovely, anything lo-oved can be lost

3 3 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 3 3 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Maybe I lo-ost my direction, what if our lo-ove is the cost?

-=Refrain=-
33 4 -4 4 -4 5 -44 33 4 -44 -4 4 4
Anyone perfect must be lying, anything easy has its cost

33 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 33 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
Anyone pla-ain can be lovely, anyone lo-oved can be lost

3 3 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 3 3 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
What if I lo-ost my direction? What if I lo-ost sense of time?

3 3 4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 4 3 3 4 -4 4 -4 4 4
What if I nu-ursed this infection? Maybe the wo-orst is behind

5 5 5 5 5
Catch a falling star

-5 6 6 6 6 6 -6
and put it in your pocket

6 6 6 6 6 -5 5
never let it fade away.

same tabs as above

Catch a falling star
and put it in your pocket
save it for a rainy day.

Verse 1

4 -6 -7 7
For love may come

-7 7 -7 7 -7 -8 7
and tap you on the shoulder

6 6 -6 6
some starless night.

4 4 -6 -6 -6 -7 7 -7 -8 7
Just in case you feel you want to hold her,

6 6 6 -7 -6 6 -5 5 -4
You’ll have a pocketfull of starlight.

refrain

Repeat verse 1

refrain

Verse 2
For when your troubles start multiplying
and they just might,
It’s easy to forget them without trying
With just a pocketfull of starlight

refrain

6 6 6 6 6 -5 5
end: save it for a rainy day

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire and the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) “Auld Lang Syne” is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and “Scots Wha Hae” served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include “A Red, Red Rose”, “A Man’s a Man for A’ That”, “To a Louse”, “To a Mouse”, “The Battle of Sherramuir”, “Tam o’ Shanter” and “Ae Fond Kiss”.

[toc]

Life and background

Ayrshire

Alloway

Burns was born two miles (3 km) south of Ayr, in Alloway, the eldest of the seven children of William Burnes (1721–1784), a self-educated tenant farmer from Dunnottar in the Mearns, and Agnes Broun (1732–1820), the daughter of a Kirkoswald tenant farmer.

He was born in a house built by his father (now the Burns Cottage Museum), where he lived until Easter 1766, when he was seven years old. William Burnes sold the house and took the tenancy of the 70-acre (280,000 m2) Mount Oliphant farm, southeast of Alloway. Here Burns grew up in poverty and hardship, and the severe manual labour of the farm left its traces in a premature stoop and a weakened constitution.

He had little regular schooling and got much of his education from his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history and also wrote for them A Manual of Christian Belief. He was also taught by John Murdoch (1747–1824), who opened an “adventure school” in Alloway in 1763 and taught Latin, French, and mathematics to both Robert and his brother Gilbert (1760–1827) from 1765 to 1768 until Murdoch left the parish. After a few years of home education, Burns was sent to Dalrymple Parish School in mid-1772 before returning at harvest time to full-time farm labouring until 1773, when he was sent to lodge with Murdoch for three weeks to study grammar, French, and Latin.

By the age of 15, Burns was the principal labourer at Mount Oliphant. During the harvest of 1774, he was a*sisted by Nelly Kilpatrick (1759–1820), who inspired his first attempt at poetry, “O, Once I Lov’d A Bonnie Lass”. In 1775, he was sent to finish his education with a tutor at Kirkoswald, where he met Peggy Thompson (born 1762), to whom he wrote two songs, “Now Westlin’ Winds” and “I Dream’d I Lay”.

Tarbolton

Despite his ability and character, William Burnes was consistently unfortunate, and migrated with his large family from farm to farm without ever being able to improve his circumstances. At Whitsun, 1777, he removed his large family from the unfavourable conditions of Mount Oliphant to the 130-acre (0.53 km2) farm at Lochlea, near Tarbolton, where they stayed until William Burnes’s death in 1784. Subsequently, the family became integrated into the community of Tarbolton. To his father’s disapproval, Robert joined a country dancing school in 1779 and, with Gilbert, formed the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club the following year. His earliest existing letters date from this time, when he began making romantic overtures to Alison Begbie (b. 1762). In spite of four songs written for her and a suggestion that he was willing to marry her, she rejected him.

Robert Burns was initiated into the Masonic lodge St David, Tarbolton, on 4 July 1781, when he was 22.

In December 1781, Burns moved temporarily to Irvine to learn to become a flax-dresser, but during the workers’ celebrations for New Year 1781/1782 (which included Burns as a participant) the flax shop caught fire and was burnt to the ground. This venture accordingly came to an end, and Burns went home to Lochlea farm. During this time he met and befriended Captain Richard Brown who encouraged him to become a poet.

He continued to write poems and songs and began a commonplace book in 1783, while his father fought a legal dispute with his landlord. The case went to the Court of Session, and Burnes was upheld in January 1784, a fortnight before he died.

Mauchline

Robert and Gilbert made an ineffectual struggle to keep on the farm, but after its failure they moved to the farm at Mossgiel, near Mauchline, in March, which they maintained with an uphill fight for the next four years. In mid-1784 Burns came to know a group of girls known collectively as The Belles of Mauchline, one of whom was Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason from Mauchline.

Love affairs

His first child, Elizabeth “Bess” Burns (1785–1817), was born to his mother’s servant, Elizabeth Paton (1760–circa 1799), while he was embarking on a relationship with Jean Armour, who became pregnant with twins in March 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father “was in the greatest distress, and fainted away”. To avoid disgrace, her parents sent her to live with her uncle in Paisley. Although Armour’s father initially forbade it, they were married in 1788. Armour bore him nine children, three of whom survived infancy.

Burns was in financial difficulties due to his lack of success in farming, and to make enough money to support a family he took up an offer of work in Jamaica from Patrick Douglas of Garrallan, Old Cumnock, whose sugar plantations outside Port Antonio were managed by his brother Charles, under whom Burns was to be a “book keeper” (assistant overseer of slaves). It has been suggested that the position was for a single man, and that he would live in rustic conditions, not likely to be living in the great house at a salary of £30 per annum. Burns’s egalitarian views were typified by “The Slave’s Lament” six years later, but in 1786 the abolitionist movement was just beginning to be broadly active.

At about the same time, Burns fell in love with Mary Campbell (1763–1786), whom he had seen in church while he was still living in Tarbolton. She was born near Dunoon and had lived in Campbeltown before moving to work in Ayrshire. He dedicated the poems “The Highland Lassie O”, “Highland Mary”, and “To Mary in Heaven” to her. His song “Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia’s shore?” suggests that they planned to emigrate to Jamaica together. Their relationship has been the subject of much conjecture, and it has been suggested that on 14 May 1786 they exchanged Bibles and plighted their troth over the Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage. Soon afterwards Mary Campbell left her work in Ayrshire, went to the seaport of Greenock, and sailed home to her parents in Campbeltown.

In October 1786, Mary and her father sailed from Campbeltown to visit her brother in Greenock. Her brother fell ill with typhus, which she also caught while nursing him. She died of typhus on 20 or 21 October 1786 and was buried there.

Kilmarnock volume

As Burns lacked the funds to pay for his passage to the West Indies, Gavin Hamilton suggested that he should “publish his poems in the mean time by subscription, as a likely way of getting a little money to provide him more liberally in necessaries for Jamaica.” On 3 April Burns sent proposals for publishing his Scotch Poems to John Wilson, a printer in Kilmarnock, who published these proposals on 14 April 1786, on the same day that Jean Armour’s father tore up the paper in which Burns attested his marriage to Jean. To obtain a certificate that he was a free bachelor, Burns agreed on 25 June to stand for rebuke in the Mauchline kirk for three Sundays. He transferred his share in Mossgiel farm to his brother Gilbert on 22 July, and on 30 July wrote to tell his friend John Richmond that, “Armour has got a warrant to throw me in jail until I can find a warrant for an enormous sum … I am wandering from one friend’s house to another.”

On 31 July 1786 John Wilson published the volume of works by Robert Burns, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect. Known as the Kilmarnock volume, it sold for 3 shillings and contained much of his best writing, including “The Twa Dogs”, “Address to the Deil”, “Halloween”, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”, “To a Mouse”, “Epitaph for James Smith”, and “To a Mountain Daisy”, many of which had been written at Mossgiel farm. The success of the work was immediate, and soon he was known across the country.

Burns postponed his planned emigration to Jamaica on 1 September, and was at Mossgiel two days later when he learnt that Jean Armour had given birth to twins. On 4 September Thomas Blacklock wrote a letter expressing admiration for the poetry in the Kilmarnock volume, and suggesting an enlarged second edition. A copy of it was passed to Burns, who later recalled, “I had taken the last farewell of my few friends, my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Scotland – ‘The Gloomy night is gathering fast’ – when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction.”

Edinburgh

On 27 November 1786 Burns borrowed a pony and set out for Edinburgh. On 14 December William Creech issued subscription bills for the first Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, which was published on 17 April 1787. Within a week of this event, Burns had sold his copyright to Creech for 100 guineas. For the edition, Creech commissioned Alexander Nasmyth to paint the oval bust-length portrait now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which was engraved to provide a frontispiece for the book. Nasmyth had come to know Burns and his fresh and appealing image has become the basis for almost all subsequent representations of the poet. In Edinburgh, he was received as an equal by the city’s men of letters—including Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair and others—and was a guest at aristocratic gatherings, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here he encountered, and made a lasting impression on, the 16-year-old Walter Scott, who described him later with great admiration:

His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are presented in Mr Nasmyth’s picture but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits … there was a strong expression of shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.

— Walter Scott

Westlife is an Irish pop vocal group formed in Dublin, Ireland in 1998. The group currently consists of members Shane Filan, Mark Feehily, Kian Egan, and Nicky Byrne. Brian McFadden was a memer, until he left in 2004. The group temporarily disbanded in 2012 after 14 years of success and later reunited in 2018.

The group has released twelve studio albums: four as a five-piece and eight as a four-piece. They rose to fame with their debut international self-titled studio album, Westlife (1999). It was followed by Coast to Coast (2000), World of Our Own (2001), Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits Vol. 1 (2002), and Turnaround (2003), which continued the group’s success worldwide. The group released their cover albums Allow Us to Be Frank (2004) and The Love Album (2006) and the studio albums Face to Face (2005) and Back Home (2007). After a hiatus of studio recording for almost one year in 2008, they released the studio albums Where We Are (2009), and Gravity (2010), and the compilation album Greatest Hits (2011). After eight years, the quartet group released their eleventh studio album, Spectrum, in 2019, followed by their twelfth studio album, Wild Dreams, in 2021.

Westlife is the act with the most Number 1 debuts on the UK Singles Chart, with all 14 of their chart-toppers landing there in their first week.[1] They have the most singles certifications for a pop band on the UK number one singles artists chart since The Beatles. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Westlife has been certified for 13.2 million albums, 1.3 million video albums, and 10.6 million singles, with a total of more than 25 million combined sales in the UK.[2][3] They are also currently ranked 19th with the most number-one albums of all time and sixth-highest band in the list.[4] The group has accumulated 14 number-one singles as a lead artist as well as having eight number-one albums in the United Kingdom, making them Ireland’s and non-British act’s (since Elvis Presley) most prolific chart-toppers. In 2012, the Official Charts Company listed Westlife 34th among the biggest-selling singles artist, 16th amongst the biggest selling groups, and 14th with most top ten hits—all the highest for a boy band and a pop group in British music history.[5] They are also the biggest selling album group of the 2000s, and three of their studio albums were part of the 50 fastest-selling albums of all time in the UK.[6]

The group has the most consecutive number-one studio albums in a decade in the UK and Ireland for a band, since the Beatles, and for a pop band and act since ABBA. Also in Ireland, they have 11 number-one albums with a total of 13 top two albums, 16 number-one singles, as well as 34 top-fifty singles. They have sold over 55 million records.[7] and are holders of the following Guinness World Records: first to achieve seven consecutive number-one singles in the UK; most public appearances in 36 hours by a pop group; most singles to debut at number one on the UK chart; and top-selling album group in the United Kingdom in the 21st century.[8][9][10] Westlife is one of the most successful music groups of all time, among the highest-profile acts in 2000s popular culture in most territories worldwide, and one of the few boy bands to have continued success after their commercial peak. On the best-selling boy bands of all time list, they are currently tenth worldwide along with the biggest-selling boy band from Ireland in history globally. They have received numerous accolades including one World Music Award, two Brit Awards, four MTV Awards, and four Record of the Year Awards. As a live act, Westlife has sold 5.5 million concert tickets worldwide from their fourteen concert tours so far. They hold the record for the most shows played at The SSE Arena, Belfast and SSE Arena, Wembley; this makes them the biggest arena act of all-time in the United Kingdom. They sold out Croke Park Stadium in their home country in a record-breaking five minutes.[11] Their fourteenth, and latest concert tour is called The Wild Dreams Tour.

History

Origin: Byrne, Egan, Feehily, Filan and McFadden’s beginnings

Kian Egan, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan, all schoolmates in Summerhill College in Sligo, Ireland, participated in a school production of Grease with fellow Sligo men Derrick Lacey, Graham Keighron, and Michael Garrett. They considered it as the start of Westlife. The sextet formed a pop vocal group called Six as One in 1997, which they later renamed IOYOU. Before this, Egan was part of a punk-rock bands called Skrod, and Pyromania. The group, managed by choreographer Mary McDonagh and two other informal managers, released a single titled “Together Girl Forever” under Sound Records which was written by Feehily and Filan with fellow Irish Those Nervous Animals and The Strong are Lonely band members Padraig Meehan and Daragh Connolly. Another song “Everlasting Love” included in the single was written by Feehily, Keighron, Meehan, and Connolly. There is also an unreleased song called “Good Thing”.[13] McDonagh first encountered Egan as a six-year-old student at her weekly dance classes, and came to know Filan and Feehily in their early teens as they starred in shows such as Oliver! and Godspell for Sligo Fun Company.
Louis Walsh, the manager of fellow Irish boy band Boyzone, came to know the group after Filan’s mother Mae contacted him, but the group failed to secure a BMG record deal with Simon Cowell. Cowell told Walsh: “You are going to have to fire at least three of them. They have great voices, but they are the ugliest band I have ever seen in my life.”[14] Lacey, Keighron, and Garrett were told they would not be part of the new group, and auditions were held in Dublin where Nicky Byrne and Brian McFadden were recruited. McFadden was part of an R&B group called Cartel before this.

The new group, formed on 3 July 1998, was originally named Westside, but as another band was already using that name, the group was renamed Westlife. It was revealed that Walsh was already calling them Westlife before the Westside name came along.[15] In Westlife – Our Story, Byrne revealed that, unlike the others in the group, he was keen to change the name to West High. McFadden also changed the spelling of his name to Bryan to facilitate signing autographs. They managed to secure a major record deal the second time around under BMG with all other record labels competed. They signed a four million pound record deal with RCA Records. Westlife’s first big break came in 1998 when they opened for Boyzone and Backstreet Boys’ concerts in Dublin. Boyzone singer Ronan Keating was brought in to co-manage the group with Walsh. Later, they won a special Smash Hits Roadshow award at that year’s Smash Hits Poll Winners Party. Their first live television performance as a group in Ireland and worldwide was on the Irish TV series and the world’s second longest-running late-night talk show, The Late Late Show that had its broadcast on 13 November 1998. They performed “Flying Without Wings”.[16] The band then released an EP titled Swear It Again afterwards. Both recorded songs under Westside were produced by Steve Mac and written by Mac and Wayne Hector. Cowell chose the debut extended play and single with the guidance of his father, Eric Cowell, who stated then, “I think they will be big”.

International breakthrough, Debut album, Coast to Coast, World of Our Own and super stardom (1999–2002)

In April 1999, the group released their first single, “Swear It Again” which immediately topped the charts in Ireland and in the UK for two weeks. It became the biggest-selling single in a week one by a debut artist.[17][18] On the week of its release and its chart achievement announcement, Cowell’s father Eric died. Their second single, “If I Let You Go” was released in August 1999, which established them as the first boy band to hit the No. 1 with its first two singles.[19] They also performed for billions in 1999 at the Miss World telecast with this song. The third single was the highly acclaimed “Flying Without Wings” (their first ‘Record of the Year’ and their third No. 1 single), released in October the same year, also followed suit. It made them the only the second Irish act and fourth act to debut at No. 1 with their first three singles, B*Witched, Robson and Jerome, and Spice Girls being the other three. “Flying Without Wings” was also included on the soundtrack of the Warner Brothers film, Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Their first album, simply titled Westlife, was released in November 1999 and went to No. 2 in the UK and their first No. 1 in Ireland. The album was the biggest chart dropper on the top 40 in UK music history when, in its 58th week on the charts it leapt from No. 79 to No. 3 before falling to No. 37 the following week.[20] Despite the history, the album successfully managed to peak at No. 1 in Scotland in the year 2001 after premiering at No. 6 at the Scottish Albums Chart in 1999.[21]

In December 1999, a fourth and a double-side single was released, “I Have A Dream”/”Seasons in the Sun”. It knocked Cliff Richard’s “The Millennium Prayer” off the top spot and earned them the 1999 UK Christmas number-one single. It is also their fourth No. 1 single.[22][23] It was the first official No. 1 single music act in the 2000s of UK Singles Chart and also the last official No. 1 single music act in the 1990s decade of UK Singles Chart. They are one of only five acts to achieve four number ones in the UK Singles Chart in one calendar year, the others being Elvis Presley, The Shadows, The Beatles and Spice Girls.[24] The fifth and last single from the album, “Fool Again”, also peaked at No. 1.[25] With this, they broke records of being the only male band to have every singles released from an album to reach No. 1 in the UK and the only male group with most original songs in an album that went straight to No. 1 in the UK with multiple and/or with four original singles. Afterwards, Westlife signed to Arista Records for the North American territory after auditioning for the label’s founder, Clive Davis.[26] Then the group had a promotional tour in the United States for their “Swear It Again” single and peaked at No. 20 in the Billboard Hot 100.[27] An Asian tour followed in support of their debut album before releasing a second album. On 1 July 2000, they were honored as Freemen of the Borough of Sligo.[28]

Coast to Coast, their second album, was released a year later and was their first No. 1 UK album, beating the Spice Girls’ Forever album by a large margin, the said chart battle was widely reported by British media. It became the country’s 4th biggest selling album of 2000.[29][30] This is their second No. 1 album in Ireland. The album was preceded by a duet with Mariah Carey singing “Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)” and the original song “My Love” (their second Record of the Year award). Both singles reached No. 1 on the UK charts, their sixth and seventh number ones respectively.[31][32] With this, Westlife broke an unexpected record of the most consecutive No. 1 singles in the UK, having their first seven consecutive singles debut at the top by a debuting act and group, and by an act, a group, a male group, a pop act and a pop group in UK and became the fastest number one music act beating Elvis Presley’s previous record of three years versus 23 months of Westlife getting each its first No. 1 singles and second music act to have the longest string of number ones in UK history.[33] However, in December 2000, their eighth and an Ireland and UK exclusive single “What Makes a Man”, only debuted at No. 2.[34] The single “My Love” was controversially used by Central Intelligence Agency as part of a torture program in Afghanistan. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, “the music pounded constantly as part of a scheme to assault prisoners’ senses”.[35] They survived the 2000 Mexico City major earthquake and lightning during this time.[36] As the 2000 had ended, Westlife achieved four number one singles in a year for two straight years (1999, 2000) since Elvis Presley (1961, 1962).

Outside the UK and Ireland, they gained chart success with “I Lay My Love on You” and “When You’re Looking Like That”. This time as well, they were included in the top ten earners list of all acts in UK and Ireland and sold over 2.5 million units in Asia Pacific region.[37][38] Also in this year, they launched their first world tour, “Where Dreams Come True Tour”.[18] A recording of a concert from the tour live from Dublin was released on 19 November 2001. Also in the same month and year, Westlife released their third album World of Our Own, their second No. 1 album in the UK and their third No. 1 album in Ireland.

“Uptown Girl” (their first single to be on the List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom), “Queen of My Heart” and “World of Our Own” were released as singles, all of which peaked at No. 1 in the UK. Those singles are also their eighth, ninth, and tenth number ones respectively.[39][40][41] With their tenth No. 1, they made history by being the shortest music act or band to have ten or double-figures number ones in the UK Singles Chart (2 years and 10 months or 149 weeks) – more than 3 months quicker than The Beatles (165 weeks). “Bop Bop Baby” was also released as a single, but it peaked at No. 5 in the UK. In 2002, Westlife went on their second world tour, the World of Our Own Tour (In The Round). Overall in 2002, IRMA awarded the band plaque about their 1 million units sold in Ireland and ranked seventh as Irish’s millionaires under age 30 with 18 million euros for all of the five members.[42] For every performance each band member will get 228,000 euros, which means the 68 dates raked in 1.55 million euros for them by June 2002. The cash rolled in from sales of their merchandise, while a recent advertising deal with Adidas was worth 488,000 euros to each of them with a total of 3.33 million euros each at the end of the said tour.

Unbreakable, Turnaround, and departure of McFadden (2002–2004)

The group sold more than 12 million records in a span of three years during this time.[44] They released their eleventh UK No. 1 single, “Unbreakable” in 2002.[45] Amidst rumours of a split, Westlife released their first greatest hits album in November that same year titled Unbreakable – The Greatest Hits Vol. 1, which zoomed all the way to No. 1 in the UK and Ireland. Their third No. 1 in the UK and the fourth one in Ireland. Also during that time, Westlife bagged another Guinness World Record for most public appearances by a pop group in a 36-hour period. The band made stop-offs in five different cities (Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh, London and Manchester) to promote their then-new album. The release was followed by the double A-side single “Tonight”/”Miss You Nights”, which debuted at No. 3 in the UK and No. 1 in Ireland.[46] At this time, Because Films Inspire made a TV documentary titled “Wild Westlife”, directed by Iain MacDonald and starred the group, featuring their daily life as musicians and their tour experiences. It was aired on BBC Choice.[47] In 2003, Westlife went on their third world tour, The Greatest Hits Tour and was invited to play at the annual Edinburgh Military Tattoo, shrugging off rumours of a split which is what most of the pop bands do after a Greatest Hits album and tour.[48] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Manchester, was released in November 2003.

Back in September 2003, Westlife released “Hey Whatever”, which peaked at No. 4 in the UK.[49] Their fourth studio album, Turnaround, was then released in November, earning the group another UK No. 1 album, the fourth one. The album is also their fifth No. 1 in Ireland. “Mandy”, was released a week before the album release. The band’s twelfth No. 1 single. Their version won them their third Record of the Year award, in under five years.[50] Their version of “Mandy” is also considered the single with the longest leap to the top (from No. 200 to No. 1) in UK music history.[51] “Obvious” was released as the final single from the album, charting at No. 3.

On 9 March 2004, just three weeks prior to embarking on their fourth world tour, McFadden left the group to spend more time with his family and six months later to release solo music projects.[52] On that day, a press conference was held where all the group’s members were present, each giving emotional individual speeches. McFadden’s final public performance as part of Westlife was at Newcastle upon Tyne’s Powerhouse nightclub on 27 February 2004.[53][54] McFadden attended the first day of the band’s tour date as an audience. The last time the five had reunited in public was when McFadden acted in an Irish reality television show Anonymous where he disguised as a fan in an album signing event of the group in November 2005 and had a broadcast in January 2006. He subsequently began a solo career, and reverted the spelling of his first name back to its original ‘Brian’. McFadden later released more albums and singles, but only with moderate success.

Less than a month after McFadden’s departure, the group kicked off their “Turnaround Tour”.[55] A live version of “Flying Without Wings” from the said tour was released as an official UK download, earning them the first official UK Downloads No. 1.[56] A recording of a concert from the Turnaround Tour, live from Stockholm, Sweden, was released in November 2003.

Face to Face, Back Home, and cover albums (2004–2008)

In September 2004, they performed on the World Music Awards, where they were recognised as the Best Irish Act of that year. They then released a Rat Pack-inspired album and fifth album …Allow Us to Be Frank, which peaked at No. 3. No singles from this album were released in the UK but “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?”, accompanied with a music video, was released as a digital download in the UK and peaked at No. 4 and as a physical single in other European countries. “Smile” and “Fly Me to the Moon”, both with music videos as well, were released as digital downloads only.

Prior to the release of the …Allow Us to Be Frank album, Westlife scouted for “the perfect fan” to help promote their album.[57] After X Factor-style auditions, they found Joanne Hindley, who recorded “The Way You Look Tonight” with the group.[18] To mark this special collaboration, a special programme was televised, showing auditions and live performances, called She’s The One, presented by Kate Thornton.[58] It also featured a live performance by their fathers with their version of “That’s Life”. Westlife continued to tour Europe as part of their “The Number Ones Tour” which started in early 2005. The tour ranked at number 84 worldwide with top concert tour ticket sales with 191,361.[59] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Sheffield, was released in November 2005.

By 2004, they sold over 30 million albums already, the biggest live act in UK, and making around £4m each as reported in 2005.[60] In October 2005, Westlife returned with their comeback single, “You Raise Me Up”, which was taken from their sixth album Face to Face, their thirteenth No. 1. On 5 November 2005, both the album and the single were at No. 1 in the UK, at the same time, during the second week of the single. It was the first time that Westlife had held both the top album and the top single position in the same week and the first Irish music act to have such feat.[61][62] This is their fifth No. 1 in the UK and sixth one in Ireland. “You Raise Me Up” was awarded as their fourth Record of the Year in the UK, for 2005. In December of that year, the group released “When You Tell Me That You Love Me”, a duet with Diana Ross, as the second single, and it debuted at its peak position of No. 2.[63] This single marked its fourteenth year since the original Diana Ross version was released and peaked at No. 2, the same chart position in the UK Singles Chart in 1991. Westlife then released a third single, “Amazing”, which debuted at No. 4.[64] After that, Westlife embarked on the “Face to Face Tour”, travelling extensively to the UK, Ireland, Australia and Asia. This tour marked the first time that Westlife travelled to mainland China for a concert.[65][66] The tour ranked the band sixth for the year with a number of performances with 32 shows and recorded 238,718 paid-for attendances.[55] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from Wembley Arena, was released in November 2006. The band was mentioned as part of the names of male groups that peaked in the United Kingdom album sales in 2005 with 45 percent of the market.[67] By this time, they already sold over 36 million records worldwide.

In late 2006, Westlife signed a brand new five-album deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Their seventh album, The Love Album was a compilation concept album which consisted of popular love-song covers. The album outsold other compilation albums by Oasis, The Beatles, and U2 in its first week of release and went straight to No. 1 in both UK and Ireland. It was the top selling album of 2006 in Ireland and Westlife’s seventh and sixth No. 1 album in Ireland and the UK, respectively. Moreover, the only single from The Love Album, “The Rose”, became their 14th UK No. 1 single.

This made Westlife the third act (along with Cliff Richard) in the UK to have the most No. 1 singles, tailing behind Elvis Presley (21) and The Beatles (17). In Ireland, they made it to the second place (tied with The Beatles) to have most number one singles, tailing behind U2 (21). They also returned to the Miss World stage where billions saw the exclusive live performance of The Rose. Westlife then kicked off their eighth world tour, “The Love Tour”, in Perth, Australia.[69] The group then went on to other Australian cities before moving on to South Africa, the UK and Ireland. The tour had a total of £1,031,033 secondary gross sales.[70]

On 5 November 2007, Westlife released their eighth album, Back Home, which contained nine new original songs along with three cover songs. The album debuted at No. 1 on the UK, their seventh No. 1. It was also 2007’s fifth biggest selling album in the UK. This makes them as one of the only five band, with Coldplay, The Prodigy, Stereophonics, and Take That, in UK chart history to claim seven No. 1 albums. With seven of their albums reaching the number one spot from 2000-2007, they attained the fastest accumulation of UK number one albums record in recent history until Taylor Swift’s re-recording release of her album Fearless in 2021.[71] The album was their eighth No. 1 in Ireland. The first single released from the album was “Home”, which peaked at No. 3 in the UK.[72][73] “I’m Already There”, not released as a single, managed to chart in the UK based on downloads alone, following a performance on an episode of The X Factor UK.

On 15 December 2007, they had a two-hour show called The Westlife Show where they performed 10 of their songs, some of which were voted online by fans and some from Back Home. It was hosted by Holly Willoughby.[74] Months later, “Us Against the World” was announced and released as their second single in UK and Ireland. Before the release of the second single, they embarked on the Back Home Tour on 25 February 2008. This tour marked the first time that the group had travelled and performed in New Zealand, performing four sold-out shows in Auckland, Wellington, New Plymouth and Christchurch. Meanwhile, “Something Right” was released as the second single and “Us Against the World” became the third single in Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Both songs performed well on several music charts.

10th anniversary and hiatus (2008–2009)

From 2005 to 2008, Music Week revealed on their website that Westlife was the official third top touring act within the years while they were the seventh top touring act of 2008.[75] On 28 March 2008, after 27 sell-out shows, in the space of 10 years and have sold 250,000 tickets. All four members were presented with a plaque cast of their hands, which can also be seen in the Wembley Square of Fame similar to Hollywood Walk of Fame.[76] Then to mark their tenth year in music, Westlife staged a special 10 Years of Westlife, a sold-out concert at the world’s thirty-third biggest and Europe’s fourth biggest stadium,[77] Croke Park, on 1 June 2008.[78] which Egan described to be a “pop extravaganza”.[79] It was only the second time for an Irish act to headline the stadium after U2.[80] Filan confirmed that a corresponding live concert DVD would be released. The group announced that they would be on hiatus for a year after their Back Home Tour[81] and that there would not be an album release in 2008 as they would be spending more time on the production of their tenth album.[82] As promised, the group’s official website confirmed on 27 September 2008 the release of a DVD on 24 November 2008 entitled 10 Years of Westlife – Live at Croke Park Stadium which went straight to No. 1 on UK, Ireland, South African, Hong Kong and New Zealand Music DVD charts. As the group ended another successful tour, Walsh announced in the show Xpose that 1 July 2008 would be the official start of the longest hiatus of the group. He said that it will be a one-year break, from that day up to 1 July 2009. On 13 December 2008, while on a break, Westlife made an unexpected appearance during that year’s X Factor final where they performed “Flying Without Wings” with runners-up JLS. After the performance, Filan and Byrne were interviewed on The Xtra Factor with Boyzone’s Keating and Stephen Gately. As JLS also performed, “I’m Already There”, Westlife’s version of the song re-entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 63 while a new entry on Ireland Singles Chart at No. 47 due to extensive downloads only. In the last week of January 2009, a DVD entitled The Karaoke Collection was released. This is the first time Sony Music has released an official Karaoke disc for music videos in DVD format. On 27 February 2009 issue of Herald Ireland, Walsh revealed that Cowell had already picked three new songs which he believed would be instant hits. On 18 March 2009, Westlife won the Best Irish Pop Act on the 2009 Meteor Awards for the ninth consecutive time.

Where We Are and Gravity (2009–2010)

Their tenth album, Where We Are, was released on 30 November 2009 in the UK and peaked at No. 2 on both Irish and UK Albums Charts. The lead single, “What About Now”, was released a few weeks earlier on 23 October 2009, with digital downloads being available the day before. The said single peaked at No. 2 on both Irish and UK Singles Charts and ranked No. 85 in the year-end official sales chart.[83] Following that month was the announcement of the Guinness Book of World Records for Westlife as the top selling album group of the 21st century with 10.74 million albums sold in the UK alone.

They were also part of the Haiti charity single in early 2010 with “Everybody Hurts”, which was organised by Cowell.[84] The said single peaked at No. 1 on both Irish and UK Singles Chart. The tour in support of this album was called, “The Where We Are Tour”. The tour entered at number 50 of top concert tour for the third quarter of the year with 241,865 ticket sales.[85] A recording of a concert from the tour, live from London, was released in November 2010. The eleventh album was recorded and processed with songwriter and producer John Shanks in London and Los Angeles and was entirely produced by Shanks.[86] On 14 November 2010, the single “Safe” was released. It debuted on the UK Singles Chart on 21 November at No. 10, giving the group their 25th Top 10 single in the United Kingdom. The new album titled Gravity was released on 22 November 2010.[87] It went to No. 1 in Ireland and No. 3 in the UK. This is their ninth No. 1 in Ireland and this album made Westlife as one of the few musical acts and band and the only pop band to have number one albums in three consecutive decades (1990s, 2000s, 2010s) in their home country.

As the 2000s decade ends with 275 singles reached the No. 1 position on the chart in the UK. Over this period, Westlife were the most successful musical act and group at reaching the top spot with 11 No. 1 singles only from the said decade, top act with most total number of weeks at No. 1 with individual credits and second to most total number of weeks at No. 1 with 14 weeks. Ten out of their fourteen No. 1 singles were released and came from this decade. Westlife is also the second biggest selling music act in the UK of the 21st century. And second from the list of artist from the past decade, 1990s, in UK Albums and Singles Charts. While in 2005, half of the decade, they were the fifth.[88]

Westlife was named the fourth most hard-working music artist and third most hard-working band in the UK by PRS in 2010.[89] Also from the said year Billboard compiled the top international touring acts worldwide, the group ranked 14th with $5,104,109 estimated net take of tour grosses (assuming a typical 34% artist cut after commissions and expenses).[90] In March 2011, they started their eleventh major concert tour, the Gravity Tour. This tour marked the first time the group travelled to Oman, Namibia, Guangzhou and Vietnam for concerts.

Greatest Hits and split (2011–2018)

As of 2011, the group were the longest reigning band and second longest reigning number one music act in the 21st century in UK. On 14 March 2011, Westlife confirmed that they had left Cowell after 13 years and his record label Syco Music after nine years. The group cited Syco’s decision not to release a second single from Gravity as the reason Byrne felt it as another reason of being unloved,

We signed to Simon back in 1998 and he was brilliant, but then came the development of The X Factor and American Idol. Simon became famous himself and his interests went that way rather than on Westlife. We almost felt a little bit unloved with Simon Cowell, if I was to be honest. We had it (full time support) with Simon but he got so busy and would do it at the very last minute and we needed someone who was on it all the time.[91]

On 23 April 2011, Egan’s Twitter account posted a series of tweets saying he was to walk away from the group. He later said his account was hacked and debunked the announcement.[92] After going back to RCA Records full-time for a one-year album contract, they announced their Greatest Hits album to be released on 21 November 2011. It debuted at No. 1 in Ireland and No. 4 in the UK. This is their tenth No. 1 album in Ireland. The first and lead single, “Lighthouse” was released in November 2011. And a follow-up promotional single “Beautiful World” released later. In October 2011, Egan ruled out speculation that McFadden would reunite with them for the new compilation album and its promotion for a television show. Egan said: “All the rumours about Brian re-joining Westlife are untrue. We have been a 4 piece for too long now. We love Brian but it’s not going to be. That includes any TV performances.”[93] With a new compilation album coming out, it was speculated Westlife would be doing a new greatest hits tour. They were scheduled to headline the ChildLine Concert in Dublin on 12 November 2011 and to have another exclusive concert on O2 Blueroom, also in Dublin on 24 November.[94][95]

A UK tour was first officially announced on 18 October 2011, with dates confirmed for May 2012 and it was titled, The Greatest Hits Tour or The Farewell Tour. Stereoboard reported that the tour sold out within minutes.[96] On 19 October 2011, Westlife officially announced they were splitting after an album and a tour.[97]

After 14 years, 26 top ten hits including 14 number one singles, 11 top 5 albums, 7 of which hit the top spot and have collectively sold over 44 million copies around the world, 10 sell out tours and countless memories that we will forever cherish, we today announce our plan to go our separate ways after a Greatest Hits collection this Christmas and a farewell tour next year. The decision is entirely amicable and after spending all of our adult life together so far, we want to have a well-earned break and look at new ventures. We see the Greatest Hits collection and the farewell tour as the perfect way to celebrate our incredible career along with our fans. We are really looking forward to getting out on the tour and seeing our fans one last time.

Over the years, Westlife has become so much more to us than just a band. Westlife are a family. We would like to thank our fans who have been with us on this amazing journey and are part of our family too. We never imagined when we started out in 1998 that 14 years later we would still be recording, touring and having hits together. It has been a dream come true for all of us.

Kian, Mark, Nicky and Shane[98]

During this time, the Official Charts Company compiled the band’s chart history which states that other than their number-ones they had, 25 UK Top 10s, 26 UK Top 40s, 27 UK Top 75s, 20 Weeks at No. 1, 76 Weeks in Top 10, 189 Weeks in Top 40 and 282 Weeks in Top 75 in the UK Singles Chart. While 7 No. 1s, 12 UK Top 10s, Top 40s, Top 75s, 7 Weeks at No. 1, 92 Weeks in Top 10, 189 Weeks in Top 40, and 299 Weeks in Top 75 in the UK Albums Chart.[99] They also had seven number-one albums in eight years, the most number-ones with different albums by a music album act, group, pop group, and male group in the UK Albums Chart in the 2000s and the second most number ones, tied with Rod Stewart, with different albums by a music album act, group, pop group, and male group in the UK clustered per decade since The Beatles in the 1960s and of all time. In Ireland, they have fourteen No. 1 singles and ten No. 1 albums, the most for a pop band and act and male band and act, and Irish band next to U2.

A second statement was issued through their official site, saying the fans were continuing to be the best support system.[100][101] Some fans on social networks described themselves as feeling “devastated” following news of the split.[102][103] People left their messages on Twitter by using #WestlifeForever and #Westlife, it trended on Ireland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. A live stream Q&A happened on 28 October 2011 as a “thank you” to their fans. As part of it, ITV commissioned a one-off music event as they took to the stage to sing some of their greatest hits, it was entitled Westlife: For the Last Time.[104] Another show entitled, The Westlife Show: Live, was broadcast from Studio One of London Studios on the same channel on 1 November 2011.[105] They then had a live guesting on The Late Late Show.[106] They were honored at that time by Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) with four specially commissioned bar stools to mark 49 performances at the venue for over 380,000 fans, selling more tickets than any other act.[107] The band had their final concert on 23 June 2012 at Croke Park Stadium in Ireland. The 82,300 capacity show was sold out in 4 minutes. Due to this popular demand, an extra date was added at Croke Park on 22 June 2012, which also sold out. Combined, there was a total of 187,808 spectators on both nights, exceeding the capacity of the stadium.[108] Their last concert was also screened live in more than 300 cinemas in the United Kingdom,[109] and 200 cinemas worldwide.[110][111] They also released a DVD, which went to number 1 in both UK and Irish chart. In that year they were also declared the 34th top-grossing tour act of the year with earnings of $35.2 million (€27 million). The farewell tour consisted of eight dates in China and 33 in the UK and Ireland; in total, the band sold 489,694 tickets from the tour.[112]

Cowell and some media predicted a possible reunion in the future,[113] but Westlife put an end to that speculation by vowing they would never reunite.[114] Later reports from the Daily Record said there was an “irreparable rift” in the band,[115] but was later denied by a source close to the band saying: “There’s no bad blood in the band, they’re still great pals. But all good things come to an end and they are all keen to do their own thing.”[116] Later, the band also denied it and called the split a “united decision”.[117] However he confessed three months after the split, Byrne said that members of the group fought with one another more and more often in the latter years leading up to the split and he felt that it was the right time to end their time together. A year after Westlife ended, they agreed to all voluntarily wind up Bluenet Ltd, their main entertainment firm, after going their own ways and split €2.3million to €595,500 each except for Filan who missed out any of it as he declared bankruptcy at that time due to property crash problems.[118]

Since the split, the four lads have released albums and singles individually. Filan, with three studio albums and with singles and tours (with support act dates for Lionel Richie) released and a Top 5 hit album in UK. Feehily associated with an independent record label (which he is the co-director) and released albums and singles. He also made it as a supporting act to Mariah Carey and Wet Wet Wet. Egan was voted King of the Jungle on the 2013 series of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity series, released one studio album with singles, was a coach judge on The Voice of Ireland, and was a support act for Boyzone. Byrne released one studio album, joined Strictly Come Dancing, hosted several major Irish television and radio shows, and represented Ireland in Eurovision, which was also his debut solo single.[119]

In 2014, Syco Music said to The Sun: “All the guys are up for it in principle. It’s now just a matter of sorting out all the details, Syco would love Brian to be part of the band again. It’d create the same sort of buzz as when Robbie Williams returned to Take That. But the other lads will need to be convinced because they were always very clear that when Brian left it was for good.”[120] but Egan later tweeted, “Guys I’m sorry to say but I don’t know where these rumours are coming from about a Westlife reunion but it’s untrue. Sorry #westlifeforever.”[121] In 2015,[122] 2016 (On this year, Walsh posted on the band’s social accounts that they will not regroup as of the moment),[123] 2017,[124] Walsh expressed that the four-piece band would reunite. He had been in contact with Ed Sheeran and James Arthur to create songs for the band.[125]

However, on 2016–2017, four years following the split, Filan told Lorraine and other media outlets that while there are currently no plans for a Westlife reunion, he would not rule it out for the future.[126] Byrne expressed in 2017, “Shame this Westlife news is not true. They were always my guilty pleasures.” He also talked about touring with the group: “Who wouldn’t want to do that again? The laugh with the boys and travelling around and seeing all the fans again. It’s nearly six years next summer since we’ve done it so who knows? Maybe in ten years. I’ve spoken to all the lads individually but we’ve never brought up a Westlife reunion, the thing about it is the four of us haven’t been in a room together since Jodi’s [Kian’s wife] mum’s funeral,’ That was the last time we spoke properly as a band, if you want to call it that., I’m sure it will happen but I don’t know when and I don’t know if even we know when the right time will be.”[127] Feehily added, “People have offered us blank cheques to get back together but it’s not about money. There are no plans to reform. The time isn’t now. We all have a lot more that we want to achieve first. It feels way too soon to be honest, a 20th anniversary tour could still happen one day as 2019 is 20 years since we released our first single, while 2021 is 20 years since our first world tour. So you never know”.[128]

On 31 March 2018, it was reported on Allkpop that all of them might guest on a popular Korean musical show Immortal Songs 2 but Filan was the only one who appeared on the show as a judge and a guest performer afterwards.[129] Egan answered that this and other reports were untrue and the rest of the group members sided with Egan’s response after as well.[130] Later they revealed they had been phoned up by Walsh and Cowell every six months since their split. On 23 September 2018, several Irish news outlets started reporting that the group has been signed to Universal Music Group for a new five-year album and tour deal with Virgin EMI Records.

Reunion, Spectrum album, and tour (2018–2021)

On 3 October 2018, the group formally announced that there’ll be new music and a tour coming soon on their official social media accounts like on their newly created Instagram.[133][non-primary source needed] Their reunion story caused huge fan reaction worldwide. According to the reports, they had been preparing for their comeback for the past year of 2017 as Feehily had said on the same year that he hoped to get them all together for a proper catch-up.[134] It was later revealed that Egan and Filan first talked about their reunion when Adele released “Hello” in late 2015.[135] While Byrne raised his concerns about “…where Westlife’s music fits into the current market” and not wanting to be simply a “nostalgia” act.[136] He went on to say, “While we were away, we realised what Westlife really meant to the fans – and to us.”[137] McFadden was not involved in the reformation as he said on an interview with Closer Magazine, “…there’s no reason for me and the boys to stay buddies.” and “For me, it was just a job. I only met the guys when I joined the band and have no regrets about leaving.”[138] Their first live interviews and press conferences as a four-piece in six years were made 20 days later held in Dublin and Belfast where they revealed their plans to stick around longer.[139][140] Days later, it was followed by several radio interviews in Manchester, Ulster, Dublin and Glasgow. Walsh also said in separate interviews that the most important things now are the songs, it will be featured as an introduction to their new sound and added, “I was just waiting for them to decide when. There were record deals on the table, but the icing on the cake was Ed Sheeran writing these amazing songs for them, as well as having Steve Mac, who produced their early songs, on track too.” […] “Sheeran’s input adds a contemporary edge”, “I’ve heard the first two songs and they are just incredible.”[141] Mac and Sheeran have come up with four new tracks for them. One will be a single co-written by Sheeran. Some had been composed since 2016. The duo have co-written recent hits like the most streamed song on Spotify, “Shape of You”, and also “Woman Like Me” by Little Mix, and “Thursday” by Jess Glynne. Mac revealed the band’s signature sound will be back.[142][non-primary source needed] Feehily and Filan added, “We’re not trying to change Westlife’s sound, we’re trying to evolve”, “We need to be a Westlife 2.0, a better version of ourselves. We wanted to come back and recreate Westlife’s sound, but better, and be a better band, and the most important thing about any band is music.”[143] In November 2018, Byrne expressed 2019 will be “one hell of a year”[144][non-primary source needed] On 19 December 2018, Egan and Feehily posted a picture of the group’s first rehearsals together in six years and Egan added that “2019 will be nothing but epic”.[145][non-primary source needed][146][non-primary source needed] A musical and a documentary film about them and their reunion were also reported.

“Hello My Love”,[141] their first single since 2011 was released on 10 January 2019.[147][non-primary source needed] It reached No. 1 in iTunes Store Top Songs in more than fifteen countries that include the United Kingdom and Ireland, reached top 10 in 23 countries, and charted in more than 50 countries only minutes after its release. It was released in four official versions: Original, instrumental, acoustic, and a remix. Their first UK, worldwide television and recorded professional appearance, performance in seven years and of the single was on The Graham Norton Show on 11 January 2019 where it was tagged as “one of the most highly-anticipated TV comebacks of the decade”.[148][149] They also performed the single on the 24th National Television Awards on 22 January 2019 and it was their first live television performance, first The O2 Arena and arena performance together in seven years. Their first Irish performance and television appearance together was in the finals night of Dancing With the Stars Ireland on 24 March 2019. Their first tour and first promotional tour in general and for a single release together outside UK and Ireland in seven years was on Singapore on 29 January 2019 to 1 February 2019.[150][non-primary source needed] It reached number-two in Ireland and Scotland. It was their highest charting on their official singles charts since the band’s “What About Now” single in 2009, ten years ago. The single got its Silver certification four months after its release and its Gold certification seven months after its premiere in the UK. In Ireland, it has a 2× Platinum certification.

The full-length album is released on 15 November 2019. It is in different formats like the CD, digital download, vinyl, and a limited box set edition. Some of the album formats are bundled with their official tour merchandise. It is their eleventh studio album, their first major album to be released in eight years and first studio album in nine years.[151][non-primary source needed] In November 2018, the pre-order links for the upcoming album were released on Amazon Australia,[152] Japan,[153] UK,[154] and HMV.[155] The album is titled Spectrum. The album peaked at number one in Ireland, Scotland, and the UK and was certified as Gold in the UK and as Platinum in Ireland. This is their first number one album in twelve years in the UK and in eight years in Ireland. This is also the fastest selling album in 2019 in Ireland. This is their eighth UK number-one album making them the fifth band (fourth until Coldplay got their eight number-one album week after) to have eight UK number-one albums with the likes of Led Zeppelin, and R.E.M. Overall, they are one of the only ten bands that has had eight number-one albums.[4] It marks their eleventh number-one album in Ireland.

To promote the album before its release, more singles were released like the second one, also by Mac and Sheeran with Fred Again (George Ezra, Prettymuch, Rita Ora), which was called “Better Man”. It was their second number one on the UK Singles Physical Chart and reached number two on the UK Singles Sales Chart and Scottish Singles Chart in 2019. It was also released in orchestral and acoustic versions. The third single, “Dynamite”, was released on 5 July 2019 and was released in three different mixes. The single was their 27th Top 10 hit in Scotland and 29th Top 40 hit in Ireland. The fourth single from the album, “My Blood”, was released on 25 October 2019. “My Blood” ended up peaking at number ninety-six on the UK Singles Chart and at number-six on the Scottish Singles Chart. It also peaked at number forty-six in the Irish Singles Chart.

Since their comeback in 2018, their previous singles “What About Now”, “Queen of My Heart”, “If I Let You Go”, and “My Love” reached the higher Gold certifications in the United Kingdom after ten, seventeen, eighteen, and twenty years of their releases respectively. “Flying Without Wings”, and “World of Our Own” were certified Platinum twenty years after its release. While “When You’re Looking Like That” after twenty years and “The Rose” after thirteen years achieved their Silver certifications since their releases respectively in the same country. Six were certified in 2019, one in 2018, and two in 2020.

On the evening of 17 October 2018, the UK and Ireland dates of their latest tour were announced through Westlife’s social networks and was called The Twenty Tour. A pre-order site of the forthcoming new Westlife album, for both unsigned and limited signed (which was taken down minutes later), from their official store was cited where fans will receive an exclusive pre-sale code for early access tickets to the 2019 tour.[156] Pre-sale tickets were all sold out before the general sale and the event had been described as a “big one”[157] making the original tour dates sold out at the very time of its general sales opening. The tour had twelve original dates and fourteen more dates added on places like Liverpool, Leeds, and Sheffield in less than seven hours due to high demand.[158][159][160][161][162] In their first full print interview as a band in six years, they said: “We will get to everyone eventually.” Egan added, “Every country that wants to see Westlife will see us at some point. We won’t step away from this until we’ve managed to tour the world.”[135] Seventeen additional Asian dates were announced from 21 March 2019 onwards; the tour has a total of fifty-one dates and took place at some of Asia’s and Europe’s largest indoor arenas and stadium. It was their fastest selling tour to date.

The second day of the tour in Croke Park had a live film broadcast in selected cinemas in at least fourteen European countries on 6 July 2019, and in more than 600 cinemas live via satellite in UK and Ireland alone. A delayed broadcast in at least nine Asian countries that include Hong Kong, India, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, and in Australia and New Zealand were done from August 2019 as well. They hired the Cirque du Soleil team for the production, stage design, and routines of the tour. A follow-up cinema screenings of the filmed tour date was produced from August 2019 onwards as well in a sing-along version that kick-started in Denmark, Ireland, and UK. This was released in a video album in different formats on 13 March 2020. It reached the number one in UK and Ireland and stayed at the top spot for more than thirty weeks on their official charts.

On 13 September 2019, they announced that they are scheduled to play at Wembley Stadium in London, England and at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork, Ireland, both for the first time, as part of their Stadiums in the Summer Tour, which was later renamed. The tour play dates were moved from 2020, 2021 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic with most of the original scheduled tour dates were also cancelled.

On 8 February 2021, the band revealed the mutual parting of ways with Virgin EMI Records and details of a new and groundbreaking partnership are imminent.

Wild Dreams (2021–present)

On 17 March 2021, they formally announced through different medias that they signed a new album deal through Warner Music UK and East West Records.

After 514 days since their last get together, they played eight of their songs live together for a BBC Radio 2 event on Ulster Hall, Belfast on 25 August 2021 and was broadcast from 10 September 2021. An estimate of sixty-eight thousand people have applied to be part of the audience that night but an approximate number of only 160 people has been picked due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“Starlight”, the lead single from their twelfth studio album, was released on 14 October 2021. The album, Wild Dreams, was released on 19 November 2021 but was pushed back to 26 November 2021 on 13 October 2021.[163][non-primary source needed] It is in different formats like the CD, digital download, streaming. Some of the album formats are bundled with their official tour merchandise.

On 29 October 2021, new schedule for their renamed fourteenth concert tour, The Wild Dreams Tour, were released. It is comprised of fourteen new dates and venues and eight dates added later. They also announced that their Wembley Stadium date will be streamed live in different cinemas in Europe.

On 17 December 2021, a Westlife concert filmed at London’s Bush Hall Venue and broadcast by Tencent’s WeChat (Weixin) across China’s most popular social media platform had an audience of almost 28 million. It received 160 million likes during the 100 minute stream. It was the first ever livestream concert by the band, and by an international artist in China. This was followed by being the special guest on Backstreet Boys livestream concert on the same said platform on 24 June 2022. The two band’s collaboration of Westlife’s song “My Love” had trended to number-one on the country’s top social media Weibo.[164][165] As of 7 April 2022, according to Official Charts Company, they are currently the fifth biggest-selling albums artist of the 21st century alone in the UK with 12,907,183.

Sleigh Ride


Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring, ting, tingling, too
 7    7     7     7     -7    7  6  5   -5    6    -5  5 -3   3

Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
 3    4    6   7 -7   7  6   -5  5   -5    -5   6 -5  5  -3   4

Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling, "Yoo hoo"
 7  7    7   7   -7   7  6   5    -5     6   -5  5    -3   3

Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
 3    4    6   7 -7   7  6   -5  5   -5    -5   6 -5  5  -3   4


Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, let's go, let's look at the show
3* 3* 6   3* 3* 6   3* 3* 6    -6*  -5*   6    -5* -4  3*  5*

We're riding in a wonderland of snow
 -5*  5* -4  3* -4 5* 6  -5* -6* -4

Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, it's grand, just holding your hand
 3 3  -5   3 3  -5   3 3  -5    6    5*    -5   5* -3  -2*   -4

We're gliding along with a song of a wintery fairyland
 -5   -3  -2* -1 3   -3 -5  -3 -2* -1 3 -3 -5  7 -5 3


Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy, cozy are we
We're snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you

Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, let's go, let's look at the show
We're riding in a wonderland of snow
Giddy up, giddy up, giddy up, it's grand, just holding your hand
We're gliding along with a song of a wintery fairyland

Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy, cozy are we
We're snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let's take that road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it's lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you


Sleigh ride together with you
  -5   -5   6  -5  5  -3   4

Sleigh ride together with you
  -5   -5   6  -5  5  -3   4

Sleigh ride together with you
  -5   -5   6  -5  5  -3   4

Sleigh ride together with you!
   8   -7*  7 -6 -5*  4   3  -3 3 4

Are you a new harmonica beginner? Are you finding easy harmonica songs for beginners? Ok, that is cause i open this topic with “Top 10 easy harmonica songs for beginners” which i collected from internet. I hope it can help you.

All notes are mainly in the middle register of the harmonica: holes 4 to 7, the easiest information to play.

These are simple songs, but to play them well you should have good control of all the notes in the middle register, both individually even though moving between holes.

It is also advisable to apply articulations using syllables like “TA” and “DA” when doing repetitions of blow and draw notes, respectively. These articulations separate the notes and give them a far more defined starting sound or accent.

For example, when we play a hole 4 blow and then repeat it, instead of blowing twice (with two separate airflows), we shall only blow once, and by using the syllable “TA” as an articulation, the continuous airflow will be interrupted when your tongue fastly hits the hard palate, separating the notes. As a result, the sound of the repeated note will undoubtedly be clearer.

In 9 of these songs you will see that on the tabs there are as much articulations as repeated notes.

The songs are arranged by difficulty, and each song has a slow practice version and an original tempo version. It will be useful to learn each song bit by bit, and play it all together.

Playing a song with the clean sound is more important than playing it fast.

“This Old Man” and “Jingle Bells” have several articulations and many passages with hole leaps, which make them even more demanding for a beginner.

When you jump holes, you must not move your mouth too far from the harmonica; just try to keep the gap to a minimum to land right at the biggest market of the hole you want to play next. When you jump from holes 6 to 4, you could accidentally play hole 5 by falling short, or hole 3 by leaping too much. At first, problems with playing hole leaps are very common because you may not really have a good reference on the harmonica yet, but you will improve this with repetition!

The tablature I use is the arrow system – up arrows for blow notes and down arrows for draw notes. Learn more about different tablature systems in this article: “How to read harmonica tabs”

Top 10 easy harmonica songs for beginners

[toc]

1. Happy Birthday

Happy birhday harmonica tab

6 6 -6 6 7 -7
Hap-py birth-day to you,
6 6 -6 6 -8 7
Hap-py birth-day to you,
6 6 9 8 7 -7 -6
Hap-py birth-day to _ _
-9 -9 8 7 -8 7
Hap-py birth-day to you.

You can see other version here.

Slow Tempo (80 bpm)

Original Tempo (110 bpm)

2. Home Sweet Home

4 -4 5 -5 -6 6 -5 5
6 -5 5 -5 -4 5
4 -4 5 -5 -6 6 -5 5
6 -5 5 -5 -4 4
6 7 -7 -6 6 6 5
6 -5 5 -5 -4 5
6 7 -7 -6 6 6 5
6 -5 5 -5 -4 4
-5 5 -5 -4 4

You can see other versions here.

Slow Tempo (65 bpm)

Original Tempo (80 bpm)

3. Jingle Bells (First part)

5 5 5
5 5 5
5 6 4 -4 5
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5 5 5 5 5 -4 -4 5 -4 6
5 5 5
5 5 5
5 6 4 -4 5
-5 -5 -5 -5 -5 5 5 5 5 6 6 -5 -4 4
3 5 -4 4 3
3 3 3 5 -4 4 -3
3 -5 5 -4 6 6 6 6 -6 6 -5 -4 4 6

You can see more versions here

Slow Tempo (80 bpm)

Original Tempo (110 bpm)

4. This Old Man

6 5 6 6 5 6
This old man, he played one,
-6 6 -5 5 -4 5 -5
He played nick-nack on my drum.
Chorus: (Repeat after each verse)
5 -5 6 4 4 4 4
With a nick-nack paddy whack
4 -4 5 -5 6
Give a dog a bone,
6 -4 -4 -5 5 -4 4
This old man came rolling home.

You can see more versions here.

Slow Tempo (120 bpm)

Original Tempo (160 bpm)

5. When the Saints Go Marching In

4 5 -5 6
4 5 -5 6
4 5 -5 6 5 4 5 -4
5 5 -4 4 4 5 6 6 6 -5
4 5 -5 6 5 4 -4 4

You can see more versions here.

Slow Tempo (120 bpm)

Original Tempo (160 bpm)

6. Oh Susanna

4-4 5 6 6-6 6 5
I came from Al-a-bam-a

4 -4 5 5 -4 4 -4
with my ban-jo on my knee;

4-4 5 6 6 -6 6 5
I’m goin’ to Lou-‘si-an-a

4-4 5 5 -4 -4 4
M-y true love for to see.

4-4 5 6 6 -6 6 5 4
I-t rained all night the day I left

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The weath-er it was dry;

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Th-e sun so hot I froze to death,

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Su-san-na, don’t you cry.

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Oh, Su-san-na, oh, don’t you cry for me;

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I-ve come from Al-a-bam-a

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with my ban-jo on my knee.

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Original Tempo (140 bpm)

7. Camptown Races

6 6 6 5 6 -6 6 5
De Camptown ladies sing this song,
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Doo-da, Doo-da
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De Camptown racetrack’s two miles long
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Oh, de doo-da day.

Refrain
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G’wine to run all night
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G’wine to run all day
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I bet my money on a bob-tailed nag
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Somebody bet on the gray

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8. Mary Had a Little Lamb

5 -4 4 -4 5 5 5
Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb
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Lit-tle lamb, lit-tle lamb
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Ma-ry had a lit-tle lamb
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Whose fleece was white as snow

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9. Ode to Joy

5 5 -5 6 6 -5 5 -4 4 4 -4 5 5 -4 -4
4 4 -4 5 5 -4 4 -3 3 3 -3 4 4 -3 -3
3 3 -3 4 4 -3 3 -2 2 2 -2 3 3 -2 -2

5 5 -5 6 6 -5 5 -4 4 4 -4 5 -4 4 4
4 4 -4 5 5 -4 4 -3 3 3 -3 4 -3 3 3
3 3 -3 4 4 -3 3 -2 2 2 -2 3 -2 2 2

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10. Alouette

4 4 -4 5 5

-4 4 -4 5 4 3

4 4 -4 5 5

-4 4 -4 5 4

4 4 4 4 4 5 6

6 -6 6 -5 5 -4 4

6 6 6 6

4 4 4 4

6 6 6

4 4 4

6 -5 5 -4 4

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Hiram “Hank” Williams (September 17, 1923 – January 1, 1953) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century, Williams recorded 35 singles (five released posthumously) that reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Country & Western Best Sellers chart, including 11 that ranked number one (three posthumously).

Born in Mount Olive, Butler County, Alabama, Williams relocated to Georgiana with his family, where he met Rufus Payne, an African American blues musician, who gave him guitar lessons in exchange for meals or money. Payne had a major influence on Williams’ later musical style, along with Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb. Williams would later relocate to Montgomery, where he began his music career in 1937, when producers at radio station WSFA hired him to perform and host a 15-minute program. He formed the Drifting Cowboys backup band, which was managed by his mother, and dropped out of school to devote his time to his career.

When several of his band members were conscripted into military service during World War II, Williams had trouble with their replacements, and WSFA terminated his contract because of his alcohol abuse. Williams eventually married Audrey Sheppard, who was his manager for nearly a decade. After recording “Never Again” and “Honky Tonkin’” with Sterling Records, he signed a contract with MGM Records. In 1947, he released “Move It on Over”, which became a hit, and also joined the Louisiana Hayride radio program.

One year later, he released a cover of “Lovesick Blues” recorded at Herzog Studio in Cincinnati, which carried him into the mainstream of music. After an initial rejection, Williams joined the Grand Ole Opry. He was unable to read or notate music to any significant degree. Among the hits he wrote were “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, “Hey, Good Lookin’”, and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”.

Years of back pain, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health. In 1952 he divorced Sheppard and was dismissed by the Grand Ole Opry because of his unreliability and alcohol abuse. On New Year’s Day 1953, he died suddenly while traveling to a concert in Canton, Ohio, at the age of 29. Despite his brief life, Williams is one of the most celebrated and influential popular musicians of the 20th century, especially in country music.

Many artists covered songs Williams wrote and recorded. He influenced Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, George Jones, Charley Pride and The Rolling Stones, among others. Williams was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1961), the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1970), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1987). The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2010 awarded him a posthumous special citation “for his craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life.”

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Early life

Williams was born in Butler County, Alabama. His parents were Jessie Lillybelle “Lillie” (née Skipper) (1898 – 1955) and Elonzo Huble “Lon” Williams (1891 – 1970), who was of Welsh, Irish, Scottish, English, French, Swiss and German ancestry. Elonzo Williams worked as an engineer for the railroads of the W. T. Smith lumber company. He was drafted during World War I, serving from July 1918 until June 1919. He was severely injured after falling from a truck, breaking his collarbone and suffering a severe blow to the head.

After his return, the family’s first child, Ernest Huble Williams (July 5, 1921 – July 7, 1921), died shortly after birth. Their daughter Irene was born on August 8, 1922 (died 1995). Their third child, Hiram, was born on September 17, 1923, in Mount Olive.[ Since Elonzo Williams was a Mason, and his wife was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, the child was named after Hiram I of Tyre (one of the three founders of the Masons, according to Masonic legend). His name was misspelled as “Hiriam” on his birth certificate, which was prepared and signed when Hank was about 10 years old.

As a child, he was nicknamed “Harm” by his family and “Herky” or “Poots” by his friends.  He was born with spina bifida occulta, a birth defect, centered on the spinal column, which gave him lifelong pain – a factor in his later abuse of alcohol and drugs. Williams’ father was frequently relocated by the lumber company railway for which he worked, and the family lived in many southern Alabama towns. In 1930, when Williams was seven years old, his father began suffering from facial paralysis. At a Veterans Affairs (VA) clinic in Pensacola, Florida, doctors determined that the cause was a brain aneurysm, and Elonzo was sent to the VA Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. He remained hospitalized for eight years, rendering him mostly absent throughout Williams’ childhood. From that time on, Lillie Williams a*sumed responsibility for the family.

In the fall of 1934, the Williams family moved to Greenville, Alabama, where Lillie opened a boarding house next to the Butler County courthouse. In 1935, the family settled in Garland, Alabama and Lillie opened a new boarding house; after a while they moved with his cousin Opal McNeil to Georgiana, Alabama, where Lillie managed to find several side jobs to support her children despite the bleak economic climate of the Great Depression. She worked in a cannery and served as a night-shift nurse in the local hospital.

Their first house burned, and the family lost their possessions. They moved to a new house on the other side of town on Rose Street, which Williams’ mother soon turned into a boarding house. The house had a small garden, on which they grew diverse crops that Williams and his sister Irene sold around Georgiana. At a chance meeting in Georgiana, Hank Williams met U.S. Representative J. Lister Hill while he was campaigning across Alabama. Williams told Hill that his mother was interested to talk with him about his problems and her need to collect Elonzo Williams’s disability pension. With Hill’s help, the family began collecting the money. Despite his medical condition, the family managed fairly well financially throughout the Great Depression.

There are several versions of how Williams got his first guitar. His mother stated that she bought it with money from selling peanuts, but many other prominent residents of the town claimed to have been the one who purchased the guitar for him. While living in Georgiana, Williams met Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, a street performer. Payne gave Williams guitar lessons in exchange for meals prepared by Lillie Williams or money. Payne’s base musical style was blues.

He taught Williams chords, chord progressions, bass turns, and the musical style of accompaniment that he would use in most of his future songwriting. Later on, Williams recorded one of the songs that Payne taught him, “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It”. Williams’ musical style contained influences from Payne along with several other country influences, among them “the Singing Brakeman” Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican, and Roy Acuff. In 1937, Williams got into a physical altercation with his physical education coach about exercises the coach wanted him to do. His mother subsequently demanded that the school board terminate the coach; when they refused, the family moved to Montgomery, Alabama. Payne and Williams lost touch, though Payne also moved to Montgomery eventually, where he died in poverty in 1939. Williams later credited him as his only teacher.

Career

Early career

In July 1937, the Williams and McNeil families opened a boarding house on South Perry Street in downtown Montgomery. It was at this time that Williams decided to change his name informally from Hiram to Hank. As Williams told the story about it in his later concerts, the name change was supposedly all because of a cat’s yowling, though, as the authors of Hank Williams: The Biography point out, “Hank” simply sounds more like a hillbilly and western star than “Hiram”. During the same year, he participated in a talent show at the Empire Theater. He won the first prize of $15, singing his first original song “WPA Blues”. Williams wrote the lyrics and used the tune of Riley Puckett’s “Dissatisfied”.

He never learned to read music and, for the rest of his career, based his compositions in storytelling and personal experience. After school and on weekends, Williams sang and played his Silvertone guitar on the sidewalk in front of the WSFA radio studio.[ His recent win at the Empire Theater and the street performances caught the attention of WSFA producers who occasionally invited him to perform on air. So many listeners contacted the radio station asking for more of “the singing kid”, possibly influenced by his mother, that the producers hired him to host his own 15-minute show twice a week for a weekly salary of US$15 (equivalent to US$266.8 in 2020).

In August 1938, Elonzo Williams was temporarily released from the hospital. He showed up unannounced at the family’s home in Montgomery. Lillie was unwilling to let him reclaim his position as the head of the household, so he stayed only long enough to celebrate Hank’s birthday in September before he returned to the medical center in Louisiana. Hank’s mother had claimed that he was dead.

Williams’ successful radio show fueled his entry into a music career. His salary was enough for him to start his own band, which he dubbed the Drifting Cowboys. The original members were guitarist Braxton Schuffert, fiddler Freddie Beach, and comedian Smith “Hezzy” Adair. James E. (Jimmy) Porter was the youngest, being only 13 when he started playing steel guitar for Williams. Arthur Whiting was also a guitarist for the Drifting Cowboys. The band traveled throughout central and southern Alabama performing in clubs and at private gatherings. James Ellis Garner later played fiddle for him. Lillie Williams became the Drifting Cowboys’ manager. Williams dropped out of school in October 1939 so that he and the Drifting Cowboys could work full-time.[ Lillie Williams began booking show dates, negotiating prices and driving them to some of their shows. Now free to travel without Williams’ schooling taking precedence, the band could tour as far away as western Georgia and the Florida Panhandle. The band started playing in theaters before the start of the movies and later in honky-tonks. Williams’ alcohol use started to become a problem during the tours; on occasion he spent a large part of the show revenues on alcohol. Meanwhile, between tour schedules, Williams returned to Montgomery to host his radio show.

1940s

The American entry into World War II in 1941 marked the beginning of hard times for Williams. While he received a 4-F deferment from the military for his back after falling from a bull during a rodeo in Texas, his band members were all drafted to serve. Many of their replacements refused to play in the band due to Williams’ worsening alcoholism. He continued to show up for his radio show intoxicated, so in August 1942 the WSFA radio station fired him for “habitual drunkenness”. During one of his concerts, Williams met his idol, Grand Ole Opry star Roy Acuff backstage, who later warned him of the dangers of alcohol, saying, “You’ve got a million-dollar talent, son, but a ten-cent brain.”

He worked for the rest of the war for a shipbuilding company in Mobile, Alabama, as well as singing in bars for soldiers. In 1943, Williams met Audrey Sheppard at a medicine show in Banks, Alabama. Williams and Sheppard lived and worked together in Mobile. Sheppard later told Williams that she wanted to move to Montgomery with him and start a band together and help him regain his radio show. The couple were married in 1944 at a Texaco Station in Andalusia, Alabama, by a justice of the peace. The marriage was declared illegal, since Sheppard’s divorce from her previous husband did not comply with the legally required 60-day trial reconciliation.

In 1945, when he was back in Montgomery, Williams started to perform again for the WSFA radio station. He wrote songs weekly to perform during the shows. As a result of the new variety of his repertoire, Williams published his first songbook, Original Songs of Hank Williams. The book only listed lyrics, since its main purpose was to attract more audiences, though it is also possible that he did not want to pay for transcribing the notes. It included 10 songs: “Mother Is Gone”, “Won’t You Please Come Back”, “My Darling Baby Girl” (with Audrey Sheppard), “Grandad’s Musket”, “I Just Wish I Could Forget”, “Let’s Turn Back the Years”, “Honkey-Tonkey”, “I Loved No One But You”, “A Tramp on the Street”, and “You’ll Love Me Again”. With Williams beginning to be recognized as a songwriter, Sheppard became his manager and occasionally accompanied him on duets in some of his live concerts.

On September 14, 1946, Williams auditioned for Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, but was rejected. After the failure of his audition, Williams and Audrey Sheppard attempted to interest the recently formed music publishing firm Acuff-Rose Music. Williams and his wife approached Fred Rose, the president of the company, during one of his habitual ping-pong games at WSM radio studios. Audrey Williams asked Rose if her husband could sing a song for him on that moment, Rose agreed, and he liked Williams’ musical style. Rose signed Williams to a six-song contract, and leveraged this deal to sign Williams with Sterling Records. On December 11, 1946, in his first recording session, he recorded “Wealth Won’t Save Your Soul”, “Calling You”, “Never Again (Will I Knock on Your Door)”, and “When God Comes and Gathers His Jewels”, which was misprinted as “When God Comes and Fathers His Jewels”. The recordings “Never Again” and “Honky Tonkin’” became successful, and earned Williams the attention of MGM Records.

Williams signed with MGM Records in 1947 and released “Move It on Over”; considered an early example of rock and roll music, the song became a massive country hit. In 1948, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and he joined the Louisiana Hayride, a radio show broadcast that propelled him into living rooms all over the Southeast appearing on weekend shows. Williams eventually started to host a show on KWKH and started touring across western Louisiana and eastern Texas, always returning on Saturdays for the weekly broadcast of the Hayride. After a few more moderate hits, in 1949 he released his version of the 1922 Cliff Friend and Irving Mills song “Lovesick Blues”,[48] made popular by Rex Griffin. Williams’ version became a huge country hit; the song stayed at number one on the Billboard charts for four consecutive months, crossing over to mainstream audiences and gaining Williams a place in the Grand Ole Opry. On June 11, 1949, Williams made his debut at the Grand Ole Opry, where he became the first performer to receive six encores. He brought together Bob McNett (guitar), Hillous Butrum (bass), Jerry Rivers (fiddle) and Don Helms (steel guitar) to form the most famous version of the Drifting Cowboys, earning an estimated US$1,000 per show (equivalent to US$10,745.5 in 2020). That year Audrey Williams gave birth to Randall Hank Williams (Hank Williams Jr.). During 1949, he joined the first European tour of the Grand Ole Opry, performing in military bases in England, Germany and the Azores. Williams released seven hit songs after “Lovesick Blues”, including “Wedding Bells”, “Mind Your Own Business”, “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)”, and “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It”.

1950s

In 1950, Williams began recording as “Luke the Drifter” for his religious-themed recordings, many of which are recitations rather than singing. Fearful that disc jockeys and jukebox operators would hesitate to accept these unusual recordings, Williams used this alias to avoid hurting the marketability of his name. Although the real identity of Luke the Drifter was supposed to be anonymous, Williams often performed part of the material of the recordings on stage. Most of the material was written by Williams himself, in some cases with the help of Fred Rose and his son Wesley. The songs depicted Luke the Drifter traveling around from place to place, narrating stories of different characters and philosophizing about life. Some of the compositions were accompanied by a pipe organ.

Around this time Williams released more hit songs, such as “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy”, “They’ll Never Take Her Love from Me”, “Why Should We Try Anymore”, “Nobody’s Lonesome for Me”, “Long Gone Lonesome Blues”, “Why Don’t You Love Me”, “Moanin’ the Blues”, and “I Just Don’t Like This Kind of Living”.  In 1951, “Dear John” became a hit, but it was the flip side, “Cold, Cold Heart”, that became one of his most recognized songs. A pop cover version by Tony Bennett released the same year stayed on the charts for 27 weeks, peaking at number one.

Williams’ career reached a peak in the late summer of 1951 with his Hadacol tour of the U.S. with actor Bob Hope and other luminaries. On the weekend after the tour ended, Williams was photographed backstage at the Grand Ole Opry signing a motion picture deal with MGM. In October, Williams recorded a demo, “There’s a Tear in My Beer” for a friend, “Big Bill Lister”, who recorded it in the studio. The demo was later overdubbed by his son, Hank Williams Jr. On November 14, 1951, Williams flew to New York with his steel guitar player Don Helms where he appeared on television for the first time on The Perry Como Show. There he and Perry Como sang “Hey Good Lookin’”. Photos but no existing footage remain of this appearance.

“Ramblin’ Man” was written in 1951 by Williams. It was released as the B-side to the 1953 #1 hit “Take These Chains from My Heart”, as well as to the 1976 re-release of “Why Don’t You Love Me”. It is also included on 40 Greatest Hits, a staple of his CD re-released material.

In November 1951, Williams suffered a fall during a hunting trip with his fiddler Jerry Rivers in Franklin, Tennessee. The fall reactivated his old back pains. He later started to consume painkillers, including morphine, and alcohol to help ease the pain. On May 21, he had been admitted to North Louisiana Sanitarium for the treatment of his alcoholism, leaving on May 24. On December 13, 1951, he had a spinal fusion at the Vanderbilt University Hospital, being released on December 24. During his recovery, he lived with his mother in Montgomery, and later moved to Nashville with Ray Price.

During the spring of 1952, Williams flew to New York with steel guitarist Don Helms, where he made two appearances with other Grand Ole Opry members on The Kate Smith Show. He sang “Cold, Cold Heart”, “Hey Good Lookin””, “Glory Bound Train” and “I Saw the Light” with other cast members, and a duet, “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)” with Anita Carter. Footage remains of these appearances. That same year, had a brief extramarital affair with dancer Bobbie Jett, with whom he fathered a daughter, Jett Williams (born January 6, 1953, two days after his burial).

In June 1952, he recorded “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”, “Window Shopping”, “Settin’ the Woods on Fire”, and “I’ll Never Get out of this World Alive”. Audrey Williams divorced him that year; the next day he recorded “You Win Again” and “I Won’t be Home No More”. Around this time, he met Billie Jean Jones, a girlfriend of country singer Faron Young, at the Grand Ole Opry. As a girl, Jones had lived down the street from Williams when he was with the Louisiana Hayride, and now Williams began to visit her frequently in Shreveport, causing him to miss many Grand Ole Opry appearances.

On August 11, 1952, Williams was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry for habitual drunkenness and missing shows. He returned to Shreveport, Louisiana to perform on KWKH and WBAM shows and in the Louisiana Hayride, for which he toured again. His performances were acclaimed when he was sober, but despite the efforts of his work a*sociates to get him to shows sober, his abuse of alcohol resulted in occasions when he did not appear or his performances were poor. In October 1952 he married Billie Jean Jones.

During his last recording session on September 23, 1952, Williams recorded “Kaw-Liga”, along with “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, “Take These Chains from My Heart”, and “I Could Never be Ashamed of You”. Due to Williams’ excesses, Fred Rose stopped working with him. By the end of 1952, Williams had started to suffer heart problems. He met Horace “Toby” Marshall in Oklahoma City, who said that he was a doctor. Marshall had been previously convicted for forgery, and had been paroled and released from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1951. Among other fake titles, he said that he was a Doctor of Science. He purchased the DSC title for $25 from the Chicago School of Applied Science; in the diploma, he requested that the DSC be spelled out as “Doctor of Science and Psychology”. Under the name of Dr. C. W. Lemon he prescribed Williams with amphetamines, Seconal, chloral hydrate, and morphine, which made his heart problems worse. His final concert was held in Austin, Texas at the Skyline Club on December 19.

Personal life

On December 15, 1944, Williams married Audrey Sheppard. It was her second marriage and his first. Their son, Randall Hank Williams, who would achieve fame in his own right as Hank Williams Jr., was born on May 26, 1949. The marriage, always turbulent, rapidly disintegrated, and Williams developed serious problems with alcohol, morphine, and other painkillers prescribed for him to ease the severe back pain caused by his spina bifida. The couple divorced on May 29, 1952.

In June 1952, Williams moved in with his mother, even as he released numerous hit songs, such as “Half as Much” in April, “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” in July, “Settin’ the Woods on Fire”/”You Win Again” in September, and “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” in November. His substance abuse problems continued to spiral out of control as he moved to Nashville and officially divorced his wife. A relationship with a woman named Bobbie Jett during this period resulted in a daughter, Jett Williams, who was born five days after Williams’ death. His mother adopted Jett, who was made a ward of the state and then adopted by another couple after her grandmother died. Jett Williams did not learn that she was Hank Williams’ daughter until the early 1980s.

On October 18, 1952, Williams and Billie Jean Jones Eshlimar were married in Minden, Louisiana  by a justice of the peace. It was the second marriage for both (each being divorced with children). The next day, two public ceremonies were also held at the New Orleans Civic Auditorium, where 14,000 seats were sold for each. After Williams’ death, a judge ruled that the wedding was not legal because Jones Eshlimar’s divorce had not become final until 11 days after she married Williams. Williams’ first wife, Audrey, and his mother, Lillie Williams, were the driving forces behind having the marriage declared invalid and pursued the matter for years. Williams had also married Audrey Sheppard before her divorce was final, on the 10th day of a required 60-day reconciliation period.

In the 1952 presidential election campaign, Williams was a vocal supporter of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican party nominee. According to singer and recording artist Jo Stafford, Williams sent Eisenhower a birthday telegram on October 14 informing him that he considered it a personal honor to endorse a military figure to lead the nation in its coming future. Eisenhower was sworn in as the 34th president 19 days after Williams’ death.

Death

Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia, on Wednesday December 31, 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled US$3,500. That day, because of an ice storm in the Nashville area, Williams could not fly, so he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts. Carr called the Charleston auditorium from Knoxville to say that Williams would not arrive on time owing to the ice storm and was ordered to drive Williams to Canton, Ohio, for the New Year’s Day concert there.

They arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Carr requested a doctor for Williams, as he was feeling the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had drunk on the way from Montgomery to Knoxville.[ Dr. P. H. Cardwell injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that also contained a quarter-grain of morphine. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel; the porters had to carry Williams to the car, as he was coughing and hiccuping.

At around midnight on Thursday, January 1, 1953, when they crossed the Tennessee state line and arrived in Bristol, Virginia, Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked Williams if he wanted to eat. Williams said he did not, and those are believed to be his last words. Carr later drove on until he stopped for fuel at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where he realized that Williams was dead, and rigor mortis had already set in. The filling station’s owner called the chief of the local police. In Williams’ Cadillac, the police found some empty beer cans and unfinished handwritten lyrics.

Dr. Ivan Malinin performed the autopsy at the Tyree Funeral House. Malinin found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as “insufficiency of the right ventricle of the heart”. That evening, when the announcer at Canton announced Williams’ death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing, thinking that it was just another excuse. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing “I Saw the Light” as a tribute to Williams, the crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, sang along. Malinin also wrote that Williams had been severely beaten and kicked in the groin recently. Also, local magistrate Virgil F. Lyons ordered an inquest into Williams’ death concerning the welt that was visible on his head.

His body was transported to Montgomery, Alabama on Friday, January 2, and placed in a silver coffin that was first shown at his mother’s boarding house for two days. His funeral took place on Sunday, January 4, at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his coffin placed on the flower-covered stage.  An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people passed by the silver coffin, and the auditorium was filled with 2,750 mourners. His funeral was said to have been far larger than any ever held for any other citizen of Alabama and the largest event ever held in Montgomery. Williams’ remains are interred at the Oakwood Annex in Montgomery. The president of MGM told Billboard magazine that the company got only about five requests for pictures of Williams during the weeks before his death, but over three hundred afterwards. The local record shops reportedly sold all their Williams records, and customers were asking for all records ever released by Williams.

His final single, released in November 1952 while he was still alive, was titled “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” was written and recorded in September 1952 but released in late January 1953 after Williams’ death. The song, backed by “Kaw-Liga”, was number one on the country charts for six weeks. It provided the title for the 1964 biographical film of the same name, which starred George Hamilton. “Take These Chains From My Heart” was released in April 1953 and went to number 1 on the country charts. “I Won’t Be Home No More”, released in July, went to number 3, and an overdubbed demo, “Weary Blues From Waitin’”, written with Ray Price, went to number 7.

Legacy

Williams is widely recognized as “the King of Country Music”,[ a title he shares with fellow artists Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, and George Strait.

Alabama governor Gordon Persons officially proclaimed September 21 “Hank Williams Day”. The first celebration, in 1954, featured the unveiling of a monument at the Cramton Bowl that was later placed at the gravesite of Williams. The ceremony featured Ferlin Husky interpreting “I Saw the Light”.

Williams had 11 number one country hits in his career (“Lovesick Blues”, “Long Gone Lonesome Blues”, “Why Don’t You Love Me”, “Moanin’ the Blues”, “Cold, Cold Heart”, “Hey, Good Lookin’”, “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”, “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”, “Kaw-Liga”, “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, and “Take These Chains from My Heart”), as well as many other top 10 hits.

On February 8, 1960, Williams’ star was placed at 6400 Hollywood Boulevard on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame[94] in 1961 and into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1985. When Downbeat magazine took a poll the year after Williams’ death, he was voted the most popular country and Western performer of all time—ahead of such giants as Jimmie Rodgers, Roy Acuff, Red Foley, and Ernest Tubb.

In 1964, Hank Williams was portrayed by George Hamilton in the film Your Cheatin’ Heart.

In 1977, a national organization of CB truck drivers voted “Your Cheatin’ Heart” as their favorite record of all time. In 1987, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under the category “Early Influence”. He was ranked second in CMT’s 40 Greatest Men of Country Music in 2003, behind only Johnny Cash who wrote the song “The Night Hank Williams Came To Town”. His son, Hank Jr., was ranked on the same list.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him number 74 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Many artists of the 1950s and 1960s, including Elvis Presley,[102] Bob Dylan, Tammy Wynette, David Houston, Jerry Lee Lewis, Merle Haggard,[103] Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Ricky Nelson, and Conway Twitty recorded Williams’ songs during their careers.

In 2011, Williams’ 1949 MGM number one hit, “Lovesick Blues”, was inducted into the Recording Academy Grammy Hall of Fame. The same year, Hank Williams: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings …Plus! was honored with a Grammy nomination for Best Historical Album.[108] In 1999, Williams was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame. On April 12, 2010, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Williams a posthumous special citation that paid tribute to his “craftsmanship as a songwriter who expressed universal feelings with poignant simplicity and played a pivotal role in transforming country music into a major musical and cultural force in American life”. Keeping his legacy alive, Williams’ son, Hank Williams Jr., daughter Jett Williams, grandson Hank Williams III, and granddaughters Hilary Williams[citation needed] and Holly Williams are also country musicians.

In 2006, a janitor of Sony/ATV Music Publishing found in a dumpster the unfinished lyrics written by Williams that had been found in his car the night he died. The worker claimed that she sold Williams’ notes to a representative of the Honky-Tonk Hall of Fame and the Rock-N-Roll Roadshow. The janitor was accused of theft, but the charges were later dropped when a judge determined that her version of events was true. The unfinished lyrics were later returned to Sony/ATV, which handed them to Bob Dylan in 2008 to complete the songs for a new album. Ultimately, the completion of the album included recordings by Alan Jackson, Norah Jones, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill, Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm, Jakob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, and Merle Haggard. The album, named The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, was released on October 4, 2011.

Material recorded by Williams, originally intended for radio broadcasts to be played when he was on tour or for its distribution to radio stations nationwide, resurfaced throughout time.  In 1993, a double-disc set of recordings of Williams for the Health & Happiness Show was released. Broadcast in 1949, the shows were recorded for the promotion of Hadacol. The set was re-released on Hank Williams: The Legend Begins in 2011. The album included unreleased songs. “Fan It” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, recorded by Williams at age 15; the homemade recordings of him singing “Freight Train Blues”, “New San Antonio Rose”, “St. Louis Blues” and “Greenback Dollar” at age 18; and a recording for the 1951 March of Dimes.[ In May 2014, further radio recordings by Williams were released. The Garden Spot Programs, 1950, a series of publicity segments for plant nursery Naughton Farms originally aired in 1950. The recordings were found by collector George Gimarc at radio station KSIB in Creston, Iowa.[ Gimarc contacted Williams’ daughter Jett, and Colin Escott, writer of a biography book on Williams. The material was restored and remastered by Michael Graves and released by Omnivore Recordings. The release won a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.

British actor Tom Hiddleston portrayed Williams in the biopic I Saw the Light, based on Colin Escott’s 1994 book Hank Williams: The Biography. Marc Abraham directed the film. The film was released in June 2016.

Lawsuits over the estate

After Williams’ death, Audrey Williams filed a suit in Nashville against MGM Records and Acuff-Rose. The suit demanded that both of the publishing companies continue to pay her half of the royalties from Hank Williams’ records. Williams had an agreement giving his first wife half of the royalties, but allegedly there was no clarification that the deal was valid after his death. Because Williams may have left no will, the disposition of the remaining 50 percent was considered uncertain; those involved included Williams’ second wife, Billie Jean Horton and her daughter, and Hank Williams’ mother and sister. On October 22, 1975, a federal judge in Atlanta, Georgia, ruled Horton’s marriage to Williams was valid and that half of Williams’ future royalties belonged to her.

WSM’s Mother’s Best Flour

In 1951, Williams hosted a 15-minute show for Mother’s Best Flour on WSM radio. Due to Williams’ tour schedules, some of the shows were previously recorded to be played in his absence. The original acetates made their way to the possession of Jett Williams. Prior to that, duplicates were made and intended to be published by a third party. In February 2005, the Tennessee Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling stating that Williams’ heirs—son, Hank Williams Jr, and daughter, Jett Williams—have the sole rights to sell his recordings made for a Nashville radio station in 1951.

The court rejected claims made by Polygram Records and Legacy Entertainment in releasing recordings Williams made for the Mother’s Best Flour Show. The recordings, which Legacy Entertainment acquired in 1997, include live versions of Williams’ hits and his cover version of other songs. Polygram contended that Williams’ contract with MGM Records, which Polygram now owns, gave them rights to release the radio recordings. A 3-CD selection of the tracks, restored by Joe Palmaccio, was released by Time-Life in October 2008 titled The Unreleased Recordings.

Burt Freeman Bacharach (/ˈbækəræk/ BAK-ə-rak; born May 12, 1928) is an American composer, songwriter, record producer, and pianist who has composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, Bacharach’s songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 different artists. As of 2014, he had written 73 US and 52 UK Top 40 hits. He is considered one of the most important composers of 20th-century popular music.

His music is characterized by unusual chord progressions, influenced by his background in jazz harmony, and uncommon selections of instruments for small orchestras. Most of Bacharach’s and David’s hits were written specifically for and performed by Dionne Warwick, but earlier a*sociations (from 1957 to 1963) saw the composing duo work with Marty Robbins, Perry Como, Gene McDaniels, and Jerry Butler. Following the initial success of these collaborations, Bacharach went on to write hits for Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Jackie DeShannon, Bobbie Gentry, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert, B. J. Thomas, the Carpenters, among numerous other artists. He arranged, conducted, and produced much of his recorded output.

Songs that he co-wrote which have topped the Billboard Hot 100 include “This Guy’s in Love with You” (1968), “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” (1969), “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (1970), “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” (1981), and “That’s What Friends Are For” (1986).

A significant figure in easy listening,[2] Bacharach is described by writer William Farina as “a composer whose venerable name can be linked with just about every other prominent musical artist of his era.” In later years, his songs were newly appropriated for the soundtracks of major feature films, by which time “tributes, compilations, and revivals were to be found everywhere”. He has been noted for his influence on later musical movements such as chamber pop and Shibuya-kei. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Bacharach and David at number 32 for their list of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. In 2012, the duo received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first time the honor has been given to a songwriting team.

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Early life and education

Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in the Kew Gardens section of New York City, graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1946. He is the son of Irma M. (née Freeman) and Mark Bertram “Bert” Bacharach, a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist. His mother was an amateur painter and songwriter who was responsible for making Bacharach learn piano during his childhood. His family was Jewish, but he says that they did not practice or give much attention to their religion. “But the kids I knew were Catholic”, he adds. “I was Jewish but I didn’t want anybody to know about it.”

Bacharach showed a keen interest in jazz as a teenager, disliking his classical piano lessons, and often used a fake ID to gain admission into 52nd Street nightclubs. He got to hear bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie, whose style would later influence his songwriting.

Bacharach studied music (Bachelor of Music, 1948) at Montreal’s McGill University, under Helmut Blume, at the Mannes School of Music, and at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California. During this period he studied a range of music, including jazz harmony, which has since been important to songs which are generally considered pop music. His composition teachers included Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell, and Bohuslav Martinů. Bacharach cites Milhaud as his biggest influence, under whose guidance he wrote a “Sonatina for Violin, Oboe and Piano.”

Beginning work as a musician

Following his tour of duty in the United States Army,[when?] Bacharach spent the next three years as a pianist and conductor for popular singer Vic Damone. Damone recalls: “Burt was clearly bound to go out on his own. He was an exceptionally talented, classically trained pianist, with very clear ideas on the musicality of songs, how they should be played, and what they should sound like. I appreciated his musical gifts.” He later worked in similar capacity for various other singers, including Polly Bergen, Steve Lawrence, the Ames Brothers and Paula Stewart (who became his first wife). When he was unable to find better jobs, Bacharach worked at resorts in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where he accompanied singers such as Joel Grey.

In 1956, at the age of 28, Bacharach’s productivity increased when composer Peter Matz recommended him to Marlene Dietrich, who needed an arranger and conductor for her nightclub shows. He then became part-time music director for Dietrich, the actress and singer who had been an international screen star in the 1930s. They toured worldwide off and on until the early 1960s; when they were not touring, he wrote songs.  As a result of his collaboration with Dietrich, he gained his first major recognition as a conductor and arranger.

In her autobiography, Dietrich wrote that Bacharach loved touring in Russia and Poland because the violinists were “extraordinary”, and musicians were greatly appreciated by the public. He liked Edinburgh and Paris, along with the Scandinavian countries, and “he also felt at home in Israel”, she wrote, where music was similarly “much revered”. Their working relationship ceased by the early 1960s, after about five years with Dietrich, with Bacharach telling her that he wanted to devote himself full-time to songwriting. She thought of her time with him as “seventh heaven … As a man, he embodied everything a woman could wish for. … How many such men are there? For me he was the only one.”

Songwriting career

1950s and 1960s

In 1957, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David met while at the Brill Building in New York City, and began their writing partnership. They received a career breakthrough when their song “The Story of My Life” was recorded by Marty Robbins, becoming a number 1 hit on the U.S. Country Chart in 1957.

Soon afterwards, “Magic Moments” was recorded by Perry Como for RCA Records, and reached #4 in the U.S. These two songs were back-to-back No. 1 singles in the UK (the British chart-topping “The Story of My Life” version was sung by Michael Holliday), giving Bacharach and David the honor of being the first songwriters to have written consecutive No. 1 UK singles.

In 1961 Bacharach was credited as arranger and producer, for the first time on both label and sleeve, for the song Three Wheels on My Wagon, written jointly with Bob Hilliard for Dick Van Dyke.

Bacharach and David formed a writing partnership in 1963. Bacharach’s career received a boost when singer Jerry Butler asked to record “Make it Easy on Yourself,” and wanted him to direct the recording sessions. It became the first time he managed the entire recording process for one of his own songs.

In the early and mid-1960s, Bacharach wrote well over a hundred songs with David. In 1961 Bacharach discovered singer Dionne Warwick while she was a session accompanist. That year the two, along with Dionne’s sister Dee Dee Warwick, released a single “Move It on the Backbeat” under the name Burt and the Backbeats. The lyrics for this Bacharach composition were provided by Hal David’s brother Mack David. Dionne made her professional recording debut the following year with her first hit, “Don’t Make Me Over”.

Bacharach and David then wrote more songs to make use of Warwick’s singing talents, which led to one of the most successful teams in popular music history. Over the next 20 years, Warwick’s recordings of his songs sold over 12 million copies, with 38 singles making the charts and 22 in the Top 40. Among the hits were “Walk on By”, “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, “Alfie”, “I Say a Little Prayer”, “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”, and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” She would eventually have more hits during her career than any other female vocalist except Aretha Franklin.[36]

Bacharach released his first solo album in 1965 on the Kapp Records label. “Hit Maker! Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits” was largely ignored in the US but rose to #3 on the UK album charts, where his version of “Trains and Boats and Planes” had become a top 5 single. In 1967, Bacharach signed as an artist with A&M Records, recording a mix of new material and re-arrangements of his best-known songs. He recorded for A&M until 1978.

Although Bacharach’s compositions are typically more complex than the average pop song, he has expressed surprise in the fact that many jazz musicians have sought inspiration from his works, saying “I’ve sometimes felt that my songs are restrictive for a jazz artist. I was excited when [Stan] Getz did a whole album of my music” (What The World Needs Now: Stan Getz Plays The Burt Bacharach Songbook, Verve, 1968).

His songs were adapted by a few jazz artists of the time, such as Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, Grant Green, and Wes Montgomery. The Bacharach/David composition “My Little Red Book”, originally recorded by Manfred Mann for the film What’s New Pussycat?, has become a rock standard.

Bacharach composed and arranged the soundtrack of the 1967 film Casino Royale, which included “The Look of Love”, performed by Dusty Springfield, and the title song, an instrumental Top 40 single for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. The resulting soundtrack album is widely considered to be one of the finest engineered vinyl recordings of all time, and is much sought after by audiophile collectors.

Bacharach and David also collaborated with Broadway producer David Merrick on the 1968 musical Promises, Promises, which yielded two hits, including the title tune and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Bacharach and David wrote the song when the producer realized the play urgently needed another before its opening the next evening. Bacharach, who had just been released from the hospital after contracting pneumonia, was still sick, but worked with David’s lyrics to write the song which was performed for the show’s opening. It was later recorded by Dionne Warwick and was on the charts for several weeks.

The year 1969 marked, perhaps, the most successful Bacharach-David collaboration, the Oscar-winning “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”, written for and prominently featured in the acclaimed film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two were awarded a Grammy for Best Cast album of the year for “Promises, Promises” and the score was also nominated for a Tony award.

Other Oscar nominations for Best Song in the latter half of the 1960s were for “The Look Of Love”, “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Alfie”.

1970s and 1980s

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bacharach continued to write and produce for artists, compose for stage, TV, and film, and release his own albums. He enjoyed a great deal of visibility in the public spotlight, appearing frequently on TV and performing live in concert. He starred in two televised musical extravaganzas: “An Evening with Burt Bacharach” and “Another Evening with Burt Bacharach,” both broadcast nationally on NBC.Newsweek magazine gave him a lengthy cover story entitled “The Music Man 1970.”

In 1971, Barbra Streisand appeared on “The Burt Bacharach Special,” (aka “Singer Presents Burt Bacharach”) where they discussed their careers and favorite songs and performed songs together. The other guests on the television special were dancer Rudolph Nureyev and singer Tom Jones.

In 1973, Bacharach and David wrote the score for Lost Horizon, a musical version of the 1937 film. The remake was a critical and commercial disaster and a flurry of lawsuits resulted between the composer and the lyricist, as well as from Warwick. She reportedly felt abandoned when Bacharach and David refused to work together further.

Bacharach tried several solo projects, including the 1977 album Futures, but the projects failed to yield hits. He and David reunited briefly in 1975 to write and produce other records.

By the early 1980s, Bacharach’s marriage to Angie Dickinson had ended, but a new partnership with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager proved rewarding, both commercially and personally. The two married and collaborated on several major hits during the decade, including “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)” (Christopher Cross), co-written with Cross and Peter Allen; “Heartlight” (Neil Diamond); “Making Love” (Roberta Flack); “On My Own” (Patti LaBelle with Michael McDonald.)

Another of their hits, “That’s What Friends Are For” in 1985, reunited Bacharach and Warwick. When asked about their coming together again, she explained:

We realized we were more than just friends. We were family. Time has a way of giving people the opportunity to grow and understand … Working with Burt is not a bit different from how it used to be. He expects me to deliver and I can. He knows what I’m going to do before I do it, and the same with me. That’s how intertwined we’ve been.

Other artists continued to revive Bacharach’s earlier hits in the 1980s and 1990s. Examples included Luther Vandross’ recording of “A House is Not a Home”; Naked Eyes’ 1983 pop hit version of “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me”, and Ronnie Milsap’s 1982 country version of “Any Day Now”. Bacharach continued a concert career, appearing at auditoriums throughout the world, often with large orchestras. He occasionally joined Warwick for sold-out concerts in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York, where they performed at the Rainbow Room in 1996.

1990s and beyond

In 1998, Bacharach co-wrote and recorded a Grammy-winning album with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, on which the compositions began to take on the sound of his earlier work. The duo later reunited for Costello’s 2018 album, Look Now, working on several tracks together.

In 2003, he teamed with singer Ronald Isley to release the album Here I Am, which revisited a number of his 1960s compositions in Isley’s signature R&B style. Bacharach’s 2005 solo album At This Time was a departure from past works in that Bacharach penned his own lyrics, some of which dealt with political themes. Guest stars on the album included Elvis Costello, Rufus Wainwright, and hip-hop producer Dr. Dre.

In 2008, Bacharach opened the BBC Electric Proms at The Roundhouse in London, performing with the BBC Concert Orchestra accompanied by guest vocalists Adele, Beth Rowley and Jamie Cullum. The concert was a retrospective look back at his six-decade career. In early 2009, Bacharach worked with Italian soul singer Karima Ammar and produced her debut single “Come In Ogni Ora”, which became a #4 hit.

In June 2015, Bacharach performed in the UK at the Glastonbury Festival, and a few weeks later appeared on stage at the Menier Chocolate Factory to launch ‘What’s It All About? Bacharach Reimagined’, a 90-minute live arrangement of his hits.

In 2016, Bacharach, at 88 years old, composed and arranged his first original score in 16 years for the film A Boy Called Po (along with composer Joseph Bauer ). The score was released on September 1, 2017. The entire 30-minute score was recorded in just two days at Capitol Studios. The theme song Dancing With Your Shadow, was composed by Bacharach, with lyrics by Billy Mann, and performed by Sheryl Crow. After seeing the film, a true story about a child with Autism, Bacharach decided he wanted to write a score for it, as well as a theme song, in tribute to his daughter Nikki — who had gone undiagnosed with Asperger syndrome, and who committed suicide at the age of 40. Bacharach asked Director John Asher to see the film and offered to score it. “It touched me very much,” the composer says. “I had gone through this with Nikki. Sometimes you do things that make you feel. It’s not about money or rewards.”

Though not known for political songs, Live To See Another Day was released in 2018. “Dedicated to survivors of school gun violence” proceeds for the release went to charity Sandy Hook Promise, a non-profit organization founded and led by several family members whose loved ones were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. A co-write with Rudy Pérez it also featured the Miami Symphony Orchestra.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Burt Bacharach among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

In July 2020, Bacharach collaborated with songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Tashian on the EP “Blue Umbrella”, Bacharach’s first new material in 15 years.

Film and television

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bacharach was featured in a dozen television musical and variety specials videotaped in the UK for ITC; several were nominated for Emmy Awards for direction (by Dwight Hemion). The guests included artists such as Joel Grey, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, and Barbra Streisand. Bacharach and David did the score for an original musical for ABC-TV titled On the Flip Side, broadcast on ABC Stage 67, starring Ricky Nelson as a faded pop star trying for a comeback. While the ratings were dismal, the soundtrack showcased Bacharach’s abilities to try different kinds of musical styles, ranging from (almost) 1960s rock, to pop, ballads, and Latin-tinged dance numbers.

In 1969, Harry Betts arranged Bacharach’s instrumental composition “Nikki” (named for Bacharach’s daughter) into a new theme for the ABC Movie of the Week, a television series that ran on the U.S. network until 1976.

During the 1970s, Bacharach and then-wife Angie Dickinson appeared in several television commercials for Martini & Rossi beverages, and even penned a short jingle (“Say Yes”) for the spots. Bacharach also occasionally appeared on television/variety shows, such as The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and many others.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Bacharach had cameo roles in Hollywood movies, including all three Austin Powers movies, inspired by his score for the 1967 James Bond parody film Casino Royale.

Bacharach appeared as a celebrity performer and guest vocal coach for contestants on the television show, “American Idol” during the 2006 season, during which an entire episode was dedicated to his music. In 2008, Bacharach featured in the BBC Electric Proms at The Roundhouse with the BBC Concert Orchestra. He performed similar shows in the same year at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and with the Sydney Symphony.

Musical style

Bacharach’s music is characterized by unusual chord progressions, influenced by jazz harmony, with striking syncopated rhythmic patterns, irregular phrasing, frequent modulation, and odd, changing meters. He arranged, conducted, and produced much of his recorded output. Though his style is sometimes called “easy listening”, he has expressed apprehension regarding that label. According to NJ.com contributor Mark Voger, “It may be easy on the ears, but it’s anything but easy. The precise arrangements, the on-a-dime shifts in meter, and the mouthfuls of lyrics required to service all those notes have, over the years, proven challenging to singers and musicians.” Bacharach’s selection of instruments included flugelhorns, bossa nova sidesticks, breezy flutes, molto fortissimo strings and cooing female voices.  According to editors of The Mojo Collection, it led to what became known as the “Bacharach Sound.” He explains:

I didn’t want to make the songs the same way as they’d been done, so I’d split vocals and instrumentals and try to make it interesting  … For me, it’s about the peaks and valleys of where a record can take you. You can tell a story and be able to be explosive one minute, then get quiet as kind of a satisfying resolution.

While he did not mind singing during live performances, he sought mostly to avoid it on records. When he did sing, he explains, “I [tried] to sing the songs not as a singer, but just interpreting it as a composer and interpreting a great lyric that Hal [David] wrote.”[ When performing in front of live audiences, he would often conduct while playing piano., as he did during a televised performance on The Hollywood Palace, where he played piano and conducted at the same time.

Personal life

Bacharach has been married four times. His first marriage was to Paula Stewart and lasted five years (1953–1958). His second marriage was to actress Angie Dickinson, lasting for 15 years (1965–1980). Bacharach and Dickinson had a daughter named Nikki Bacharach, who struggled with Asperger’s Syndrome and took her own life on January 4, 2007 at the age of 40.

Bacharach’s third marriage was to lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, which lasted nine years (1982–1991). Bacharach and Bayer Sager collaborated on a number of musical pieces and adopted a son named Cristopher. Bacharach married his fourth wife, Jane Hansen, in 1993; they have two children, a son named Oliver, and a daughter named Raleigh. His autobiography, Anyone Who Had a Heart, was published in 2013.

Honors and awards

• 1969, Grammy Awards, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) and Promises, Promises.
• 1969, Academy Award, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head.”
• 1981, Academy Award and Golden Globe, “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)”
• 1997, Trustees Award from NARAS on the Grammy Awards broadcast.
• 1997, subject of a PBS “Great Performances” biography, “Burt Bacharach: This is Now,”.
• 1998, Grammy Award for the single “I Still Have That Other Girl,” in collaboration with Elvis Costello.
• 2000, People magazine named him one of the “Sexiest Men Alive”, and one of the “50 Most Beautiful People” in 1999.
• 2001, Polar Music Prize, presented in Stockholm by His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.
• 2002, National Academy Of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) New York Heroes Award.
• 2005, GQ Magazine Inspiration Award.
• 2006, George and Ira Gershwin Award for Musical Achievement from UCLA.
• 2006, Thornton Legacy Award, USC; They also created the Burt Bacharach Music Scholarship at the Thornton School to support outstanding young musicians.
• 2008, Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, when he was proclaimed music’s “Greatest Living Composer.”
• 2009, Bacharach received an honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. The award was presented to him during the Great American Songbook concert, which paid tribute to his music.
• 2011, Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, with Hal David, awarded by the Library of Congress.

Television and film appearances

• Analyze This
• An Evening with Marlene Dietrich
• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
• Austin Powers in Goldmember
• Marlene Dietrich: Her Own Song
• Nip/Tuck
• The Nanny

Carole Bayer Sager (born Carol Bayer on March 8, 1947) is an American lyricist, singer, and songwriter.

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Early life and career

Bayer Sager was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Anita Nathan Bayer and Eli Bayer. Her family was Jewish. She graduated from New York University, where she majored in English, dramatic arts, and speech. She had already written her first pop hit, “A Groovy Kind of Love”, with Toni Wine, while still a student at New York City’s High School of Music and Art. It was recorded by the British invasion band The Mindbenders, whose version was a worldwide hit, reaching number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. This song was later recorded by Sonny & Cher, Petula Clark, and Phil Collins, the latter whose rendition for the film Buster reached number one in 1988.

Solo albums

Bayer Sager’s first recording as a singer was the 1977 album Carole Bayer Sager, produced by Brooks Arthur. It included the hit single “You’re Moving Out Today”, a song which she co-wrote with Bette Midler and Bruce Roberts. The single became a 1977 Australian number one single and also reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart in June 1977.Paul Buckmaster provided horn and string arrangements for the album. The album also included Bayer Sager’s versions of two songs previously recorded by Melissa Manchester – “Home to Myself” and the oft-covered “Come in from the Rain”. It went platinum in Japan and Australia.

It was followed by …Too in 1978, also produced by Brooks Arthur, which included all-star cameos by the likes of Michael McDonald, Alice Cooper and Manchester. It also included the first recording of “It’s the Falling in Love” which subsequently would be covered by Michael Jackson on his 1979 multi-platinum album Off the Wall.

Her final album, 1981’s Sometimes Late at Night, was co-produced by future-husband Burt Bacharach with Brooks Arthur, and included the single “Stronger Than Before”, later recorded by Chaka Khan and Dionne Warwick. The track “Just Friends” featured a vocal cameo from Michael Jackson, who also co-produced the track with Bacharach, while Neil Diamond also co-produced and played guitar on the track “On The Way To The Sky” which he also recorded as the title track of his concurrent album On the Way to the Sky.

Songwriting

Bayer Sager had many hits during the 1970s. She co-wrote many songs with Melissa Manchester that appeared on Manchester’s solo albums of the period including “Come In From The Rain” and “Midnight Blue” which would go on to be covered by many other artists. She also worked with Australian songwriter Peter Allen crafting hits like “I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love” and “Don’t Cry Out Loud”. She also scored major hits collaborating with Albert Hammond (“When I Need You”) and Bruce Roberts (“You’re The Only One”).

With Marvin Hamlisch and Neil Simon, she wrote the lyrics for the 1978 stage musical They’re Playing Our Song, which was loosely based on her relationship with Hamlisch. The musical ran for over three years on Broadway. Many of Bayer Sager’s 1980s songs were co-written with her former husband, the composer Burt Bacharach.[6] She executive-produced the eponymous solo album for June Pointer, of The Pointer Sisters, in 1989.

Bayer Sager has won an Academy Award (out of six nominations), a Grammy Award (out of nine nominations), and two Golden Globe Awards (out of seven nominations). She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987. Bayer Sager won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1982 for “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do)”, which was the theme song of the movie Arthur.

Bayer Sager received the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1987 for the song “That’s What Friends Are For”, which she co-wrote with Bacharach. This song was originally written for the movie Night Shift (1982), and it was recorded for this movie by Rod Stewart. The song was popularized in a 1986 cover version by Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Elton John.

Her song with David Foster, “The Prayer”, originally recorded by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli, won the Golden Globe, and is one of few songs to be sung at weddings and funerals alike.

She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Bayer Sager received the New York University Steinhardt Distinguished Alumni award in 2006. She received the 2019 “Johnny Mercer Award” from the Songwriters Hall of Fame during their 50th anniversary induction ceremony. She was the sixth female songwriter to ever be awarded this honor.[9]

She occasionally collaborated with Neil Sedaka, with 11 songs co-written between the two.

Along with Bruce Roberts and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Bayer Sager helped write the song, “Stronger Together”, sung by Jessica Sanchez. The song was played after Hillary Clinton’s speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. The song’s title is named after the slogan that the Clinton campaign used as a show of uniting behind the Democratic nominee. The song was well received, and was praised by celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian.

In 2018, she co-wrote the song “Living in the Moment” for the film Book Club, recorded by Katherine McPhee, as well as two songs on Barbra Streisand’s album Walls: “Better Angels” and “What’s on My Mind”. She contributed lyrics to “GhostTown” on Kanye West’s album Ye.

On April, 2020 Lady Gaga closed out her “One World: Together At Home concert with a new rendition of “The Prayer” performed by Gaga, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, John Legend and classical piano great Lang Lang. The performance helped raise 127 million dollars for the World Health Organization battling COVID-19 cases in America.

In September 2020, Bayer Sager along with Bette Midler, and Bruce Roberts released an updated version of their hit song ‘You’re Moving Out Today’ in protest of the presidency of Donald Trump.

Personal life

She married record-producer Andrew Sager in 1970, and they divorced in 1978. Bayer Sager was involved in a romantic relationship with composer Marvin Hamlisch in the late 1970s. On April 3, 1982, she married composer and pianist Burt Bacharach after over a year’s co-habitation: in December 1985 the couple adopted an infant son, whom they named Cristopher Elton Bacharach.  Bacharach and Sager divorced in 1991.

Since June 1996, Bayer Sager has been married to Robert Daly, former chairman of Warner Brothers and former chairman / CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, and currently chairman of the American Film Institute (AFI), Bayer Sager and her husband live in Los Angeles.

In October 2016, Bayer Sager published her memoir They’re Playing Our Song: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster). She also narrated the audiobook version.

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar (born October 11, 1992), known professionally as Cardi B, is an American rapper, songwriter, and actress. Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, New York City, she became an Internet celebrity after several of her posts and videos became popular on Vine and Instagram. From 2015 to 2017, she appeared as a regular cast member on the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York, which depicted her pursuit of her music aspirations. She released two mixtapes—Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, before signing with label Atlantic Records in early 2017.

Her debut studio album, Invasion of Privacy (2018), debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, broke several streaming records, was certified triple platinum by the RIAA and named by Billboard the top female rap album of the 2010s. Critically acclaimed, it won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, making Cardi B the only woman to win the award as a solo artist, as well as the first female rap artist in 15 years to be nominated for Album of the Year. It spawned two number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100; “Bodak Yellow”, which made her the second female rapper to top the chart with a solo output—following Lauryn Hill in 1998—and “I Like It”, which made her the first female rapper to attain multiple number-one songs on the chart. Her Maroon 5 collaboration “Girls Like You” made her the only female rapper to top the Hot 100 three times. “WAP”, the lead single of her second album, expanded her record as the female rapper with the most Hot 100 number-one singles as her fourth leader, and made her the only female rap artist to achieve chart-topping singles in two decades (2010s and 2020s).

Recognized by Forbes as one of the most influential female rappers of all time, Cardi B is known for her aggressive flow and candid lyrics, which have received widespread media coverage. She is the highest-certified female rapper of all time on the RIAA’s Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, also appearing among the ten highest-certified female artists and having the top certified song by a female rap artist. She is the only female rapper with multiple billion-streamers on Spotify. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, eight Billboard Music Awards, five Guinness World Records, five American Music Awards, eleven BET Hip Hop Awards and two ASCAP Songwriter of the Year awards. In 2018 Time magazine included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2020, Billboard honored her as Woman of the Year.

Early life

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar was born on October 11, 1992, in Washington Heights, Manhattan. The daughter of a Dominican father and Trinidadian mother, she was raised in the Highbridge neighborhood of the South Bronx, and spent much time at her paternal grandmother’s home in Washington Heights, which she credits with giving her “such a thick accent.” Almánzar developed the stage name “Cardi B” as a derivation of Bacardi, a rum brand that was formerly her nickname. She has said she was a gang member with the Bloods in her youth, since the age of 16 However, she has stated ever since that she would not encourage joining a gang.[15] She went on to attend Renaissance High School for Musical Theater & Technology, a vocational high school on the Herbert H. Lehman High School campus.

During her teens, Cardi B was employed at a deli in Tribeca. She was fired, and her manager suggested she apply to be a stripper at the strip club across the street. Cardi B has said that becoming a stripper was positive for her life in many ways: “It really saved me from a lot of things. When I started stripping I went back to school.” She has stated that she became a stripper in order to escape poverty and domestic violence, having been in an abusive relationship at the time after being kicked out of her mother’s house, and that stripping was her only way to earn enough money to escape the situation and get an education. She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College before eventually dropping out. While stripping, Cardi B lied to her mother by telling her she was making money babysitting.

In 2013, she began to gain publicity due to several of her videos spreading on social media, on Vine and her Instagram page.

Career

2015–2016: Career beginnings

In 2015, Cardi B joined the cast of the VH1 reality television series Love & Hip Hop: New York, debuting in season six. Jezebel considered her the breakout star of the show’s sixth season. The sixth and seventh seasons chronicle her rise to stardom and her turbulent relationship with her incarcerated fiancé. On December 30, 2016, after two seasons, she announced that she would be leaving the show to further pursue a career in music.

In November 2015, Cardi B made her musical debut on Jamaican reggae fusion singer Shaggy’s remix to his single “Boom Boom”, alongside fellow Jamaican dancehall singer Popcaan. She made her music video debut on December 15, 2015, with the song “Cheap Ass Weave”, her rendition of British rapper Lady Leshurr’s “Queen’s Speech 4”. On March 7, 2016, Cardi B released her first full-length project, a mixtape titled Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 1. In November 2016, she was featured on the digital cover of Vibe magazine’s “Viva” issue. On September 12, 2016, KSR Group released the compilation Underestimated: The Album, which is a collaboration between KSR Group artists Cardi B, HoodCelebrityy, SwiftOnDemand, Cashflow Harlem, and Josh X. It was previously released only to attendees of their U.S. tour. KSR Group’s flagship artist Cardi B said “I wanted to make a song that would make girls dance, twerk and at the same time encourage them to go get that Shmoney,” in regard to the compilation’s single “What a Girl Likes”.

She appeared on the December 9, 2015 episode of Uncommon Sense with Charlamagne. On April 6, 2016, she was on the twelfth episode of Khloé Kardashian’s Kocktails with Khloé: In it, she revealed how she told her mother that she was a stripper. In November 2016, it was announced that she would be joining the cast of the BET series Being Mary Jane. TVLine describes her character, Mercedes, as a “round-the-way beauty with a big weave, big boobs and a big booty to match her oversize, ratchet personality.”

In 2016, Cardi B was featured in her first endorsement deal with Romantic Depot, a large New York chain of lingerie stores that sell sexual health and wellness products. The ad campaign was featured on radio and cable TV. This was noted by the NY Post in a feature article about “Cardi B’s meteoric rise from stripper to superstar” in April 2018.

2017–2018: Breakthrough with Invasion of Privacy

On January 20, 2017, Cardi B released her second mixtape, Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 2. In February 2017, Cardi B partnered with MAC Cosmetics and Rio Uribe’s Gypsy Sport for an event for New York Fashion Week. In late February, it was reported that Cardi B signed her first major record label recording contract with Atlantic Records. On February 25, 2017, Cardi B was the opening act for East Coast hip hop group The Lox’s Filthy America… It’s Beautiful Tour, alongside fellow New York City-based rappers Lil’ Kim and Remy Ma. In April 2017, she was featured in i-D’s “A-Z of Music” video sponsored by Marc Jacobs. Cardi also guest-starred on the celebrity panel show Hip Hop Squares, appearing on the March 13 and April 3, 2017 episodes. In May 2017, the nominees for the 2017 BET Awards were announced, revealing that Cardi B had been nominated for Best New Artist and Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, tying with DJ Khaled and Kendrick Lamar for the most nominations with nine. Although she failed to win any awards, losing to Chance the Rapper and Remy Ma, respectively, Cardi B performed at the BET Awards Afterparty show. On June 11, 2017, during Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam music festival, Remy Ma brought out Cardi B, along with The Lady of Rage, MC Lyte, Young M.A, Monie Love, Lil’ Kim and Queen Latifah, to celebrate female rappers and perform Latifah’s 1993 hit single “U.N.I.T.Y.” about female empowerment. In June 2017, it was revealed that Cardi B would be on the cover of The Fader’s Summer Music issue for July/August 2017. She performed at MoMA PS1 on August 19 to a crowd of 4,000.

On June 16, 2017, Atlantic Records released Cardi B’s commercial debut single, “Bodak Yellow”, via digital distribution. She performed the single on The Wendy Williams Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! The song climbed the charts for several months, and, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated September 25, 2017, “Bodak Yellow” reached the number one spot, making Cardi B the first female rapper to do so with a solo single since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” debuted atop the chart in 1998.  The song stayed atop the charts for three consecutive weeks, tying with American pop singer Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” as the longest running female at the number one spot in 2017. Cardi B became the first person of Dominican descent to reach number one in the history of the Hot 100 since it was launched in 1958. An editor of The New York Times called it “the rap anthem of the summer”. Selected by The Washington Post and Pitchfork music critics as the best song of 2017,  “Bodak Yellow” was eventually certified nonuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The song received nominations for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 60th Grammy Awards.  It won Single of the Year at the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards.

With her collaborations “No Limit” and “MotorSport”, she became the first female rapper to land her first three entries in the top 10 of the Hot 100,  and the first female artist to achieve the same on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In October 2017, Cardi B headlined Power 105.1’s annual Powerhouse music celebration, alongside The Weeknd, Migos, and Lil Uzi Vert, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. In December, she released two songs: a collaboration with Puerto Rican singer Ozuna titled “La Modelo”, and “Bartier Cardi”, the second single from her debut album.

On January 3, 2018, Cardi B was featured on Bruno Mars’ remix version of “Finesse”, and also appeared in the 90s inspired video. It reached the top three on the Hot 100, Canada and New Zealand. On January 18, 2018, Cardi B became the first woman to have five top 10 singles simultaneously on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. She released another single, “Be Careful”, on March 30, 2018, a week before her album’s release.

Her debut studio album, Invasion of Privacy, was released on April 6, 2018, to universal acclaim from music critics. Editors from Variety and The New York Times called it “one of the most powerful debuts of this millennium” and “a hip-hop album that doesn’t sound like any of its temporal peers,” respectively. The album entered at number one in the United States, while she became the first female artist to chart 13 entries simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100, on the chart issue dated April 21. It also became the most streamed album by a female artist in a single week in Apple Music, and the largest on-demand audio streaming week ever for an album by a woman. Cardi held the latter record until 2019. The album’s title reflects Cardi B’s feeling that as she gained popularity her privacy was being invaded in a variety of ways. Following the album’s release, during a performance on Saturday Night Live, Cardi B officially announced her pregnancy, after much media speculation. She also co-hosted an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Several months later, in July 2018, the album’s fourth single, “I Like It”, which features vocals from Bad Bunny and J Balvin, reached number one on the Hot 100; this marked her second number one on the chart and made her the first female rapper to achieve multiple chart-toppers. It received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone naming it “the best summer song of all time” in 2020. Her collaboration with Maroon 5, “Girls Like You”, also reached number one the Hot 100 chart, extending her record among female rappers and also making her the sixth female artist to achieve three number-one singles on the chart during the 2010s. The song’s music video has received more than 2.7 billion views on YouTube and was the fifth-best selling song of the year globally. With “Girls Like You” following “I Like It” at the top of the Billboard Radio Songs chart, Cardi B became the first female rapper to ever replace herself at number one on that chart. The single spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100, making Cardi the female rapper with the most cumulative weeks atop the chart, with eleven weeks. It spent 33 weeks in the top 10, tying both Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” for the longest top 10 run in the chart’s archives at the time. In October 2018, Invasion of Privacy was certified double platinum by the RIAA, and the following year it was updated to triple platinum. With the thirteen tracks, she became the first female artist to have all songs from an album certified gold or higher in the US.

Cardi B received the most nominations for the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards with 12 mentions—including for Video of the Year, winning three awards. She also tied with Drake for the most nominations at the 2018 American Music Awards. She won three AMAs and performed at the ceremony. Her single “Money” earned her a fourth Video Music Award. Her collaboration with DJ Snake “Taki Taki” topped the charts in a number of Hispanic countries, made Cardi B the first female rapper to top the Spotify Global 50 chart, and has garnered more than 1.8 billion views. Both singles were certified multiple-platinum by the RIAA. People en Español named her Star of the Year,  and Entertainment Weekly deemed her “a pop culture phenomenon”, as she was named one of “2018 Entertainers of the Year.”

On November 30, 2018, Cardi B was honored at Ebony’s annual Power 100 Gala. Cardi ranked fifth on the 2018 Billboard Year-End Top Artists chart, while Invasion of Privacy ranked sixth. She achieved the most-streamed album of the year by a female artist globally in Apple Music, and ranked as the most streamed female artist of the year in the United States in Spotify. Editorial staff from Apple Music and Billboard named “I Like It” the best song of 2018,  while Time magazine and Rolling Stone named Invasion of Privacy the best album of the year. Also in 2018, Time included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[ In its decade-end review article, NME stated that the era secured “her crown as the new Queen of Rap.”

2019–present: Hustlers, Rhythm + Flow and upcoming second studio album

Cardi B received five nominations at the 61st Grammy Awards, including for Album of the Year, Best Rap Album and Record of the Year (“I Like It”). She became the third female rapper to be nominated for Album of the Year, following Lauryn Hill (1999) and Missy Elliott (2004). On February 10, 2019, she then performed at the award ceremony, where she wore three vintage Thierry Mugler couture looks during the telecast and became the first female rapper to win Best Rap Album as a solo artist. Cardi B also led the 2019 Billboard Music Awards nominations, with 21, the most nominations in a single year ever by a woman and the third most nominations in a year ever (behind Drake and The Chainsmokers, who both had 22 in a year). She ended up winning six awards, including for Top Hot 100 Song, bringing her career total wins to seven—the most of any female rapper in history. An article by Omaha World-Herald called her “the biggest rapper in the world.”

On February 15, 2019, Cardi B released “Please Me”, a collaboration with Bruno Mars, which became her seventh top-ten song on the Hot 100, reaching number three. The song marked Cardi and Bruno’s second collaboration, following “Finesse” in 2018. The official music video was released two weeks later. On March 1, Cardi set a new attendance record at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, with 75,580 fans in the audience. With “Backin’ It Up”, “Twerk” and “Money”, Cardi became the first female artist to occupy the top three on the Billboard Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop airplay chart. Her following single titled “Press” was released on May 31, 2019. The parental-advisory labeled music video marked her directorial debut—being credited as co-director, and was released on June 26, 2019. It had its debut performance at the 2019 BET Awards, where she won Album of the Year. During the summer of 2019 she embarked on an arena tour.

Cardi B made her film debut in Hustlers directed by Lorene Scafaria, opposite Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, and Lili Reinhart. The film was released on September 13, 2019 to critical acclaim. Cardi B, along with Chance the Rapper and T.I., were confirmed as judges for the Netflix series Rhythm + Flow, a ten-part hip-hop talent search that premiered on October 9, 2019, which she also executive produced. She will next appear in F9, which is set to be released on May 28, 2021, by Universal Pictures. In September 2019, Cardi B became the highest-certified female rapper of all time on the RIAA’s Top Artists (Digital Singles) ranking, with 31.5 million certified units, also being the ninth highest-certified female artist overall. Forbes has recognized her as one of the most influential female rappers of all time. In December 2019, Cardi B embarked on her first tour of Africa, performing in Nigeria and Ghana. Her collaboration “Clout” was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance. She was the most streamed female rapper of 2019 in the US, according to Spotify. Consequence of Sound deemed her “one of the most formidable hip-hop artists of the decade.”  In March 2020, Cardi B created a reaction video about the coronavirus pandemic. DJ iMarkkeyz, a Brooklyn DJ known for turning memes and online moments into full-length songs, created a track, based on her reaction titled “Coronavirus”, which became an internet meme and was released to music platforms. Netflix announced the return of Rhythm + Flow for 2021.

Cardi B released the single “WAP” featuring American rapper Megan Thee Stallion on August 7, 2020 as the lead single off her forthcoming second studio album. The song received critical acclaim and was praised for its sex positive messages. The Colin Tilley-directed music video accompanied the song itself, and broke the record for the biggest 24-hour debut for an all-female collaboration on YouTube. She became the only female rap artist to top the Global Spotify chart multiple times.[151] “WAP” debuted at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, garnering Cardi B her fourth chart-topper in the US, extending her record as the female rapper with the most number-one singles, and also making her the first female rapper to achieve Hot 100 number one singles in two different decades (2010s and 2020s). With 93 million streaming units, it became the largest first-week streams for a song, breaking the all-time record held by Ariana Grande’s “7 Rings”. It has spent four weeks atop the Hot 100. The single has also spent multiple weeks at number one in seven other countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom. Neil Shah of The Wall Street Journal deemed it “a big moment for female rappers” and “a historic sign that women artists are making their mark on hip-hop like never before”. “WAP” became the first number one single on the inaugural Billboard Global 200 chart. Cardi B won the Billboard Music Award for Top Rap Female Artist for the third time at the 2020 ceremony.  In December 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be named Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards. With her win for “WAP” at the American Music Awards, she became the first artist to win the American Music Award for Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Song multiple times, following her win for “Bodak Yellow” in 2018.

Artistry

Influences

In Billboard’s “You Should Know” series, Cardi B said the first albums she ever purchased were by American entertainers Missy Elliott and Tweet, respectively. She has credited Puerto Rican rapper Ivy Queen and Jamaican dancehall artist Spice as influences, as well as Lady Gaga, Lil’ Kim, Madonna,  and Selena.  When asked about the initial direction for her music, Cardi B said in an interview,

“When I first started rapping […] I liked certain songs from Khia and Trina, and they [were] fighting songs. I haven’t heard fighting songs for a very long time,” crediting the two female rappers for her aggressive rap style. She continued, saying “a lot of girls they cannot afford red bottoms, a lot of girls they cannot afford foreign cars […] but I know that every girl has beef with a girl […] I know that every bitch don’t like some bitch, and it’s like ‘that’s what I wanna rap about.’”

She also credits growing up in the South Bronx and real life experiences as influences for her songwriting; “I wouldn’t be able to rap about the things that I rap about now [if I hadn’t grown up there].

Musical style

Her first studio album, Invasion of Privacy, is primarily a hip hop record, which comprises elements of trap, Latin music, and R&B. Consequence of Sound described her flow as “acrobatic and nimble.” AllMusic editor David Jeffries called Cardi B “a raw and aggressive rapper”. Stereogum called her voice “a full-bodied New Yawk nasal bleat, the sort of thing that you’ve heard if someone has ever told you that you stupid for taking too long at swiping your MetroCard.” They continued to call her voice “an unabashedly loud and sexual f*ck-you New York honk—that translates perfectly to rap.” In a 2017 Complex article about her, the editor wrote “unapologetic does not begin to describe the totally unfiltered and sheer Cardi B-ness of Cardi B’s personality. She’s a hood chick who’s not afraid to be hood no matter the setting. Cardi B is Cardi B 24/7, 365, this is why she resonates with people, and that same energy comes out in her music.” Her flow has been described as aggressive. Cardi B has defended her musical content primarily comprising sexually-charged lyrics—like most contemporary female rappers; she stated that the content “seems like that’s what people want to hear”, since she faced negative reactions after releasing her more emotional song, “Be Careful.”

Other ventures

In February 2017, she partnered with M.A.C and Rio Uribe’s Gypsy Sport for an event for New York Fashion Week. During an April 2017 interview with HotNewHipHop, Cardi B spoke on being rejected by fashion designers. Her April appearance in i-D’s “A-Z of Music” video was sponsored by designer Marc Jacobs, and she made the cover of The Fader’s July/August 2017 Summer Music issue. Tom Ford’s Cardi B-inspired lipstick, and named after her, was released in September 2018. It sold out within 24 hours. In November, she partnered with Reebok, promoting the brand’s Aztrek sneaker. The same month she released a clothing line collection with Fashion Nova.

Cardi B teamed up with Pepsi for two television commercials, which aired during the Super Bowl LIII and the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. In early 2019, Cardi also joined other hip hop artists (including her husband Offset, as part of Migos) in releasing her flavors of snack food Rap Snacks: two flavors of chips, and two of popcorn. The bags’ artwork were inspired by the cover of Invasion of Privacy. In partnership with Reebok, she released a footwear and apparel collection, inspired by her personal style and paying homage to “classic 80s styling” and motifs.

Public image

Cardi B identifies as a feminist. The New York Times wrote “on Love & Hip Hop: New York some viewers saw her as a hero of female empowerment, as she made pronouncements such as ‘Ever since I started using guys, I feel so much better about myself. I feel so damn powerful.’”

Political statements

The star has been called “unabashedly, directly political” and often uses social media to advocate for causes she believes in, such as gun control. During the 2016 presidential primaries, she warned her fans of President Trump’s immigration policies and encouraged them to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. At the Grammy Awards in 2018, she appeared in a video along with Hillary Clinton to narrate a portion of Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s insider’s account of Trump’s administration, and stated “Why am I even reading this shit? I can’t believe this. I can’t believe—this is how he really lives his life?” Cardi B endorsed Sanders once again in his second bid for the presidency in the 2020 United States presidential election, while also praising U.S. Representative Tim Ryan. She also stated that one of the reasons for her endorsement is Sanders’ long-time involvement in supporting underprivileged minorities and “people getting Medicare because he knows they can’t afford it,” while Politico website argued that she “might be one of Bernie’s most powerful 2020 allies.” She has also used her social pages to raise awareness for victims of police brutality, and has encouraged people to vote for mayors, judges and district attorneys in local elections. In a conversation with Democratic candidate Joe Biden for Elle, they discussed Medicare, free college tuition, and racial equality.[ According to a study published by The Hollywood Reporter, Cardi B ranked as the fifth most influential celebrity, and fourth among Generation Z, for the 2020 presidential election.

She has praised President Franklin D. Roosevelt for advocating for the Social Security program and the New Deal project in general and has noted her admiration for his wife Eleanor Roosevelt’s humanitarianism and advocacy for African-Americans. She said of President Roosevelt, “he helped us get over the Depression, all while he was in a wheelchair. Like, this man was suffering from polio at the time of his presidency, and yet all he was worried about was trying to make America great—make America great again for real. He’s the real ‘Make America Great Again,’ because if it wasn’t for him, old people wouldn’t even get Social Security.” Sanders himself has praised her for her “leading role” in calling attention to Social Security. During the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown she released a video on Instagram, where she said “our country is a hellhole right now”.

On October 8, 2020, Cardi B posted a message on her Instagram condemning Azerbaijan for attacking Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), a disputed territory, and asked her followers to donate to Armenia Fund, a humanitarian organization that supports Armenia’s development and the needy. The next day she removed the message and apologized to her followers for posting such a message and instead she said she is just in favor of ending the war.

Controversies

Cardi B caused controversy after throwing one of her high heel shoes at, and attempting to physically fight, fellow rapper Nicki Minaj at an after-party hosted by Harper’s Bazaar during New York Fashion Week 2018. She later stated that Minaj had previously “liked” comments made by other users on social media who spoke negatively about Cardi B’s abilities to take care of her newly born daughter. Minaj denied the accusations. Nevertheless, she covered the spring fashion issue of Harper’s Bazaar in early 2019, featuring her in a Cinderella-themed photo shoot wearing a red gown and leaving a shoe behind, which some writers found reflective of the incident.

After the release of “Girls” in May 2018, a collaboration where she had a featured verse, Cardi B responded to the accusations of the song trivializing and sexualizing LGBT relationships. She stated on Twitter, “We never try to cause harm or had bad intentions with the song.” Cardi B then went on to say, “I personally myself had experiences with other women.”

In March 2019, a livestream from Instagram resurfaced from 2016 where she can be heard claiming that in the past she “had drugged and robbed men” who willingly came with her to hotel rooms for sex. She stated that the men she referred to were conscious, willing and aware; they were getting “twisted in the club” before approaching her, and denied putting anything on a man’s drink. She added that she took some money from them because they wasted her time by falling asleep, and then “kept coming back.” She concluded by saying that at the time she had very limited options to survive, and feels a responsibility not to glorify it.

Fashion

Cardi has a noted affinity for Christian Louboutin heels, a running theme in her song “Bodak Yellow”. She has also mentioned her affinity for cheap, fast-fashion brands stating “I don’t care if it cost $20 or $15. If it looks good on me, it looks good on me”. In November 2018 she released a collection with Fashion Nova.  Cardi wore vintage Thierry Mugler to the 2018 Grammy Awards. An article from Vogue noted she “is famous for her statement getups—whether she’s rocking archival Mugler on the red carpet, or dripping in Chanel while sitting courtside at a basketball game.” Her over-the-top manicures, designed by nail artist Jenny Bui and studded with Swarovski crystals, has become a part of her signature look.

In 2018, she became the first female rapper in the US to appear on the cover of Vogue. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz, the cover, one of four for the January 2019 issue that included Stella McCartney, features her in a red and white Michael Kors dress and matching red Jimmy Choo shoes, while holding her daughter, Kulture.

In 2019, the Council of Fashion Designers of America included her on their list of “28 Black Fashion Forces”.

Cardi B became the face of Balenciaga’s ad campaign for the winter 2020 season. The campaign includes billboards in several international locations, including the Louvre museum. Vogue’s Brooke Bobb commented, “This is Cardi’s first campaign for a luxury fashion house, though she’s definitely no stranger to the Parisian style scene”, citing her floral printed Richard Quinn ensemble “that literally covered her from head to toe” and her being “a front row fixture” at high fashion shows, adding, “She and her stylist Kollin Carter have been wildly successful in carving out a much-needed space for Cardi within the fashion industry, and they’ve cultivated a personal style that is all her own while being inspiring to all”.

In 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be awarded by the FN Achievement Awards when she won the Style Influencer of the Year award. In a press release for the awards show, she was called an “influence just about everything in pop culture—from music, fashion and style to social media, politics and even public service”.

Impact

Multiple publications, including Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, and Entertainment Weekly, have called her “Hip Hop’s Reigning Queen” since the release of Invasion of Privacy. Spin staff credited her for opening “the table to a new generation of pop artists remaking American music in their own image and accents. [Cardi B] recognized that POC artists no longer need to pander or soften themselves in order to become household names.” An article from Uproxx noted Cardi B for promoting up-and-coming female rappers; “[she is] choosing to use her position at the height of stardom to open doors for other women to flourish in hip-hop at a greater level than any since the Golden Era and “Ladies First”. This is something of a departure from tradition; for the decade previous to Cardi’s precipitous come-up, it seemed hip-hop had an unspoken, Highlander-esque rule in place regarding women.” The New Yorker also credited her for “changing a genre that has rarely allowed for more than one female superstar at a time.” Billboard editors stated that with “Bodak Yellow”‘s commercial success, “she left an indelible mark on the summer of 2017, not only because she rewrote history, but she gave hope to the have nots…”. “I Like It” became the first Latin trap song to reach number one on the Hot 100, which reflected “the times, the moment and the new openness of the world” towards Spanish-infused music in streaming services according to the magazine. In 2020, The Wall Street Journal’s Neil Shah stated that “today’s female-rap renaissance was sparked partly by the success of Cardi B”, while Genius staff credited her for “helping jumpstart a new wave of female hip-hop signings and promotion at labels”.

NPR defined “Cardi B effect” as “a branding power rooted in specific authenticity, created and permeated by rapper Cardi B” and noticed that with her breakthrough, “brands finally started to become hip to [her] effect, noticing the cultural markers outside of the rap world that were proving it wasn’t limited to clubs, concerts and radio.” Business magazine Inc. stated that her success “shows how social media changed everything we knew about traditional marketing and media”, which no longer relies on a “well-thought marketing scheme or millions of dollars in advertising.” Articles by Vogue and The Telegraph have referred to her as a “fashion icon for our times.” In 2019, a life-sized sculpture of her was on display at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of Spotify’s RapCaviar “Pantheon”. Bloomberg reported that her data bill helped to boost Ghana’s GDP growth in 2019, after it was part of a concert tour. She inspired the creation of the sitcom Partners in Rhyme, executively produced by MC Lyte about a young woman in high school who “aspires to be the next Cardi B.” P-Valley creator Katori Hall credited her influence for “helping prepare the public” for the storyline depicted in the TV series. Singer-songwriter Rosalía has cited her among her influences. Cardi B has been credited for supporting and uniting female rappers in the industry.

Achievements

Cardi B is the recipient of numerous accolades, including a Grammy Award, eight Billboard Music Awards, five Guinness World Records, five American Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, four BET Awards, and eleven BET Hip Hop Awards. Time included her on their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2018. She received the ASCAP award for Songwriter of the Year in 2019, becoming the first female rapper to win the award. She received the honor for the second time in 2020, making her the first female songwriter to win the award twice. In 2020, Cardi B became the first female rapper to be named Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards.

Cardi B is the female rapper with the most Billboard Hot 100 number one singles (4) and the one with the most total weeks on the top position (15). “Bodak Yellow”—certified nonuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)—became the highest-certified single by a female rapper. “I Like It” became the first song led by a female rapper to surpass a billion streams on Spotify, also making her the first woman in hip hop with multiple billion-streamers on the service, with a total of three so far. Invasion of Privacy was the top female rap album of the 2010s, according to the Billboard 200 decade-end chart. It also became the longest-charting album by a female rapper on the Billboard 200, and the most-streamed album by a female rapper on Spotify.  Invasion of Privacy—which made her the first female rapper to win the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album as a solo artist—became the first female rap album in fifteen years to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Rolling Stone and Billboard ranked her debut album number 13 and 34 on their critics’ lists of best albums of the 2010s respectively, both the highest rank for a female rapper for the decade.

Personal life

Cardi B is Catholic;  she has mentioned her “strong relationship” with God in interviews, often saying that she directly communicates with God.

Cardi B’s younger sister, Hennessy Carolina, also has a strong following on social media and has accompanied her to award shows, such as the 2017 Grammy Awards.

In an interview in 2018, Cardi talked about being Afro-Latina and Afro-Caribbean:

We are Caribbean people […] Some people want to decide if you’re black or not, depending on your skin complexion, because they don’t understand Caribbean people or our culture. I feel like people need to understand or get a passport and travel. I don’t got to tell you that I’m black. I expect you to know about it. When my father taught me about Caribbean countries, he told me that these Europeans took over our lands. That’s why we all speak different languages […] Just like everybody else, we came over here the same way. I hate when people try to take my roots from me. Because we know that there’s African roots inside of us…

She has been a resident of Edgewater, New Jersey, renting an apartment for $3,000 a month that she says would be twice as much in Manhattan for an equivalently sized unit.

Cardi has opened up about the #MeToo movement and being sexually a*saulted.

Relationships

As of early 2017, Cardi B began publicly dating fellow American rapper Offset, of the southern hip hop group Migos. When speaking on her relationship with Offset, Cardi B told The Fader, “It’s been a blessing, me meeting him and meeting his friends. I see how hard they work. And that motivated me to work even harder. And I see how good things are going for them and how popping it is to be number one. And I’m like, I want that. A lot of people just see they jewelry and they money, but I don’t think a lot of people see how hard they work for that shit every single day.” Cardi B and Offset became engaged on October 27, 2017, after Offset proposed to her at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, during the Power 99 Powerhouse concert. On April 7, 2018, during her second performance on Saturday Night Live, Cardi B wore a stunning, white Christian Siriano evening gown which, along with several deliberate camera side shots, revealed her pregnancy. She was about 6 months (24 weeks) pregnant at the time. On June 25, 2018, TMZ found a marriage license revealing Cardi B and Offset had actually secretly married in September 2017, doing so one month before the public proposal. Cardi B later went on to confirm this revelation in a social media post. In July 2018, Cardi B gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Kulture Kiari Cephus  In December 2018 she announced on Instagram that she and Offset had broken up, though the pair later reunited. In February 2019, the couple made a public appearance for the Grammys.  He accompanied her on the stage during her acceptance speech for Best Rap Album. In September 2020, it was reported that Cardi B had filed for divorce, but the next month it was revealed they were back together.

Legal issues

On October 1, 2018, Cardi B agreed to meet with investigators at a Queens police station in connection with an alleged a*sault. She denied involvement through her attorney. She was charged with two misdemeanors: a*sault and reckless endangerment. Cardi B appeared in court for her arraignment on December 7, 2018, after she failed to show up for the originally scheduled date due to a scheduling conflict, according to her attorney. She was ordered by the judge to avoid having any contact with the two bartenders. She was released by the judge despite prosecutors requesting bail to be set at $2,500. On June 21, 2019, a grand jury indicted Cardi B on 14 charges, including two counts of felony a*sault with intent to cause serious physical injury, stemming from the incident. She was arraigned on June 25, 2019 and pleaded not guilty on all charges

James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, songwriter and poet, who served as the lead vocalist of the rock band The Doors. Due to his wild personality, poetic lyrics, his widely recognized voice, unpredictable and erratic performances, and the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most iconic and influential frontmen in rock history. Since his death, his fame has endured as one of popular culture’s most rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing the generation gap and youth counterculture.

Together with Ray Manzarek, Morrison co-founded the Doors during the summer of 1965 in Venice, California. The band spent two years in obscurity until shooting to prominence with their number-one single in the United States, “Light My Fire”, taken from their self-titled debut album. Morrison wrote or co-wrote many of the Doors’ songs, including “Light My Fire”, “Break On Through (To the Other Side)”, “The End”, “Moonlight Drive”, “Wild Child”, “The Soft Parade”, “People Are Strange”, “Hello, I Love You”, “Roadhouse Blues”, “L.A. Woman”, and “Riders on the Storm”. He recorded a total of six studio albums with the Doors, all of which sold well and received critical acclaim. Morrison was well known for improvising spoken word poetry passages while the band played live. Manzarek said Morrison “embodied hippie counterculture rebellion”.

Morrison developed an alcohol dependency during the 1960s, which at times affected his performances on stage. He died unexpectedly at the age of 27 in Paris, among conflicting witness and alleged witness reports. As no autopsy was performed, the cause of Morrison’s death remains disputed.[ Though the Doors recorded two more albums after Morrison died, his death severely affected the band’s fortunes, and they split up in 1973. In 1993, Morrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Doors. In 2008, he was ranked 47th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list “The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time”.

Biography

1943–1961: Early years

Morrison was born in late 1943 in Melbourne, Florida, to Clara Virginia (née Clarke) and Lt.(j.g.) George Stephen Morrison, a future rear admiral in the U.S. Navy. His ancestors were Scottish, Irish, and English.[ Admiral Morrison commanded U.S. naval forces during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, which provided the pretext for the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in 1965. Morrison had a younger sister, Anne Robin (born 1947 in Albuquerque, New Mexico), and a younger brother, Andrew Lee Morrison (born 1948 in Los Altos, California).

In 1947, when he was three to four years old, Morrison allegedly witnessed a car accident in the desert, during which a truck overturned and some Native Americans were lying injured at the side of the road. He referred to this incident in the Doors’ song “Peace Frog” on their 1970 album Morrison Hotel, as well as in the spoken word performances “Dawn’s Highway” and “Ghost Song” on the posthumous 1978 album An American Prayer. Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life, and made repeated references to it in the imagery in his songs, poems, and interviews.

His family does not recall this traffic incident happening in the way he told it. According to the Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Morrison’s family did drive past a car accident on an Indian reservation when he was a child, and he was very upset by it. The book The Doors, written by the surviving members of the Doors, explains how different Morrison’s account of the incident was from that of his father. This book quotes his father as saying, “We went by several Indians. It did make an impression on him [the young James]. He always thought about that crying Indian.” This is contrasted sharply with Morrison’s tale of “Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death.” In the same book, his sister is quoted as saying, “He enjoyed telling that story and exaggerating it. He said he saw a dead Indian by the side of the road, and I don’t even know if that’s true.”

Raised a military brat, Morrison spent part of his childhood in San Diego, completed third grade in northern Virginia at Fairfax County Elementary School, and attended Charles H. Flato Elementary School in Kingsville, Texas, while his father was stationed at NAS Kingsville in 1952. He continued at St. John’s Methodist School in Albuquerque, and then Longfellow School Sixth Grade Graduation Program from San Diego.

In 1957, Morrison attended Alameda High School in Alameda, California, for his freshman and first semester of his sophomore year. [self-published source] The Morrison family moved back to northern Virginia in 1959, and he graduated from George Washington High School (now a middle school) in Alexandria in June 1961.

1961–1963: Literary influences

A voracious reader from an early age, Morrison was particularly inspired by the writings of several philosophers and poets. He was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose views on aesthetics, morality, and the Apollonian and Dionysian duality would appear in his conversation, poetry and songs. Some of his formative influences were Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and the works of the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, whose style would later influence the form of Morrison’s short prose poems. He was also influenced by William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Louis Ferdinand Celine, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Baudelaire, Molière, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Honoré de Balzac and Jean Cocteau, along with most of the French existentialist philosophers.

His senior year English teacher said, “Jim read as much and probably more than any student in class, but everything he read was so offbeat I had another teacher (who was going to the Library of Congress) check to see if the books Jim was reporting on actually existed. I suspected he was making them up, as they were English books on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century demonology. I’d never heard of them, but they existed, and I’m convinced from the paper he wrote that he read them, and the Library of Congress would’ve been the only source.”

Morrison went to live with his paternal grandparents in Clearwater, Florida, and attended St. Petersburg Junior College. In 1962, he transferred to Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, and appeared in a school recruitment film.[19] While at FSU, Morrison was arrested for disturbing the peace while drunk at a home football game on September 28, 1963.

1964–1965: College experience in Los Angeles

In January 1964, Morrison moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Seven months later, his father commanded a carrier division of the U.S. fleet during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. At UCLA, Morrison enrolled in Jack Hirschman’s class on Antonin Artaud in the Comparative Literature program within the UCLA English Department. Artaud’s brand of surrealist theatre had a profound impact on Morrison’s dark poetic sensibility of cinematic theatricality.

Morrison completed his undergraduate degree at UCLA’s film school within the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts in 1965. At the time of the graduation ceremony, he went to Venice Beach, and the university mailed his diploma to his mother in Coronado, California. He made several short films while attending UCLA. First Love, the first of these films, made with Morrison’s classmate and roommate Max Schwartz, was released to the public when it appeared in a documentary about the film Obscura.

During these years, while living in Venice Beach, he befriended writers at the Los Angeles Free Press, for which he advocated until his death in 1971. He conducted a lengthy and in-depth interview with Bob Chorush and Andy Kent, both working for the Free Press at the time (approximately December 6–8, 1970), and was planning on visiting the headquarters of the busy newspaper shortly before leaving for Paris.

1965–1971: The Doors

In the summer of 1965, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the UCLA film school, Morrison led a bohemian lifestyle in Venice Beach. Living on the rooftop of a building inhabited by his old UCLA cinematography friend, Dennis Jacobs, he wrote the lyrics of many of the early songs the Doors would later perform live and record on albums, such as “Moonlight Drive” and “Hello, I Love You”. According to Manzarek, he lived on canned beans and LSD for several months. Morrison and fellow UCLA student Ray Manzarek were the first two members of the Doors, forming the group during that summer. They had met months earlier as cinematography students. The story claims that Manzarek was lying on the beach at Venice one day, where he accidentally encountered Morrison. He was impressed with Morrison’s poetic lyrics, claiming that they were “rock group” material. Subsequently, guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore joined. Krieger auditioned at Densmore’s recommendation and was then added to the lineup. All three musicians shared a common interest in the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s meditation practices at the time, attending scheduled classes, but Morrison was not involved in these series of classes.

The Doors took their name from the title of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception (a reference to the unlocking of doors of perception through psychedelic drug use). Huxley’s own title was a quotation from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” Although Morrison was known as the lyricist of the group, Krieger also made significant lyrical contributions, writing or co-writing some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Light My Fire”, “Love Me Two Times”, “Love Her Madly” and “Touch Me”. On the other hand, Morrison, who did not write most songs using an instrument, would come up with vocal melodies for his own lyrics, with the other band members contributing chords and rhythm. Morrison did not play an instrument live (except for maracas and tambourine for most shows, and harmonica on a few occasions) or in the studio (excluding maracas, tambourine, handclaps, and whistling). However, he did play the grand piano on “Orange County Suite” and a Moog synthesizer on “Strange Days”.

In June 1966, Morrison and the Doors were the opening act at the Whisky a Go Go in the last week of the residency of Van Morrison’s band Them. Van’s influence on Jim’s developing stage performance was later noted by Brian Hinton in his book Celtic Crossroads: The Art of Van Morrison: “Jim Morrison learned quickly from his near namesake’s stagecraft, his apparent recklessness, his air of subdued menace, the way he would improvise poetry to a rock beat, even his habit of crouching down by the bass drum during instrumental breaks.” On the final night, the two Morrisons and their two bands jammed together on “Gloria”. In November 1966, Morrison and the Doors produced a promotional film for “Break on Through (To the Other Side)”, which was their first single release. The film featured the four members of the group playing the song on a darkened set with alternating views and close-ups of the performers while Morrison lip-synched the lyrics. Morrison and the Doors continued to make short music films, including “The Unknown Soldier”, “Moonlight Drive” and “People Are Strange”.

The Doors achieved national recognition after signing with Elektra Records in 1967. The single “Light My Fire” spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July/August 1967. This was a far cry from the Doors opening for Simon and Garfunkel or playing at a high school as they did in Connecticut that same year. Later, the Doors appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, a popular Sunday night variety series that had introduced the Beatles and Elvis Presley to the United States. Ed Sullivan requested two songs from the Doors for the show, “People Are Strange” and “Light My Fire”. Sullivan’s censors insisted that the Doors change the lyrics of the song “Light My Fire” from “Girl we couldn’t get much higher” to “Girl we couldn’t get much better” for the television viewers; this was reportedly due to what was perceived as a reference to drugs in the original lyrics. After giving a*surances of compliance to the producer in the dressing room, the band agreed and proceeded to sing the song with the original lyrics. Sullivan was not happy and he refused to shake hands with Morrison or any other band member after their performance. Sullivan had a show producer tell the band that they would never appear on The Ed Sullivan Show again. Morrison reportedly said to the producer, in a defiant tone, “Hey man. We just did the Sullivan Show!”

By the release of their second album, Strange Days, the Doors had become one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. Their blend of blues and dark psychedelic rock included a number of original songs and distinctive cover versions, such as their rendition of “Alabama Song”, from Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The band also performed a number of extended concept works, including the songs “The End”, “When the Music’s Over”, and “Celebration of the Lizard”. In 1966, photographer Joel Brodsky took a series of black-and-white photos of Morrison, in a photo shoot known as “The Young Lion” photo session. These photographs are considered among the most iconic images of Jim Morrison and are frequently used as covers for compilation albums, books, and other memorabilia of the Doors and Morrison. In late 1967 at a concert in New Haven, Connecticut, he was arrested on stage, an incident that further added to his mystique and emphasized his rebellious image. Morrison became the first rock artist to be arrested onstage during a concert performance.

In 1968, the Doors released their third studio album, Waiting for the Sun. The band performed on July 5 at the Hollywood Bowl; this performance became famous with the DVD: Live at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s also this year that the band played, for the first time, in Europe. Their fourth album, The Soft Parade, was released in 1969. It was the first album where the individual band members were given credit on the inner sleeve for the songs they had written. Previously, each song on their albums had been credited simply to “The Doors”. On September 6 and 7, 1968, the Doors played four performances at the Roundhouse, London, England with Jefferson Airplane which was filmed by Granada for a television documentary The Doors Are Open directed by John Sheppard. Around this time, Morrison—who had long been a heavy drinker—started showing up for recording sessions visibly inebriated.[ He was also frequently late for live performances.

By early 1969, the formerly svelte singer had gained weight, grown a beard and mustache, and begun dressing more casually — abandoning the leather pants and concho belts for slacks, jeans, and T-shirts. During a concert on March 1 at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, Morrison attempted to spark a riot in the audience, in part by screaming “You wanna see my cock?” and other obscenities. He failed, but six warrants for his arrest were issued by the Dade County Police department three days later for indecent exposure, among other things. Consequently, many of the Doors’ scheduled concerts were canceled. After Miami, Morrison lost his desire to perform with The Doors, and even tried to quit many times. He had become tired of the rock-star life. On September 20, 1970, Morrison was convicted of indecent exposure and profanity by a six-person jury in Miami after a trial that had 16 days of testimony. Morrison, who attended the October 30 sentencing “in a wool jacket adorned with Indian designs”, silently listened as he was sentenced to six months in prison and had to pay a $500 fine. Morrison remained free on a $50,000 bond. At the sentencing, Judge Murray Goodman told Morrison that he was a “person graced with a talent” admired by many of his peers; Morrison remained free on $50,000 bond while the conviction was appealed. His death eight months later made the appeal a moot point.

On December 8, 2010—the 67th anniversary of Morrison’s birth—Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the state clemency board unanimously signed a complete posthumous pardon for Morrison. Drummer John Densmore denied Morrison ever exposed himself on stage that night.

Following The Soft Parade, the Doors released Morrison Hotel. After a lengthy break, the group reconvened in October 1970 to record their final album with Morrison, titled L.A. Woman. Shortly after the recording sessions for the album began, producer Paul A. Rothchild — who had overseen all of their previous recordings — left the project, and engineer Bruce Botnick took over as producer.

July 3, 1971: Death

After recording L.A. Woman in Los Angeles, Morrison joined Pamela Courson in Paris in March 1971, at an apartment she had rented for him at 17–19, Rue Beautreillis in Le Marais, 4th arrondissement, Paris. In letters, he described going for long walks through the city, alone. During this time, he shaved his beard and lost some of the weight he had gained in the previous months. He died on July 3, 1971, at age 27.[ He was reportedly found by Courson in the bathtub of the apartment. The official cause of death was listed as heart failure, although no autopsy was performed, as it was not required by French law. It has also been reported, by several individuals who say they were eyewitnesses, that his death was due to an accidental heroin overdose.

His death came two years to the day after the death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and approximately nine months after the deaths of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin — all of whom died at the age of 27. Three years after his death, Courson also died at the age of 27.

Personal relationships

Morrison’s early life was the semi-nomadic existence typical of military families. Jerry Hopkins recorded Morrison’s brother, Andy, explaining that his parents had determined never to use physical corporal punishment such as spanking on their children. They instead instilled discipline and levied punishment by the military tradition known as “dressing down”. This consisted of yelling at and berating the children until they were reduced to tears and acknowledged their failings. Once Morrison graduated from UCLA, he broke off most contact with his family. By the time Morrison’s music ascended to the top of the charts (in 1967) he had not been in communication with his family for more than a year and falsely claimed that his parents and siblings were dead (or claiming, as it has been widely misreported, that he was an only child).

This misinformation was published as part of the materials distributed with the Doors’ self-titled debut album. Admiral Morrison was not supportive of his son’s career choice in music. One day, an acquaintance brought over a record thought to have Jim on the cover. The record was the Doors’ self-titled debut. The young man played the record for Morrison’s father and family. Upon hearing the record, Morrison’s father wrote him a letter telling him “to give up any idea of singing or any connection with a music group because of what I consider to be a complete lack of talent in this direction.” In a letter to the Florida Probation and Parole Commission District Office dated October 2, 1970, Morrison’s father acknowledged the breakdown in family communications as the result of an argument over his a*sessment of his son’s musical talents. He said he could not blame his son for being reluctant to initiate contact and that he was proud of him.

Morrison spoke fondly of his Irish and Scottish ancestry and was inspired by Celtic mythology in his poetry and songs. Celtic Family Magazine revealed in its 2016 Spring Issue that his Morrison clan was originally from the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, while his Irish side, the Clelland clan who married into the Morrison line, were from County Down, Northern Ireland.

Relationships

Morrison was sought after by many as a photographer’s model, confidante, romantic partner and sexual conquest. Throughout his life he had at least several serious, ongoing relationships, and many casual encounters. By many accounts, he could also be inconsistent with his partners, displaying what some recall as “a dual personality”.  Doors producer Paul Rothchild recalls, “Jim really was two very distinct and different people. A Jekyll and Hyde. When he was sober, he was Jekyll, the most erudite, balanced, friendly kind of guy … He was Mr. America. When he would start to drink, he’d be okay at first, then, suddenly, he would turn into a maniac. Turn into Hyde.”

Morrison spent the majority of his adult life in an open, and at times very charged and intense, relationship with Pamela Courson. They met while both were attending college, and she encouraged him to develop his poetry. Through to the end, Courson saw Morrison as more than a rock star, as “a great poet”; she constantly encouraged him and pushed him to write. Courson attended his concerts, and focused on supporting his career. Like Morrison, she was described by many as fiery, determined and attractive, as someone who was tough despite appearing fragile. Manzarek called Pamela “Jim’s other half” and said, “I never knew another person who could so complement his bizarreness.” Courson was buried by her family as Pamela Susan Morrison, after Jim Morrison’s death, despite the two having never been married. After Courson’s death in 1974, and her parents petitioned the court for inheritance of Morrison’s estate, the probate court in California decided that she and Morrison had once had what qualified as a common-law marriage, despite neither having applied for such status, and the common-law marriage not being recognized in California. Morrison’s will at the time of his death named Courson as the sole heir.[ Morrison dedicated his published poetry books The Lords and New Creatures and the lost writings Wilderness to her. A number of writers have speculated that songs like “Love Street”, “Orange County Suite” and “Queen of the Highway”, among other songs, may have been written about her. Though the relationship was “tumultuous” much of the time, and both also had relationships with others, they always maintained a unique and ongoing connection with one another, right up until the end.

One of Morrison’s early significant relationships was with Mary Werbelow, whom he met on the beach in Florida, when they were teenagers in 1962. In a 2005 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, she said Morrison spoke to her before a photo shoot for the Doors’ fourth album and told her the first three albums were about her.

Throughout his career, Morrison had regular sexual and romantic encounters with fans (including groupies) such as Pamela Des Barres, as well as ongoing affairs with other musicians, writers and photographers involved in the music business. These included Nico, an encounter with singer Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane while the two bands toured together, an on-again, off-again relationship with 16 Magazine’s Gloria Stavers, as well as an alleged alcohol-fueled encounter with Janis Joplin.

David Crosby said many years later Morrison treated Joplin meanly at a party at the Calabasas, California, home of John Davidson while Davidson was out of town. She reportedly hit him over the head with a bottle of whiskey in retaliation during a fight in front of witnesses. Thereafter, whenever Joplin had a conversation with someone who mentioned Morrison, Joplin referred to him as “that a*shole”, never by his first or last name.

First written about in No One Here Gets Out Alive, Break On Through, and later in her own memoir, Strange Days: My Life with and without Jim Morrison, Morrison participated in a Celtic Pagan handfasting ceremony with rock critic Patricia Kennealy. The couple signed a handwritten document, and were declared wed by a Celtic High Priestess and High Priest on Midsummer’s Night in 1970, but none of the necessary paperwork for a legal marriage was filed with the state. The couple had been friends, and then in a long-distance relationship, since meeting at a private interview for Jazz & Pop magazine in January 1969. The handfasting ceremony is described in No One Here Gets Out Alive as a “blending of souls on a karmic and cosmic plane”. Morrison was also still seeing Pamela Courson when he was in Los Angeles, and later moved to Paris for the summer where Courson had acquired an apartment. In an interview in the book Rock Wives, Kennealy says he turned “really cold” when she became pregnant, leading her to speculate that maybe he hadn’t taken the wedding as seriously as he’d led her to believe. She also notes that his coldness and distance was during the trial in Miami, and that “he was scared to death. They were really out to put him away. Jim was devastated that he wasn’t getting any public support.” As he did with so many people, Morrison could be cruel and cold and then turn warm and loving; he wrote in letters that he was planning on returning to her, to New York City, in the fall of ’71. However, Kennealy was skeptical. Morrison seemed to be falling apart. He was back with Courson in Paris, he was severely alcoholic and in poor health, and like many, Kennealy feared he was dying.

At the time of Morrison’s death, there were multiple paternity actions pending against him, although no claims were made against his estate by any of the putative paternity claimants.

Artistic influences

Although Morrison’s early education was routinely disrupted as he moved from school to school, he was drawn to the study of literature, poetry, religion, philosophy and psychology, among other fields. Biographers have consistently pointed to a number of writers and philosophers who influenced Morrison’s thinking and, perhaps, his behavior. While still in his adolescence, Morrison discovered the works of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He was also drawn to the poetry of William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, and Arthur Rimbaud. Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac and libertine writers such as the Marquis de Sade also had a strong influence on Morrison’s outlook and manner of expression; Morrison was eager to experience the life described in Kerouac’s On the Road.[ He was similarly drawn to the work of French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline.[108] Céline’s book, Voyage Au Bout de la Nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) and Blake’s Auguries of Innocence both echo through one of Morrison’s early songs, “End of the Night”.

Morrison later met and befriended Michael McClure, a well-known Beat poet. McClure had enjoyed Morrison’s lyrics but was even more impressed by his poetry and encouraged him to further develop his craft. Morrison’s vision of performance was colored by the works of 20th-century French playwright Antonin Artaud (author of Theater and its Double) and by Judith Malina and Julian Beck’s Living Theater.

Other works relating to religion, mysticism, ancient myth and symbolism were of lasting interest, particularly Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. James Frazer’s The Golden Bough also became a source of inspiration and is reflected in the title and lyrics of the song “Not to Touch the Earth”.  Morrison was particularly attracted to the myths and religions of Native American cultures.

While he was still at school, his family moved to New Mexico where he got to see some of the places and artifacts important to the American Southwest Indigenous cultures. These interests appear to be the source of many references to creatures and places such as lizards, snakes, deserts and “ancient lakes” that appear in his songs and poetry. His interpretation and imagination of Native American ceremonies and peoples (which, based on his readings, he referred to by the anthropological term “shamans”) influenced his stage routine, notably in seeking trance states and vision through dancing to the point of exhaustion. In particular, Morrison’s poem “The Ghost Song” was inspired by his readings about the Native American Ghost Dance.

Morrison’s vocal influences included Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, which is evident in his baritone crooning style on several of the Doors’ songs. In the 1981 documentary The Doors: A Tribute to Jim Morrison, producer Paul Rothchild relates his first impression of Morrison as being a “Rock and Roll Bing Crosby”. Sugerman states that Morrison, as a teenager, was such a fan of Presley that he demanded silence when Elvis was on the radio. He states that Sinatra was Morrison’s favorite singer. According to record producer David Anderle, Morrison considered Brian Wilson “his favorite musician” and the Beach Boys’ 1967 LP Wild Honey “one of his favorite albums. … he really got into it.”

Wallace Fowlie, professor emeritus of French literature at Duke University, wrote Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, subtitled “The Rebel as Poet – A Memoir”. In this, he recounts his surprise at receiving a fan letter from Morrison who, in 1968, thanked him for his latest translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s verse into English. “I don’t read French easily”, he wrote, “…your book travels around with me.” Fowlie went on to give lectures on numerous campuses comparing the lives, philosophies, and poetry of Morrison and Rimbaud. The book The Doors by the remaining Doors quotes Morrison’s close friend Frank Lisciandro as saying that too many people took a remark of Morrison’s that he was interested in revolt, disorder, and chaos “to mean that he was an anarchist, a revolutionary, or, worse yet, a nihilist. Hardly anyone noticed that Jim was paraphrasing Rimbaud and the Surrealist poets”.

Poetry and film

Morrison began writing in earnest during his adolescence. At UCLA he studied the related fields of theater, film, and cinematography. He self-published two separate volumes of his poetry in 1969, titled The Lords / Notes on Vision and The New Creatures. The Lords consists primarily of brief descriptions of places, people, events and Morrison’s thoughts on cinema. The New Creatures verses are more poetic in structure, feel and appearance. These two books were later combined into a single volume titled The Lords and The New Creatures. These were the only writings published during Morrison’s lifetime. Morrison befriended Beat poet Michael McClure, who wrote the afterword for Jerry Hopkins’ biography of Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive. McClure and Morrison reportedly collaborated on a number of unmade film projects, including a film version of McClure’s infamous play The Beard, in which Morrison would have played Billy the Kid. After his death, a further two volumes of Morrison’s poetry were published. The contents of the books were selected and arranged by Morrison’s friend, photographer Frank Lisciandro, and girlfriend Pamela Courson’s parents, who owned the rights to his poetry.

The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison Volume I is titled Wilderness, and, upon its release in 1988, became an instant New York Times Bestseller. Volume II, The American Night, released in 1990, was also a success. Morrison recorded his own poetry in a professional sound studio on two separate occasions. The first was in March 1969 in Los Angeles and the second was on December 8, 1970. The latter recording session was attended by Morrison’s personal friends and included a variety of sketch pieces. Some of the segments from the 1969 session were issued on the bootleg album The Lost Paris Tapes and were later used as part of the Doors’ An American Prayer album,[ released in 1978. The album reached No. 54 on the music charts. Some poetry recorded from the December 1970 session remains unreleased to this day and is in the possession of the Courson family. Morrison’s best-known but seldom seen cinematic endeavor is HWY: An American Pastoral, a project he started in 1969. Morrison financed the venture and formed his own production company in order to maintain complete control of the project. Paul Ferrara, Frank Lisciandro, and Babe Hill a*sisted with the project. Morrison played the main character, a hitchhiker turned killer/car thief. Morrison asked his friend, composer/pianist Fred Myrow, to select the soundtrack for the film.

Paris Journal

After his death, a notebook of poetry written by Morrison was recovered, titled Paris Journal; amongst other personal details, it contains the allegorical foretelling of a man who will be left grieving and having to abandon his belongings, due to a police investigation into a death connected to the Chinese opium trade. “Weeping, he left his pad on orders from police and furnishings hauled away, all records and mementos, and reporters calculating tears & curses for the press: ‘I hope the Chinese junkies get you’ and they will for the [opium] poppy rules the world”.

The concluding stanzas of this poem convey disappointment for someone with whom he had had an intimate relationship and contain a further invocation of Billy the killer/Hitchhiker, a common character in Morrison’s body of work. “This is my poem for you, Great flowing funky flower’d beast, Great perfumed wreck of hell…Someone new in your knickers & who would that be? You know, You know more, than you let on…Tell them you came & saw & look’d into my eyes & saw the shadow of the guard receding, Thoughts in time & out of season The Hitchhiker stood by the side of the road & levelled his thumb in the calm calculus of reason.”

In 2013, another of Morrison’s notebooks from Paris, found alongside the Paris Journal in the same box, known as the 127 Fascination box, sold for $250,000 at auction. This box of personal belongings similarly contained a home movie of Pamela Courson dancing in an unspecified cemetery in Corsica, the only film so far recovered to have been filmed by Morrison. The box also housed a number of older notebooks and journals and may initially have included the “Steno Pad” and the falsely titled The Lost Paris Tapes bootleg, if they had not been separated from the primary collection and sold by Philippe Dalecky with this promotional title. Those familiar with the voices of Morrison’s friends and colleagues later determined that, contrary to the story advanced by Dalecky that this was Morrison’s final recording made with busking Parisian musicians, the Lost Paris Tapes are in fact of “Jomo & The Smoothies”: Morrison, friend Michael McClure and producer Paul Rothchild loose jamming in Los Angeles, well before Paris 1971.

Grave site

Morrison was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris,[ one of the city’s most visited tourist attractions, where Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, French cabaret singer Edith Piaf, and many other poets and artists are also buried. The grave had no official marker until French officials placed a shield over it, which was stolen in 1973. The grave was listed in the cemetery directory with Morrison’s name incorrectly arranged as “Douglas James Morrison”.

In 1981, Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin voluntarily placed a bust of his own design and a new gravestone with Morrison’s name at the grave to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Morrison’s death; the bust was defaced through the years by vandals, and later stolen in 1988. Mikulin made another bust of Morrison in 1989,[ and a bronze portrait of him in 2001; neither piece is at the gravesite.

In 1990, Morrison’s father, George Stephen Morrison, after a consultation with E. Nicholas Genovese, Professor of Classics and Humanities, San Diego State University, placed a flat stone on the grave. The bronze plaque thereon bears the Greek inscription: ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, usually translated as “true to his own spirit” or “according to his own daemon”.

Legacy

Musical

Morrison was, and continues to be, one of the most popular and influential singer-songwriters and iconic frontmen in rock history. To this day Morrison is widely regarded as the prototypical rock star: surly, sexy, scandalous, and mysterious. The leather pants he was fond of wearing both onstage and off have since become stereotyped as rock-star apparel. [dubious – discuss] In 2011, a Rolling Stone readers’ pick placed Jim Morrison in fifth place of the magazine’s “Best Lead Singers of All Time”. He was also ranked number 22 on Classic Rock magazine’s “50 Greatest Singers in Rock”. In 1993, Morrison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Doors.

Iggy and the Stooges are said to have formed after lead singer Iggy Pop was inspired by Morrison while attending a Doors concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One of Pop’s most popular songs, “The Passenger”, is said to be based on one of Morrison’s poems. Layne Staley, the vocalist of Alice in Chains; Morten Harket, The vocalist of A-ha; Eddie Vedder, the vocalist of Pearl Jam; Scott Weiland, the vocalist of Stone Temple Pilots, and Velvet Revolver; Glenn Danzig, singer, and founder of Danzig; Julian Casablancas of the Strokes; James LaBrie of Dream Theater; Scott Stapp of Creed; and Ville Valo of H.I.M. have all said that Morrison was their biggest influence and inspiration. Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver have both covered “Roadhouse Blues” by the Doors. Weiland also filled in for Morrison to perform “Break On Through (To the Other Side)” with the rest of the Doors. Stapp filled in for Morrison for “Light My Fire”, “Riders on the Storm” and “Roadhouse Blues” on VH1 Storytellers; Travis Meeks, of Days of the New, also performed “The End”. Creed performed their version of “Roadhouse Blues” with Robby Krieger for the 1999 Woodstock Festival.

Morrison’s recital of his poem “Bird of Prey” can be heard throughout the song “Sunset” by Fatboy Slim. Rock band Bon Jovi featured Morrison’s grave in their “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” video clip. The band Radiohead mentions Jim Morrison in their song “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, stating “I wanna be wanna be wanna be Jim Morrison”. Alice Cooper in the liner notes of the album Killer stated that the song “Desperado” is about Jim Morrison. The leather trousers of U2’s lead singer Bono’s “The Fly” persona for the Achtung Baby era and subsequent Zoo TV Tour is attributed to Jim Morrison. In 2012 electronic music producer Skrillex released “Breakn’ a Sweat” which contained vocals from an interview with Jim Morrison.

Morrison was also referenced in the Lana Del Rey song “Gods & Monsters” in the line “living like Jim Morrison”.

Other

In June 2013, a fossil analysis discovered a large lizard in Myanmar. The extinct reptile was given the moniker Barbaturex morrisoni in honor of Morrison. “This is a king lizard, and he was the lizard king, so it just fit,” said Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist.

A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene”, which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950. Members of the Weavers were blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In the 1960s, Seeger re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of protest music in support of international disarmament, civil rights, counterculture, workers rights, and environmental causes.

A prolific songwriter, his best-known songs include “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (with additional lyrics by Joe Hickerson), “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)” (with Lee Hays of the Weavers), “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” (also with Hays), and “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, which have been recorded by many artists both in and outside the folk revival movement. “Flowers” was a hit recording for the Kingston Trio (1962); Marlene Dietrich, who recorded it in English, German and French (1962); and Johnny Rivers (1965). “If I Had a Hammer” was a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) and Trini Lopez (1963) while the Byrds had a number one hit with “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in 1965.

Seeger was one of the folk singers responsible for popularizing the spiritual “We Shall Overcome” (also recorded by Joan Baez and many other singer-activists) that became the acknowledged anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, soon after folk singer and activist Guy Carawan introduced it at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. In the PBS American Masters episode “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song”, Seeger said it was he who changed the lyric from the traditional “We will overcome” to the more singable “We shall overcome”.

Early years

Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, at the French Hospital, Midtown Manhattan. His family, which Seeger called “enormously Christian, in the Puritan, Calvinist New England tradition”,  traced its genealogy back over 200 years. A paternal ancestor, Karl Ludwig Seeger, a doctor from Württemberg, Germany, had emigrated to America during the American Revolution and married into the old New England family of Parsons in the 1780s.

Seeger’s father, the Harvard-trained composer and musicologist Charles Louis Seeger, Jr., was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents. Charles established the first musicology curriculum in the U.S. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1913, helped found the American Musicological Society, and was a key founder of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology. Pete’s mother, Constance de Clyver Seeger (née Edson), raised in Tunisia and trained at the Paris Conservatory of Music, was a concert violinist and later a teacher at the Juilliard School.

In 1912, his father Charles Seeger was hired to establish the music department at the University of California, Berkeley, but was forced to resign in 1918 because of his outspoken pacifism during World War I. Charles and Constance moved back east, making Charles’ parents’ estate in Patterson, New York, just north of New York City, their base of operations. When baby Pete was eighteen months old, they set out with him and his two older brothers in a homemade trailer to bring musical uplift to the working people in the American South. Upon their return, Constance taught violin and Charles taught composition at the New York Institute of Musical Art (later Juilliard), whose president, family friend Frank Damrosch, was Constance’s adoptive “uncle”. Charles also taught part-time at the New School for Social Research. Career and money tensions led to quarrels and reconciliations, but when Charles discovered Constance had opened a secret bank account in her own name, they separated, and Charles took custody of their three sons.[8] Beginning in 1936, Charles held various administrative positions in the federal government’s Farm Resettlement program, the WPA’s Federal Music Project (1938–1940) and the wartime Pan American Union. After World War II, he taught ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University.

Charles and Constance divorced when Pete was seven and in 1932 Charles married his composition student and a*sistant, Ruth Crawford, now considered by many to be one of the most important modernist composers of the 20th century. Deeply interested in folk music, Ruth had contributed musical arrangements to Carl Sandburg’s extremely influential folk song anthology the American Songbag (1927) and later created significant original settings for eight of Sandburg’s poems. Pete’s eldest brother, Charles Seeger III, was a radio astronomer, and his next older brother, John Seeger, taught in the 1950s at the Dalton School in Manhattan and was the principal from 1960 to 1976 at Fieldston Lower School in the Bronx. Pete’s uncle, Alan Seeger, a noted American war poet (“I Have a Rendezvous with Death”), had been one of the first American soldiers to be killed in World War I. All four of Pete’s half-siblings from his father’s second marriage – Margaret (Peggy), Mike, Barbara, and Penelope (Penny) – became folk singers. Peggy Seeger, a well-known performer in her own right, married British folk singer and activist Ewan MacColl. Mike Seeger was a founder of the New Lost City Ramblers, one of whose members, John Cohen, married Pete’s half-sister Penny – also a talented singer who died young. Barbara Seeger joined her siblings in recording folk songs for children. In 1935, Pete attended Camp Rising Sun, an international leadership camp held every summer in upstate New York that influenced his life’s work. His final visit occurred in 2012.

Career

Early work

At four, Seeger was sent away to boarding school, but came home two years later when his parents learned the school had failed to inform them he had contracted scarlet fever. He attended first and second grades in Nyack, New York, where his mother lived, before entering boarding school in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Despite being classical musicians, his parents did not press him to play an instrument. On his own, the otherwise bookish and withdrawn boy gravitated to the ukulele, becoming adept at entertaining his classmates with it while laying the basis for his subsequent remarkable audience rapport. At thirteen, Seeger enrolled in the Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1936. He was selected to attend Camp Rising Sun, the George E. Jonas Foundation’s international summer leadership program. During the summer of 1936, while traveling with his father and stepmother, Pete heard the five-string banjo for the first time at the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in western North Carolina near Asheville, organized by local folklorist, lecturer, and traditional music performer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom Charles Seeger had hired for Farm Resettlement music projects. The festival took place in a covered baseball field. There the Seegers:

watched square-dance teams from Bear Wallow, Happy Hollow, Cane Creek, Spooks Branch, Cheoah Valley, Bull Creek, and Soco Gap; heard the five-string banjo player Samantha Bumgarner; and family string bands, including a group of Indians from the Cherokee reservation who played string instruments and sang ballads. They wandered among the crowds who camped out at the edge of the field, hearing music being made there as well. As Lunsford’s daughter would later recall, those country people “held the riches that Dad had discovered. They could sing, fiddle, pick the banjos, and guitars with traditional grace and style found nowhere else but deep in the mountains. I can still hear those haunting melodies drift over the ball park.”

For the Seegers, experiencing the beauty of this music firsthand was a “conversion experience”. Pete was deeply affected and, after learning basic strokes from Lunsford, spent much of the next four years trying to master the five-string banjo.[17] The teenage Seeger also sometimes accompanied his parents to regular Saturday evening gatherings at the Greenwich Village loft of painter and art teacher Thomas Hart Benton and his wife Rita. Benton, a lover of Americana, played “Cindy” and “Old Joe Clark” with his students Charlie and Jackson Pollock; friends from the “hillbilly” recording industry; as well as avant-garde composers Carl Ruggles and Henry Cowell. It was at one of Benton’s parties that Pete heard “John Henry” for the first time.

Seeger enrolled at Harvard College on a partial scholarship, but as he became increasingly involved with politics and folk music, his grades suffered and he lost his scholarship. He dropped out of college in 1938.[ He dreamed of a career in journalism and took courses in art, as well. His first musical gig was leading students in folk singing at the Dalton School, where his aunt was principal. He polished his performance skills during a summer stint of touring New York State with The Vagabond Puppeteers (Jerry Oberwager, 22; Mary Wallace, 22; and Harriet Holtzman, 23), a traveling puppet theater “inspired by rural education campaigns of post-revolutionary Mexico”.  One of their shows coincided with a strike by dairy farmers. The group reprised its act in October in New York City. An article in the October 2, 1939, Daily Worker reported on the Puppeteers’ six-week tour this way:

During the entire trip the group never ate once in a restaurant. They slept out at night under the stars and cooked their own meals in the open, very often they were the guests of farmers. At rural affairs and union meetings, the farm women would bring “suppers” and would vie with each other to see who could feed the troupe most, and after the affair the farmers would have earnest discussions about who would have the honor of taking them home for the night.

“They fed us too well,” the girls reported. “And we could live the entire winter just by taking advantage of all the offers to spend a week on the farm.

In the farmers’ homes they talked about politics and the farmers’ problems, about antisemitism and Unionism, about war and peace and social security — “and always,” the puppeteers report, “the farmers wanted to know what can be done to create a stronger unity between themselves and city workers. They felt the need of this more strongly than ever before, and the support of the CIO in their milk strike has given them a new understanding and a new respect for the power that lies in solidarity. One summer has convinced us that a minimum of organized effort on the part of city organizations—unions, consumers’ bodies, the American Labor Party and similar groups—can not only reach the farmers but weld them into a pretty solid front with city folks that will be one of the best guarantees for progress.

That fall, Seeger took a job in Washington, D.C., a*sisting Alan Lomax, a friend of his father’s, at the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress. Seeger’s job was to help Lomax sift through commercial “race” and “hillbilly” music and select recordings that best represented American folk music, a project funded by the music division of the Pan American Union (later the Organization of American States), of whose music division his father, Charles Seeger, was head (1938–53). Lomax also encouraged Seeger’s folk singing vocation, and Seeger was soon appearing as a regular performer on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray’s weekly Columbia Broadcasting show Back Where I Come From (1940–41) alongside Josh White, Burl Ives, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie (whom he had first met at Will Geer’s Grapes of Wrath benefit concert for migrant workers on March 3, 1940). Back Where I Come From was unique in having a racially-integrated cast. The show was a success, but was not picked up by commercial sponsors for nationwide broadcasting because of its integrated cast. During the war, Seeger also performed on nationwide radio broadcasts by Norman Corwin.

From 1942-1945, Seeger served in the Army, as an Entertainment Specialist.

In 1949, Seeger worked as the vocal instructor for the progressive City and Country School in Greenwich Village, New York.

Early activism

In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), then at the height of its influence. In 1942, he became a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) itself but left in 1949.

In the spring of 1941, the twenty-one-year-old Seeger performed as a member of the Almanac Singers along with Millard Lampell, Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie, Butch, and Bess Lomax Hawes, and Lee Hays. Seeger and the Almanacs cut several albums of 78s on Keynote and other labels, Songs for John Doe (recorded in late February or March and released in May 1941), the Talking Union, and an album each of sea shanties and pioneer songs. Written by Millard Lampell, Songs for John Doe was performed by Lampell, Seeger, and Hays, joined by Josh White and Sam Gary. It contained lines such as, “It wouldn’t be much thrill to die for Du Pont in Brazil,” that were sharply critical of Roosevelt’s unprecedented peacetime draft (enacted in September 1940). This anti-war/anti-draft tone reflected the Communist Party line after the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which maintained the war was “phony” and a mere pretext for big American corporations to get Hitler to attack Soviet Russia. Seeger has said he believed this line of argument at the time — as did many fellow members of the Young Communist League (YCL). Though nominally members of the Popular Front, which was allied with Roosevelt and more moderate liberals, the YCL’s members still smarted from Roosevelt and Churchill’s arms embargo to Loyalist Spain (which Roosevelt later called a mistake), and the alliance frayed in the confusing welter of events.

A June 16, 1941, review in Time magazine, which under its owner, Henry Luce, had become very interventionist, denounced the Almanacs’ John Doe, accusing it of scrupulously echoing what it called “the mendacious Moscow tune” that “Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J.P. Morgan war.” Eleanor Roosevelt, a fan of folk music, reportedly found the album “in bad taste,” though President Roosevelt, when the album was shown to him, merely observed, correctly as it turned out, that few people would ever hear it. More alarmist was the reaction of eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich, an adviser on domestic propaganda to the United States military. In a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Poison in Our System,” he pronounced Songs for John Doe “…strictly subversive and illegal,” “…whether Communist or Nazi financed,” and “a matter for the attorney general,” observing further that “mere” legal “suppression” would not be sufficient to counteract this type of populist poison,[28] the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.

While the U.S. had not officially declared war on the Axis powers in the summer of 1941, the country was energetically producing arms and ammunition for their allies overseas. Despite the boom in manufacturing this concerted rearming effort brought, African-Americans were barred from working in defense plants. Racial tensions rose as Black labor leaders (such as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin) and their white allies began organizing protests and marches. To combat this social unrest, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 (The Fair Employment Act) on 25 June 1941. The order came three days after Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet Union, at which time the Communist Party quickly directed its members to get behind the draft and forbade participation in strikes for the duration of the war — angering some leftists. Copies of Songs for John Doe were removed from sale, and the remaining inventory destroyed, though a few copies may exist in the hands of private collectors. The Almanac Singers’ Talking Union album, on the other hand, was reissued as an LP by Folkways (FH 5285A) in 1955 and is still available. The following year, the Almanacs issued Dear Mr. President, an album in support of Roosevelt and the war effort. The title song, “Dear Mr. President”, was a solo by Pete Seeger, and its lines expressed his lifelong credo:

Now, Mr. President,
We haven’t always agreed in the past, I know,
But that ain’t at all important now.
What is important is what we got to do,
We got to lick Mr. Hitler, and until we do,
Other things can wait.

Now, as I think of our great land …
I know it ain’t perfect, but it will be someday,
Just give us a little time.

This is the reason that I want to fight,
Not ’cause everything’s perfect, or everything’s right.
No, it’s just the opposite: I’m fightin’ because
I want a better America, and better laws,
And better homes, and jobs, and schools,
And no more Jim Crow, and no more rules like
“You can’t ride on this train ’cause you’re a Negro,”
“You can’t live here ’cause you’re a Jew,”
“You can’t work here ’cause you’re a union man.”

So, Mr. President,
We got this one big job to do
That’s lick Mr. Hitler and when we’re through,
Let no one else ever take his place
To trample down the human race.
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done.

Seeger’s critics, however, continued to bring up the Almanacs’ repudiated Songs for John Doe. In 1942, a year after the John Doe album’s brief appearance (and disappearance), the FBI decided that the now-pro-war Almanacs were still endangering the war effort by subverting recruitment. According to the New York World Telegram (February 14, 1942), Carl Friedrich’s 1941 article “The Poison in Our System” was printed up as a pamphlet and distributed by the Council for Democracy (an organization that Friedrich and Henry Luce’s right-hand man, C. D. Jackson, Vice President of Time magazine, had founded “…to combat all the Nazi, fascist, communist, pacifist …” antiwar groups in the United States).

Seeger served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific. He was trained as an airplane mechanic, but was reassigned to entertain the American troops with music. Later, when people asked him what he did in the war, he always answered: “I strummed my banjo.” After returning from service, Seeger and others established People’s Songs, conceived as a nationwide organization with branches on both coasts and designed to “create, promote and distribute songs of labor and the American People.”  With Pete Seeger as its director, People’s Songs worked for the 1948 presidential campaign of Roosevelt’s former Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President, Henry A. Wallace, who ran as a third-party candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. Despite having attracted enormous crowds nationwide, however, Wallace won only in New York City, and following the election, he was excoriated for accepting the help in his campaign of Communists and fellow travelers, such as Seeger and singer Paul Robeson.

Spanish Civil War songs

Seeger had been a fervent supporter of the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. In 1943, with Tom Glazer and Bess and Baldwin Hawes, he recorded an album of 78s called Songs of the Lincoln Battalion on Moe Asch’s Stinson label. This included such songs as “There’s a Valley in Spain called Jarama” and “Viva la Quince Brigada”. In 1960, this collection was re-issued by Moe Asch as one side of a Folkways LP called Songs of the Lincoln and International Brigades. On the other side was a reissue of the legendary Six Songs for Democracy (originally recorded in Barcelona in 1938 while bombs were falling), performed by Ernst Busch and a chorus of members of the Thälmann Battalion, made up of volunteers from Germany. The songs were: “Moorsoldaten” (“Peat Bog Soldiers”, composed by political prisoners of German concentration camps); “Die Thaelmann-Kolonne”, “Hans Beimler”, “Das Lied Von Der Einheitsfront” (“Song of The United Front” by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht), “Der Internationalen Brigaden” (“Song of the International Brigades”), and “Los cuatro generales” (“The Four Generals”, known in English as “The Four Insurgent Generals”).

Group recordings

As a self-described “split tenor” (between a tenor and a countertenor), Pete Seeger was a founding member of two highly influential folk groups: the Almanac Singers and the Weavers. The Almanac Singers, which Seeger co-founded in 1941 with Millard Lampell and Arkansas singer and activist Lee Hays, was a topical group, designed to function as a singing newspaper promoting the industrial unionization movement, racial and religious inclusion, and other progressive causes. Its personnel included, at various times: Woody Guthrie, Bess Lomax Hawes, Sis Cunningham, Josh White, and Sam Gary. As a controversial Almanac singer, the 21-year-old Seeger performed under the stage name “Pete Bowers” to avoid compromising his father’s government career.

In 1950, the Almanacs were reconstituted as the Weavers, named after the title of an 1892 play by Gerhart Hauptmann, about a workers’ strike (which contained the lines, “We’ll stand it no more, come what may!”). They did benefits for strikers, at which they sang songs such as ‘Talking Union’, about the struggles for unionisation of industrial workers such as miners and auto mobile workers. Besides Pete Seeger (performing under his own name), members of the Weavers included charter Almanac member Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman; later Frank Hamilton, Erik Darling, and Bernie Krause serially took Seeger’s place. In the atmosphere of the 1950s red scare, the Weavers’ repertoire had to be less overtly topical than that of the Almanacs had been, and its progressive message was couched in indirect language — arguably rendering it even more powerful. The Weavers on occasion performed in tuxedos (unlike the Almanacs, who had dressed informally) and their managers refused to let them perform at political venues. The Weavers’ string of major hits began with “On Top of Old Smoky” and an arrangement of Lead Belly’s signature waltz, “Goodnight, Irene”,[4] which topped the charts for 13 weeks in 1950 and was covered by many other pop singers. On the flip side of “Irene” was the Israeli song “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena”. Other Weaver hits included “Dusty Old Dust” (“So Long It’s Been Good to Know You” by Woody Guthrie), “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” (by Hays, Seeger, and Lead Belly), and the South African Zulu song by Solomon Linda, “Wimoweh” (about Shaka), among others.

The Weavers’ performing career was abruptly derailed in 1953, at the peak of their popularity, when blacklisting prompted radio stations to refuse to play their records and all their bookings were canceled. They briefly returned to the stage, however, at a sold-out reunion at Carnegie Hall in 1955 and in a subsequent reunion tour, which produced a hit version of Merle Travis’s “Sixteen Tons”, as well as LPs of their concert performances. “Kumbaya”, a Gullah black spiritual dating from slavery days, was also introduced to wide audiences by Pete Seeger and the Weavers (in 1959), becoming a staple of Boy and Girl Scout campfires.

In the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio was formed in direct imitation of (and homage to) the Weavers, covering much of the latter’s repertoire, though with a more buttoned-down, uncontroversial, and mainstream collegiate persona. The Kingston Trio produced another phenomenal succession of Billboard chart hits and in its turn spawned a legion of imitators, laying the groundwork for the 1960s commercial folk revival.

In the documentary film Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (2007), Seeger states that he resigned from the Weavers when the three other band members agreed to perform a jingle for a cigarette commercial.

Banjo and 12-string guitar

In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic How to Play the Five-String Banjo, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or Seeger banjo. This instrument is three frets longer than a typical banjo, is slightly longer than a bass guitar at 25 frets, and is tuned a minor third lower than the normal 5-string banjo. Hitherto strictly limited to the Appalachian region,[citation needed] the five-string banjo became known nationwide as the American folk instrument par excellence, largely thanks to Seeger’s championing of and improvements to it. According to an unnamed musician quoted in David King Dunaway’s biography, “by nesting a resonant chord between two precise notes, a melody note and a chiming note on the fifth string”, Pete Seeger “gentrified” the more percussive traditional Appalachian “frailing” style, “with its vigorous hammering of the forearm and its percussive rapping of the fingernail on the banjo head.”[38] Although what Dunaway’s informant describes is the age-old droned frailing style, the implication is that Seeger made this more acceptable to mass audiences by omitting some of its percussive complexities, while presumably still preserving the characteristic driving rhythmic quality a*sociated with the style.

From the late 1950s on, Seeger also accompanied himself on the 12-string guitar, an instrument of Mexican origin that had been a*sociated with Lead Belly, who had styled himself “the King of the 12-String Guitar”. Seeger’s distinctive custom-made guitars had a triangular soundhole. He combined the long scale length (approximately 28″) and capo-to-key techniques that he favored on the banjo with a variant of drop-D (DADGBE) tuning, tuned two whole steps down with very heavy strings, which he played with thumb and finger picks.

Introduction of the “Steel Pan” to U.S. audiences

In 1956, then “Peter” Seeger (see film credits) and his wife, Toshi, traveled to Port of Spain, Trinidad, to seek out information on the steelpan, steel drum or “ping-pong” as it was sometimes called. The two searched out a local panyard director Isaiah and proceeded to film the construction, tuning and playing of the then new, national instrument of Trinidad-Tobago. He was attempting to include the unique flavor of the steel pan into American Folk music.

McCarthy era

In the 1950s and indeed consistently throughout his life, Seeger continued his support of civil and labor rights, racial equality, international understanding, and anti-militarism (all of which had characterized the Wallace campaign) and he continued to believe that songs could help people achieve these goals. However, with the ever-growing revelations of Joseph Stalin’s atrocities and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet Communism. He left the CPUSA in 1949, but remained friends with some who did not leave it, although he argued with them about it.

On August 18, 1955, Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Alone among the many witnesses after the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress, Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which would have a*serted that his testimony might be self-incriminating) and instead, as the Hollywood Ten had done, refused to name personal and political a*sociations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights: “I am not going to answer any questions as to my a*sociation, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this.” Seeger’s refusal to answer questions that he believed violated his fundamental Constitutional rights led to a March 26, 1957, indictment for contempt of Congress; for some years, he had to keep the federal government apprised of where he was going any time he left the Southern District of New York. He was convicted in a jury trial of contempt of Congress in March 1961, and sentenced to ten 1-year terms in jail (to be served simultaneously), but in May 1962, an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.

In 1960, the San Diego school board told him that he could not play a scheduled concert at a high school unless he signed an oath pledging that the concert would not be used to promote a communist agenda or an overthrow of the government. Seeger refused, and the American Civil Liberties Union obtained an injunction against the school district, allowing the concert to go on as scheduled. Almost 50 years later, in February 2009, the San Diego School District officially extended an apology to Seeger for the actions of their predecessors.

Folk music revival

To earn money during the blacklist period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger worked gigs as a music teacher in schools and summer camps, and traveled the college campus circuit. He also recorded as many as five albums a year for Moe Asch’s Folkways Records label. As the nuclear disarmament movement picked up steam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seeger’s anti-war songs, such as, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (co-written with Joe Hickerson), “Turn! Turn! Turn!”,  adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and “The Bells of Rhymney” by the Welsh poet Idris Davies  (1957), gained wide currency. Seeger was the first person to make a studio recording of “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” in 1956. Seeger also was closely a*sociated with the Civil Rights Movement and in 1963 helped organize a landmark Carnegie Hall concert, featuring the youthful Freedom Singers, as a benefit for the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. This event, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in August of that same year, brought the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” to wide audiences. He sang it on the 50-mile walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, along with 1,000 other marchers.[49] By this time, Seeger was a senior figure in the 1960s folk revival centered in Greenwich Village, as a longtime columnist in Sing Out!, the successor to the People’s Songs Bulletin, and as a founder of the topical Broadside magazine. To describe the new crop of politically committed folk singers, he coined the phrase “Woody’s children”, alluding to his a*sociate and traveling companion, Woody Guthrie, who by this time had become a legendary figure. This urban folk-revival movement, a continuation of the activist tradition of the 1930s and 1940s and of People’s Songs, used adaptations of traditional tunes and lyrics to effect social change, a practice that goes back to the Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies’ Little Red Song Book, compiled by Swedish-born union organizer Joe Hill (1879–1915). (The Little Red Song Book had been a favorite of Woody Guthrie’s, who was known to carry it around.)

Seeger toured Australia in 1963. His single “Little Boxes”, written by Malvina Reynolds, was number one in the nation’s Top 40s. That tour sparked a folk boom throughout the country at a time when popular music tastes, post-Kennedy a*sassination, competed between folk, the surfing craze, and the British rock boom which gave the world the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among others. Folk clubs sprung up all over the nation, folk performers were accepted in established venues, and Australian performers singing Australian folk songs – many of their own composing – emerged in concerts and festivals, on television, and on recordings, and overseas performers were encouraged to tour Australia.

The long television blacklist of Seeger began to end in the mid-1960s, when he hosted a regionally broadcast, educational, folk-music television show, Rainbow Quest. Among his guests were Johnny Cash, June Carter, Reverend Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, the Stanley Brothers, Elizabeth Cotten, Patrick Sky, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Paxton, Judy Collins, Hedy West, Donovan, The Clancy Brothers, Richard Fariña and Mimi Fariña, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mamou Cajun Band, Bernice Johnson Reagon, The Beers Family, Roscoe Holcomb, Malvina Reynolds, Sonia Malkine, and Shawn Phillips. Thirty-nine[40] hour-long programs were recorded at WNJU’s Newark studios in 1965 and 1966, produced by Seeger and his wife Toshi, with Sholom Rubinstein. The Smothers Brothers ended Seeger’s national blacklisting by broadcasting him singing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on their CBS variety show on February 25, 1968, after his similar performance in September 1967 was censored by CBS.

In November 1976, Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song “Delbert Tibbs”, about the death-row inmate Delbert Tibbs, who was later exonerated. Seeger wrote the music and selected the words from poems written by Tibbs.

Seeger also supported the Jewish Camping Movement. He came to Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, New York, over the summer many times. He sang and inspired countless campers.

Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan

Pete Seeger was one of the earliest backers of Bob Dylan; he was responsible for urging A&R man John Hammond to produce Dylan’s first LP on Columbia, and for inviting him to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, of which Seeger was a board member. There was a widely repeated story that Seeger was so upset over the extremely loud amplified sound that Dylan, backed by members of the Butterfield Blues Band, brought into the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that he threatened to disconnect the equipment. There are multiple versions of what went on, some fanciful. What is certain is that tensions had been running high between Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman and Festival Board members (who besides Seeger also included Theodore Bikel, Bruce Jackson, Alan Lomax, festival MC Peter Yarrow, and George Wein) over the scheduling of performers and other matters. Two days earlier, there had been a scuffle and brief exchange of blows between Grossman and Alan Lomax, and the Board in an emergency session had voted to ban Grossman from the grounds, but had backed off when George Wein pointed out that Grossman also managed highly popular draws Odetta and Peter, Paul and Mary. Seeger has been portrayed as a folk “purist” who was one of the main opponents to Dylan’s “going electric”. but when asked in 2001 about how he recalled his “objections” to the electric style, he said:

I couldn’t understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, “Maggie’s Farm,” and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, “Fix the sound so you can hear the words.” He hollered back, “This is the way they want it.” I said “Damn it, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now.” But I was at fault. I was the MC, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, “you didn’t boo Howlin’ Wolf yesterday. He was electric!” Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the twentieth century, to use my father’s old term.

Vietnam War era and beyond

A longstanding opponent of the arms race and of the Vietnam War, Seeger satirically attacked then-President Lyndon Johnson with his 1966 recording, on the album Dangerous Songs!?, of Len Chandler’s children’s song, “Beans in My Ears”. Beyond Chandler’s lyrics, Seeger said that “Mrs. Jay’s little son Alby” had “beans in his ears,” which, as the lyrics imply, ensures that a person does not hear what is said to them. To those opposed to continuing the Vietnam War, the phrase implied that “Alby Jay”, a loose pronunciation of Johnson’s nickname “LBJ,” did not listen to anti-war protests as he too had “beans in his ears”.

During 1966, Seeger and Malvina Reynolds took part in environmental activism. The album God Bless the Grass was released on January of that year and became the first album in history wholly dedicated to songs about environmental issues. Their politics were informed by the same ideologies of nationalism, populism, and criticism of big business.

Seeger attracted wider attention starting in 1967 with his song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy”, about a captain — referred to in the lyrics as “the big fool” — who drowned while leading a platoon on maneuvers in Louisiana during World War II. With its lyrics about a platoon being led into danger by an ignorant captain, the song’s anti-war message was obvious — the line “the big fool said to push on” is repeated several times.[61] In the face of arguments with the management of CBS about whether the song’s political weight was in keeping with the usually light-hearted entertainment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the final lines were “Every time I read the paper/those old feelings come on/We are waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on.” The lyrics could be interpreted as an allegory of Johnson as the “big fool” and the Vietnam War as the foreseeable danger. Although the performance was cut from the September 1967 show, after wide publicity, it was broadcast when Seeger appeared again on the Smothers’ Brothers show in the following January.

At the November 15, 1969, Vietnam Moratorium March on Washington, DC, Seeger led 500,000 protesters in singing John Lennon’s song “Give Peace a Chance” as they rallied across from the White House. Seeger’s voice carried over the crowd, interspersing phrases like, “Are you listening, Nixon?” between the choruses of protesters singing, “All we are saying … is give peace a chance”.

Inspired by Woody Guthrie, whose guitar was labeled “This machine kills fascists,”photo Seeger’s banjo was emblazoned with the motto “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender.”

In the documentary film The Power of Song, Seeger mentions that he and his family visited North Vietnam in 1972.

Being a supporter of progressive labor unions, Seeger had supported Ed Sadlowski in his bid for the presidency of the United Steelworkers of America. In 1977, Seeger appeared at a fundraiser in Homestead, Pennsylvania. In 1978, Seeger joined American folk, blues, and jazz singer Barbara Dane at a rally in New York for striking coal miners.

In 1980, Pete Seeger performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The performance was later released by Smithsonian Folkways as the album Singalong Sanders Theater, 1980.

Hudson River sloop Clearwater

In 1966, Seeger and his wife Toshi founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization based in Poughkeepsie, New York, that sought to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands and waterways through advocacy and public education. It constructed a floating ambassador for this environmental mission, the sloop Clearwater, and began an annual music and environmental festival, today known as the Great Hudson River Revival.

Reflection on support for Soviet Communism

In 1982, Seeger performed at a benefit concert for Poland’s Solidarity resistance movement. His biographer David Dunaway considers this the first public manifestation of Seeger’s decades-long personal dislike of communism in its Soviet form. In the late 1980s, Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions, remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change and that “the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time.” In his autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone (1993, 1997, reissued in 2009), Seeger wrote, “Should I apologize for all this? I think so.” He went on to put his thinking in context:

How could Hitler have been stopped? Litvinov, the Soviet delegate to the League of Nations in ’36, proposed a worldwide quarantine but got no takers. For more on those times check out pacifist Dave Dellinger‘s book, From Yale to Jail … At any rate, today I’ll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was merely a “hard driver” and not a “supremely cruel misleader.” I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern White Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? She’s part African, part European, part Chinese, part Japanese, part Native American. Let’s look ahead.

In a 1995 interview, however, he insisted that “I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.” In recent years, as the aging Seeger began to garner awards and recognition for his lifelong activism, he also found himself criticized once again for his opinions and a*sociations of the 1930s and 1940s. In 2006, David Boaz—Voice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute—wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian, entitled “Stalin’s Songbird” in which he excoriated The New Yorker and The New York Times for lauding Seeger. He characterized Seeger as “someone with a longtime habit of following the party line” who had only “eventually” parted ways with the CPUSA. In support of this view, he quoted lines from the Almanac Singers’ May 1941 Songs for John Doe, contrasting them darkly with lines supporting the war from Dear Mr. President, issued in 1942, after the United States and the Soviet Union had entered the war.

In 2007, in response to criticism from historian Ron Radosh, a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National Review — Seeger wrote a song condemning Stalin, “Big Joe Blues”:

I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe.
He ruled with an iron hand.
He put an end to the dreams
Of so many in every land.
He had a chance to make
A brand new start for the human race.
Instead he set it back
Right in the same nasty place.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast.
I got the Big Joe Blues.
Do this job, no questions asked.
I got the Big Joe Blues.

The song was accompanied by a letter to Radosh, in which Seeger stated, “I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965].”

Later work

On March 16, 2007, Pete Seeger, his sister Peggy, his brothers Mike and John, his wife Toshi, and other family members spoke and performed at a symposium and concert sponsored by the American Folklife Center in honor of the Seeger family, held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.,  where Pete Seeger had been employed by the Archive of American Folk Song 67 years earlier.
In September 2008, Appleseed Recordings released At 89, Seeger’s first studio album in 12 years. On September 29, 2008, the 89-year-old singer-activist, once banned from commercial TV, made a rare national TV appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, singing “Take It From Dr. King”.

On January 18, 2009, Seeger and his grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger joined Bruce Springsteen, and the crowd in singing the Woody Guthrie song “This Land Is Your Land” in the finale of Barack Obama’s Inaugural concert in Washington, D.C. The performance was noteworthy for the inclusion of two verses not often included in the song, one about a “private property” sign the narrator cheerfully ignores, and the other making a passing reference to a Depression-era relief office. The former’s final line, however, “This land was made for you and me,” is modified to “That side was made for you and me.”

Over the years, he lent his fame to support numerous environmental organizations, including South Jersey’s Bayshore Center, the home of New Jersey’s tall ship, the oyster schooner A.J. Meerwald. Seeger’s benefit concerts helped raise funds for groups so they could continue to educate and spread environmental awareness. On May 3, 2009, at the Clearwater Concert, dozens of musicians gathered in New York at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Seeger’s 90th birthday (which was later televised on PBS during the summer), ranging from Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Eric Weissberg, Ani DiFranco and Roger McGuinn to Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Joanne Shenandoah, R. Carlos Nakai, Bill Miller, Joseph Fire Crow, Margo Thunderbird, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Arlo Guthrie. Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez was also invited to appear but his visa was not approved in time by the United States government. Consistent with Seeger’s long-time advocacy for environmental concerns, the proceeds from the event benefited the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a non-profit organization founded by Seeger in 1966, to defend and restore the Hudson River. Seeger’s 90th Birthday was also celebrated at The College of Staten Island on May 4.

On September 19, 2009, Seeger made his first appearance at the 52nd Monterey Jazz Festival, which was particularly notable because the festival does not normally feature folk artists.

In 2010, still active at the age of 91, Seeger co-wrote and performed the song God’s Counting on Me, God’s Counting on You with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. A performance of the song by Seeger, Wyatt, and friends was recorded and filmed aboard the Sloop Clearwater in August for a single and video produced by Richard Barone and Matthew Billy, released on election day November 6, 2012.

On October 21, 2011, at age 92, Pete Seeger was part of a solidarity march with Occupy Wall Street to Columbus Circle in New York City. The march began with Seeger and fellow musicians exiting Symphony Space (95th and Broadway), where they had performed as part of a benefit for Seeger’s Clearwater organization. Thousands of people crowded Pete Seeger by the time they reached Columbus Circle, where he performed with his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, and other celebrated musicians.[105] The event, promoted under the name OccupyTheCircle, was live streamed, and dubbed by some as “The Pete Seeger March”.

On December 14, 2012, Seeger performed, along with Harry Belafonte, Jackson Browne, Common, and others, at a concert to bring awareness to the 37-year-long ordeal of Native American Activist Leonard Peltier. The concert was held at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

On April 9, 2013, Hachette Audio Books issued an audiobook entitled Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems. This two-CD spoken-word work was conceived of and produced by noted percussionist Jeff Haynes and presents Pete Seeger telling the stories of his life against a background of music performed by more than 40 musicians of varied genres. The launch of the audiobook was held at the Dia:Beacon on April 11, 2013, to an enthusiastic audience of around two hundred people, and featured many of the musicians from the project (among them Samite, Dar Williams, Dave Eggar, and Richie Stearns of the Horse Flies and Natalie Merchant) performing live under the direction of producer and percussionist Haynes.[108] April 15, 2013, Sirius XM Book Radio presented the Dia:Beacon concert as a special episode of “Cover to Cover Live with Maggie Linton and Kim Alexander” entitled “Pete Seeger: The Storm King and Friends.”

On August 9, 2013, one month widowed, Seeger was in New York City for the 400-year commemoration of the Two Row Wampum Treaty between the Iroquois and the Dutch. On an interview he gave that day to Democracy Now!, Seeger sang “I Come and Stand at Every Door”, as it was also the 68th anniversary of bombing of Nagasaki.

On September 21, 2013, Pete Seeger performed at Farm Aid at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. Joined by Wille Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews, he sang “This Land Is Your Land”,  and included a verse he said he had written specifically for the Farm Aid concert.

Personal life

Seeger married Toshi Aline Ota in 1943, whom he credited with being the support that helped make the rest of his life possible. The couple remained married until Toshi’s death in July 2013.  Their first child, Peter Ōta Seeger, was born in 1944 and died at six months, while Pete was deployed overseas. Pete never saw him. They went on to have three more children: Daniel (an accomplished photographer and filmmaker), Mika (a potter and muralist), and Tinya (a potter), as well as grandchildren Tao Rodríguez-Seeger (a musician), Cassie (an artist), Kitama Cahill-Jackson (a psychotherapist), Moraya (a marriage and family therapist married to the NFL player Chris DeGeare), Penny, Isabelle, and great-grandchildren Dio and Gabel. Tao, a folk musician in his own right, sings and plays guitar, banjo, and harmonica with the Mammals. Kitama Jackson is a documentary filmmaker who was a*sociate producer of the PBS documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song.

When asked by Beliefnet about his religious or spiritual beliefs, and his definition of God, Seeger replied:

Nobody knows for sure. But people undoubtedly get feelings which are not explainable and they feel they’re talking to God or they’re talking to their parents who are long dead. I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God. I’ve had preachers of the gospel, Presbyterians and Methodists, saying, “Pete, I feel that you are a very spiritual person.” And maybe I am. I feel strongly that I’m trying to raise people’s spirits to get together. … I tell people I don’t think God is an old white man with a long white beard and no navel; nor do I think God is an old black woman with white hair and no navel. But I think God is literally everything, because I don’t believe that something can come out of nothing. And so there’s always been something. Always is a long time.

He was a member of a Unitarian Universalist Church in New York.

Seeger lived in Beacon, New York. He remained engaged politically and maintained an active lifestyle in the Hudson Valley region of New York throughout his life. He and Toshi purchased their land in 1949 and lived there first in a trailer, then in a log cabin they built themselves. Toshi died in Beacon on July 9, 2013, at the age of 91,  and Pete died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 27, 2014, at the age of 94.

Legacy

Response and reaction to Seeger’s death quickly poured in. President Barack Obama noted that Seeger had been called “America’s tuning fork”  and that he believed in “the power of song” to bring social change, “Over the years, Pete used his voice and his hammer to strike blows for workers’ rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation, and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger.” Folksinger and fellow activist Billy Bragg wrote that: “Pete believed that music could make a difference. Not change the world, he never claimed that – he once said that if music could change the world he’d only be making music – but he believed that while music didn’t have agency, it did have the power to make a difference.” Bruce Springsteen said of Seeger’s death, “I lost a great friend and a great hero last night, Pete Seeger”, before performing “We Shall Overcome” while on tour in South Africa.

Tributes

• A proposal was made in 2009 to name the Walkway Over the Hudson in his honor.
• A posthumous suggestion that Seeger’s name be applied to the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge being built over the Hudson River was made by a local town supervisor. Seeger’s boat, the sloop Clearwater, is based at Beacon, New York, just upriver from the bridge.
• Oakwood Friends School located in Poughkeepsie New York, not far from Seeger’s home, performed Where Have All the Flowers Gone? at one of their worship meetings. The collaboration was with three teachers (playing guitar and vocals) as well as a student harmonica player and a student vocalist.
• A free five-day memorial called Seeger Fest took place on July 17 to 21, 2014, featuring Judy Collins, Peter Yarrow, Harry Belafonte, Anti-Flag, Michael Glabicki of Rusted Root, Steve Earle, Holly Near, Fred Hellerman, Guy Davis, DJ Logic, Paul Winter Consort, Dar Williams, DJ Kool Herc, The Rappers Delight Experience, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, David amram, Mik + Ruthy, Tom Chapin, James Maddock, The Chapin Sisters, Rebel Diaz, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Elizabeth Mitchell, Emma’s Revolution, Toni Blackman, Kim & Reggie Harris, Magpie, Abrazos Orcchestra, Nyraine, George Wein, The Vanaver Caravan, White Tiger Society, Lorre Wyatt, AKIR, Adira & Alana Amram, Aurora Barnes, The Owens Brothers, The Tony Lee Thomas Band, Jay Ungar & Molly Mason, Ney York Sity Labor Chorus, Roland Moussa, Roots Revelators, Kristen Graves, Bob Reid, Hudson River Sloop Singers, Walkabout Clearwater Chorus, Betty & The baby Boomers, Work O’ The Weavers, Jacob Bernz * Sarah Armour, and Amanda Palmer.
• In 2006, thirteen folk music songs made popular by Pete Seeger have been reinterpreted by Bruce Springsteen in his fourteenth studio album: “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions“
• In 2014, Wepecket Island Records recorded a Pete Seeger tribute album called “For Pete’s Sake“

Awards

Seeger received many awards and recognitions throughout his career, including:

• Induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (1972)
• The Eugene V. Debs Award (1979)
• The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award (1986)
• The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1993)
• The National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts (1994)
• Kennedy Center Honor (1994)
• The Harvard Arts Medal (1996)
• The James Smithson Bicentennial Medal (1996)^[130]
• Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1996)
• Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 1996 for his record Pete (1997)
• The Felix Varela Medal, Cuba‘s highest honor for “his humanistic and artistic work in defense of the environment and against racism” (1999)
• The Schneider Family Book Award for his children’s picture book The Deaf Musicians. (2007)
• The Mid-Hudson Civic Center Hall of Fame (2008)- Seeger and Arlo Guthrie performed the first public concert at the Poughkeepsie, New York not-for-profit family entertainment venue, close to Seeger’s home, in 1976. Grandson Tao Rodríguez-Seeger accepted the Hall of Fame plaque on behalf of his grandfather.
• Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album of 2008 for his record At 89 (2009)
• The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award for his commitment to peace and social justice as a musician, songwriter, activist, and environmentalist that spans over sixty years. (2008)
• The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2009)
• Grammy Award for Best Musical Album for Children of 2010 for his record album Tomorrow’s Children with the Rivertown Kids and Friends (2011)
• George Peabody Medal (2013)
• Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album of 2013 nomination for Pete Seeger: The Storm King; Stories, Narratives, Poems (2014)
• Woody Guthrie Prize (2014) (inaugural recipient)

Ludwig van Beethoven (/ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪtoʊvən/ (About this soundlisten); German: [ˈluːtvɪç fan ˈbeːtˌhoːfn̩] (About this soundlisten); baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist whose music ranks amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire; he remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works span the transition from the classical period to the romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. The “early” period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his “middle” period showed an individual development from the “classical” styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as “heroic.” During this time he began to suffer increasingly from deafness. In his “late” period from 1812 to his death in 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.

Born in Bonn, Beethoven’s musical talent was obvious at an early age, and he was initially harshly and intensively taught by his father Johann van Beethoven. Beethoven was later taught by the composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe, under whose tutelage he published his first work, a set of keyboard variations, in 1783. He found relief from a dysfunctional home life with the family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which subsequently became his base, and studied composition with Haydn. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and he was soon courted by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in his three Opus 1 piano trios (the earliest works to which he accorded an opus number) in 1795.

His first major orchestral work, the First Symphony, appeared in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. During this period, his hearing began to deteriorate, but he continued to conduct, premiering his Third and Fifth Symphonies in 1804 and 1808, respectively. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His last piano concerto (No. 5, Op. 73, known as the ‘Emperor’), dedicated to his frequent patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was premiered in 1810, but not with Beethoven as soloist. He was almost completely deaf by 1814, and he then gave up performing and appearing in public. He described his problems with health and his unfulfilled personal life in two letters, his “Heiligenstadt Testament” (1802) to his brothers and his unsent love letter to an unknown “Immortal Beloved” (1812).

In the years from 1810, increasingly less socially involved, Beethoven composed many of his most admired works including his later symphonies and his mature chamber music and piano sonatas. His only opera, Fidelio, which had been first performed in 1805, was revised to its final version in 1814. He composed his Missa Solemnis in the years 1819–1823, and his final, Ninth, Symphony, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, in 1822–1824. Written in his last years, his late string quartets of 1825–26 are amongst his final achievements. After some months of bedridden illness, he died in 1827. Beethoven’s works remain mainstays of the classical music repertoire.

Life and career

Family and early life

Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven (1712–1773)[n 1], a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant (in what is now the Flemish region of Belgium) who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21. Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister (music director) and hence a pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson’s rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann (1740–1792), who worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income.

Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn at what is now the Beethoven House Museum, Bonnstrasse 20. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; however, the registry of his baptism, in the Catholic Parish of St. Remigius on 17 December 1770, survives, and the custom in the region at the time was to carry out baptism within 24 hours of birth. There is a consensus, (with which Beethoven himself agreed) that his birth date was 16 December, but no documentary proof of this.

Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, and two younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, (generally known as Johann) the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.

Beethoven’s first music teacher was his father. He later had other local teachers: the court organist Gilles van den Eeden (d. 1782), Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer (a family friend, who provided keyboard tuition), Franz Rovantini (a relative, who instructed him in playing the violin and viola),[2] and court concertmaster Franz Anton Ries for the violin. His tuition began in his fifth year. The regime was harsh and intensive, often reducing him to tears. With the involvement of the insomniac Pfeiffer, there were irregular late-night sessions, with the young Beethoven being dragged from his bed to the keyboard. His musical talent was obvious at a young age. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart’s successes in this area (with his son Wolfgang and daughter Nannerl), attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming that Beethoven was six (he was seven) on the posters for his first public performance in March 1778.

1780–1792: Bonn

In 1780 or 1781, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Neefe taught him composition; in March 1783 appeared Beethoven’s first published work, a set of keyboard variations (WoO 63).[n 2] Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as a*sistant organist, at first unpaid (1782), and then as a paid employee (1784) of the court chapel. His first three piano sonatas, WoO 47, sometimes known as “Kurfürst” (“Elector”) for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich (1708–1784), were published in 1783. In the same year, the first printed reference to Beethoven appeared in the Magazin der Musik – “Louis van Beethoven [sic] … a boy of 11 years and most promising talent. He plays the piano very skilfully and with power, reads at sight very well … the chief piece he plays is Das wohltemperierte Klavier of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe puts into his hands …” Maximilian Friedrich’s successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Franz. He gave some support to Beethoven, appointing him Court Organist and paying towards his visit to Vienna of 1792.

He was introduced in these years to several people who became important in his life. He often visited the cultivated von Breuning family, at whose home he taught piano to some of the children, and where the widowed Frau von Breuning offered him a motherly friendship. Here he also met Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, who became a lifelong friend (and was to marry one of the von Breuning daughters). The von Breuning family environment offered an alternative to his home life, which was increasingly dominated by his father’s decline. Another frequenter of the von Breunings was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who became a friend and financial supporter during Beethoven’s Bonn period. Waldstein was to commission in 1791 Beethoven’s first work for the stage, the ballet Musik zu einem Ritterballett (WoO 1).

In the period 1785–90 there is virtually no record of Beethoven’s activity as a composer. This may be attributed to the lukewarm response his initial publications had attracted, and also to ongoing problems in the Beethoven family. His mother died in 1787, shortly after Beethoven’s first visit to Vienna, where he stayed for about two weeks and almost certainly met Mozart. In 1789 Beethoven’s father was forcibly retired from the service of the Court (as a consequence of his alcoholism) and it was ordered that half of his father’s pension be paid directly to Ludwig for support of the family. He contributed further to the family’s income by teaching (to which Wegeler said he had “an extraordinary aversion” ) and by playing viola in the court orchestra. This familiarized him with a variety of operas, including works by Mozart, Gluck and Paisiello. Here he also befriended Anton Reicha, a composer, flautist and violinist of about his own age who was a nephew of the court orchestra’s conductor, Josef Reicha.

From 1790 to 1792, Beethoven composed several works (none were published at the time) showing a growing range and maturity. Musicologists have identified a theme similar to those of his Third Symphony in a set of variations written in 1791. It was perhaps on Neefe’s recommendation that Beethoven received his first commissions; the Literary Society in Bonn commissioned a cantata to mark the occasion of the death in 1790 of Joseph II (WoO 87), and a further cantata, to celebrate the subsequent accession of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor (WoO 88), may have been commissioned by the Elector. These two Emperor Cantatas were never performed at the time and they remained lost until the 1880s when they were described by Johannes Brahms as “Beethoven through and through” and as such prophetic of the style which would mark his music as distinct from the classical tradition.

Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790 when the latter was travelling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time. A year and a half later, they met in Bonn on Haydn’s return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792, when Beethoven played in the orchestra at the Redoute in Godesberg. Arrangements were likely made at that time for Beethoven to study with the older master. Waldstein wrote to him before his departure: “You are going to Vienna in fulfilment of your long-frustrated wishes … With the help of a*siduous labour you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”

1792–1802: Vienna – the early years

Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, amid rumours of war spilling out of France; he learned shortly after his arrival that his father had died. Over the next few years, Beethoven responded to the widespread feeling that he was a successor to the recently deceased Mozart by studying that master’s work and writing works with a distinctly Mozartian flavour.

He did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer, but rather devoted himself to study and performance. Working under Haydn’s direction, he sought to master counterpoint. He also studied violin under Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Early in this period, he also began receiving occasional instruction from Antonio Salieri, primarily in Italian vocal composition style; this relationship persisted until at least 1802, and possibly as late as 1809.

With Haydn’s departure for England in 1794, Beethoven was expected by the Elector to return home to Bonn. He chose instead to remain in Vienna, continuing his instruction in counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger and other teachers. In any case, by this time it must have seemed clear to his employer that Bonn would fall to the French, as it did in October 1794, effectively leaving Beethoven without a stipend or the necessity to return. However, several Viennese noblemen had already recognised his ability and offered him financial support, among them Prince Joseph Franz Lobkowitz, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and Baron Gottfried van Swieten.

Assisted by his connections with Haydn and Waldstein, Beethoven began to develop a reputation as a performer and improviser in the salons of the Viennese nobility. His friend Nikolaus Simrock began publishing his compositions, starting with a set of keyboard variations on a theme of Dittersdorf (WoO 66). By 1793, he had established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he apparently withheld works from publication so that their eventual appearance would have greater impact.

His first public performance in Vienna was in March 1795, where he first performed one of his piano concertos. Shortly after this performance, he arranged for the publication of the first of his compositions to which he a*signed an opus number, the three piano trios, Opus 1. These works were dedicated to his patron Prince Lichnowsky, and were a financial success; Beethoven’s profits were nearly sufficient to cover his living expenses for a year. In 1799 Beethoven participated in (and won) a notorious piano ‘duel’ at the home of Baron Raimund Wetzlar (a former patron of Mozart) against the virtuoso Joseph Wölfl; and in the following year he similarly triumphed against Daniel Steibelt at the salon of Count Moritz von Fries. Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata the “Pathétique” (Op. 13), published in 1799 is described by the musicologist Barry Cooper as “surpass[ing] any of his previous compositions, in strength of character, depth of emotion, level of originality, and ingenuity of motivic and tonal manipulation.”

Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) between 1798 and 1800 (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz). They were published in 1801. He also completed his Septet (Op. 20) in 1799, which was one of his most popular works during his lifetime. With premieres of his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, he became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart. But his melodies, musical development, use of modulation and texture, and characterisation of emotion all set him apart from his influences, and heightened the impact some of his early works made when they were first published.[46] For the premiere of his First Symphony, he hired the Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, and staged an extensive programme, including works by Haydn and Mozart, as well as his Septet, the Symphony, and one of his piano concertos (the latter three works all then unpublished). The concert, which the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described as “the most interesting concert in a long time,” was not without difficulties; among the criticisms was that “the players did not bother to pay any attention to the soloist.” By the end of 1800, Beethoven and his music were already much in demand from patrons and publishers.

In May 1799, he taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, he fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine. Amongst his other students, from 1801 to 1805, he tutored Ferdinand Ries, who went on to become a composer and later wrote about their encounters. The young Carl Czerny, who later became a renowned music teacher himself, studied with Beethoven from 1801 to 1803. In late 1801, he met a young countess, Julie Guicciardi, through the Brunsvik family; he mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to a friend, but class difference prevented any consideration of pursuing this. He dedicated his 1802 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, now commonly known as the Moonlight Sonata, to her.

In the spring of 1801 he completed The Creatures of Prometheus, a ballet. The work received numerous performances in 1801 and 1802, and he rushed to publish a piano arrangement to capitalise on its early popularity.[50] In the spring of 1802 he completed the Second Symphony, intended for performance at a concert that was cancelled. The symphony received its premiere instead at a subscription concert in April 1803 at the Theater an der Wien, where he had been appointed composer in residence. In addition to the Second Symphony, the concert also featured the First Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto, and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Reviews were mixed, but the concert was a financial success; he was able to charge three times the cost of a typical concert ticket.

His business dealings with publishers also began to improve in 1802 when his brother Kaspar, who had previously a*sisted him casually, began to a*sume a larger role in the management of his affairs. In addition to negotiating higher prices for recently composed works, Kaspar also began selling some of his earlier unpublished compositions and encouraged him (against Beethoven’s preference) to also make arrangements and transcriptions of his more popular works for other instrument combinations. Beethoven acceded to these requests, as he could not prevent publishers from hiring others to do similar arrangements of his works.

1802–1812: The ‘heroic’ period

Deafness

Beethoven told the English pianist Charles Neate (in 1815) that he dated his hearing loss from a fit he suffered in 1798 induced by a quarrel with a singer. During its gradual decline, his hearing was further impeded by a severe form of tinnitus. As early as 1801, he wrote to Wegeler and another friend Karl Amenda, describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). The cause was probably otosclerosis, perhaps accompanied by degeneration of the auditory nerve.

On the advice of his doctor, Beethoven moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote the document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art. The letter was never sent and was discovered in his papers after his death. The letters to Wegeler and Amenda were not so despairing; in them Beethoven commented also on his ongoing professional and financial success at this period, and his determination, as he expressed it to Wegeler, to “seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely.” In 1806, Beethoven noted on one of his musical sketches “Let your deafness no longer be a secret – even in art.”

Beethoven’s hearing loss did not prevent him from composing music, but it made playing at concerts—an important source of income at this phase of his life—increasingly difficult. (It also contributed substantially to his social withdrawal.) Czerny remarked however that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until 1812.  Beethoven never became totally deaf; in his final years he was still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sounds.

The ‘heroic’ style

Beethoven’s return to Vienna from Heiligenstadt was marked by a change in musical style, and is now often designated as the start of his middle or “heroic” period characterised by many original works composed on a grand scale. According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven said, “I am not satisfied with the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new way.”  An early major work employing this new style was the Third Symphony in E flat Op. 55, known as the Eroica, written in 1803–04. The idea of creating a symphony based on the career of Napoleon may have been suggested to Beethoven by Count Bernadotte in 1798.[65] Beethoven, sympathetic to the ideal of the heroic revolutionary leader, originally gave the symphony the title “Bonaparte”, but disillusioned by Napoleon declaring himself Emperor in 1804, he scratched Napoleon’s name from the manuscript’s title page, and the symphony was published in 1806 with its present title and the subtitle “to celebrate the memory of a great man.” The Eroica was longer and larger in scope than any previous symphony. When it premiered in early 1805 it received a mixed reception. Some listeners objected to its length or misunderstood its structure, while others viewed it as a masterpiece.

Other middle period works extend in the same dramatic manner the musical language Beethoven had inherited. The Rasumovsky string quartets, and the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas share the heroic spirit of the Third Symphony. Other works of this period include the Fourth through Eighth Symphonies, the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, the opera Fidelio, and the Violin Concerto.[68] Beethoven was hailed in 1810 by the writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, in an influential review in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, as the greatest of (what he considered) the three “Romantic” composers, (that is, ahead of Haydn and Mozart); in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony his music, wrote Hoffmann, “sets in motion terror, fear, horror, pain, and awakens the infinite yearning that is the essence of romanticism”.

During this time Beethoven’s income came from publishing his works, from performances of them, and from his patrons, for whom he gave private performances and copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive period before their publication. Some of his early patrons, including Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Lichnowsky, gave him annual stipends in addition to commissioning works and purchasing published works. Perhaps his most important aristocratic patron was Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, who in 1803 or 1804 began to study piano and composition with him. They became friends, and their meetings continued until 1824. Beethoven was to dedicate 14 compositions to Rudolf, including some of his major works such as the Archduke Trio Op. 97 (1811) and Missa solemnis Op. 123 (1823).

His position at the Theater an der Wien was terminated when the theatre changed management in early 1804, and he was forced to move temporarily to the suburbs of Vienna with his friend Stephan von Breuning. This slowed work on Leonore, (his original title for his opera), his largest work to date, for a time. It was delayed again by the Austrian censor and finally premiered, under its present title of Fidelio in November 1805 to houses that were nearly empty because of the French occupation of the city. In addition to being a financial failure, this version of Fidelio was also a critical failure, and Beethoven began revising it.

Despite this failure, Beethoven continued to attract recognition. In 1807 the musician and publisher Muzio Clementi secured the rights for publishing his works in England, and Haydn’s former patron Prince Esterházy commissioned a mass (the Mass in C, Op. 86) for his wife’s name-day. But he could not count on such recognition alone. A colossal benefit concert which he organized in December 1808, and was widely advertised, included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth (Pastoral) symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, extracts from the Mass in C, the scena and aria Ah! perfido Op. 65 and the Choral Fantasy op. 80. There was a large audience, (including Czerny and the young Ignaz Moscheles). But it was under-rehearsed, involved many stops and starts, and during the Fantasia Beethoven was noted shouting at the musicians “badly played, wrong, again!” The financial outcome is unknown.

In the autumn of 1808, after having been rejected for a position at the Royal Theatre, Beethoven had received an offer from Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, for a well-paid position as Kapellmeister at the court in Cassel. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving representations from Beethoven’s friends, pledged to pay him a pension of 4000 florins a year. In the event, Archduke Rudolf paid his share of the pension on the agreed date. Kinsky, immediately called to military duty, did not contribute and died in November 1812 after falling from his horse. The Austrian currency destabilized and Lobkowitz went bankrupt in 1811 so that to benefit from the agreement Beethoven eventually had recourse to the law, which in 1815 brought him some recompense.

The imminence of war reaching Vienna itself was felt in early 1809. In April Beethoven had completed writing his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, which the musicologist Alfred Einstein has described as “the apotheosis of the military concept” in Beethoven’s music. Archduke Rudolf left the capital with the Imperial family in early May, prompting Beethoven’s piano sonata Les Adieux, (Sonata No. 26, Op. 81a), actually entitled by Beethoven in German “Das Lebewohl” (The Farewell), of which the final movement, “Das Wiedersehen” (The Return), is dated in the manuscript with the date of Rudolf’s homecoming of 30 January 1810. During the French bombardment of Vienna in May Beethoven took refuge in the cellar of the house of his brother Kaspar. The subsequent occupation of Vienna and the disruptions to cultural life and to Beethoven’s publishers, together with Beethoven’s poor health at the end of 1809, explain his significantly reduced output during this period, although other notable works of the year include his String Quartet No. 10 in F major, Op. 74 (known as The Harp) and the Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp major op. 78, dedicated to Josephine’s sister Therese Brunsvik.

At the end of 1809 Beethoven was commissioned to write incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont. The result (an overture, and nine additional entractes and vocal pieces, Op. 84), which appeared in 1810 fitted well with Beethoven’s “heroic” style and he became interested in Goethe, setting three of his poems as songs (Op. 83) and learning about the poet from a mutual acquaintance, Bettina Brentano (who also wrote to Goethe at this time about Beethoven). Other works of this period in a similar vein were the F minor String Quartet Op. 95, to which Beethoven gave the subtitle Quartetto serioso, and the Op. 97 Piano Trio in B flat major known, from its dedication to his patron Rudolph as the Archduke Trio.

In the spring of 1811, Beethoven became seriously ill, suffering headaches and high fever. His doctor Johann Malfatti recommended him to take a cure at the spa of Teplitz (now Teplice in Czechia) where he wrote two more overtures and sets of incidental music for dramas, this time by August von Kotzebue – King Stephen Op. 117 and The Ruins of Athens Op. 113. Advised again to visit Teplitz in 1812 he met there with Goethe, who wrote: “His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but surely does not make it any more enjoyable … by his attitude.” Beethoven wrote to his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel that “Goethe delights far too much in the court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet.” But following their meeting he began a setting for choir and orchestra of Goethe’s Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) (Op. 112), completed in 1815. After this was published in 1822 with a dedication to the poet, Beethoven wrote to him “The admiration, the love and esteem which already in my youth I cherished for the one and only immortal Goethe have persisted.”

“The Immortal Beloved”

While he was at Teplitz in 1812 he wrote a ten-page love letter to his “Immortal Beloved”, which he never sent to its addressee. The identity of the intended recipient was long a subject of debate, although the musicologist Maynard Solomon has convincingly demonstrated that the intended recipient must have been Antonie Brentano; other candidates have included Julie Guicciardi, Therese Malfatti and Josephine Brunsvik.

All of these had been regarded by Beethoven as possible soulmates during his first decade in Vienna. Guicciardi, although she flirted with Beethoven, never had any serious interest in him and married Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg in November 1803. (Beethoven insisted to his later secretary and biographer, Anton Schindler, that Gucciardi had “sought me out, crying, but I scorned her.”)   Josephine had since Beethoven’s initial infatuation with her married the elderly Count Joseph Deym, who died in 1804. Beethoven began to visit her and commenced a passionate correspondence. Initially, he accepted that Josephine could not love him, but he continued to address himself to her even after she had moved to Budapest, finally demonstrating that he had got the message in his last letter to her of 1807: “I thank you for wishing still to appear as if I were not altogether banished from your memory”.[90] Malfatti was the niece of Beethoven’s doctor, and he had proposed to her in 1810. He was 40, she was 19 – the proposal was rejected.  She is now remembered as the recipient of the piano bagatelle Für Elise.

Antonie (Toni) Brentano (née von Birkenstock), ten years younger than Beethoven, was the wife of Franz Brentano, the half-brother of Bettina Brentano, who provided Beethoven’s introduction to the family. It would seem that Antonie and Beethoven had an affair during 1811–1812. Antonie left Vienna with her husband in late 1812 and never met with (or apparently corresponded with) Beethoven again, although in her later years she wrote and spoke fondly of him.

After 1812 there are no reports of any romantic liaisons of Beethoven; it is, however, clear from his correspondence of the period and, later, from the conversation books, that he would occasionally resort to prostitutes.

1813–1822: Acclaim

Family problems

In early 1813 Beethoven apparently went through a difficult emotional period, and his compositional output dropped. His personal appearance degraded—it had generally been neat—as did his manners in public, notably when dining.

Family issues may have played a part in this. Beethoven had visited his brother Johann at the end of October 1812. He wished to end Johann’s cohabitation with Therese Obermayer, a woman who already had an illegitimate child. He was unable to convince Johann to end the relationship and appealed to the local civic and religious authorities, but Johann and Therese married on 8 November.

The illness and eventual death of his brother Kaspar from tuberculosis became an increasing concern. Kaspar had been ill for some time; in 1813 Beethoven lent him 1500 florins, to procure the repayment of which he was ultimately led to complex legal measures. After Kaspar died on 15 November 1815, Beethoven immediately became embroiled in a protracted legal dispute with Kaspar’s wife Johanna over custody of their son Karl, then nine years old. Beethoven had successfully applied to Kaspar to have himself named the sole guardian of the boy. A late codicil to Kaspar’s will gave him and Johanna joint guardianship. While Beethoven was successful at having his nephew removed from her custody in January 1816, and had him removed to a private school in 1818 he was again preoccupied with the legal processes around Karl. While giving evidence to the court for the nobility, the Landrechte, Beethoven was unable to prove that he was of noble birth and as a consequence, on 18 December 1818 the case was transferred to the civil magistracy of Vienna, where he lost sole guardianship. He only regained custody after intensive legal struggles in 1820. During the years that followed, Beethoven frequently interfered in his nephew’s life in what Karl perceived as an overbearing manner.

Post-war Vienna

Beethoven was finally motivated to begin significant composition again in June 1813, when news arrived of Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Vitoria by a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington. The inventor Mälzel persuaded him to write a work commemorating the event for his mechanical instrument the Panharmonicon. This Beethoven also transcribed for orchestra as Wellington’s Victory (Op. 91, also known as the Battle Symphony).[n 8] It was first performed on 8 December, along with his Seventh Symphony, Op. 92, at a charity concert for victims of the war, a concert whose success led to its repeat on 12 December. The orchestra included several leading and rising musicians who happened to be in Vienna at the time, including Giacomo Meyerbeer and Domenico Dragonetti. The work received repeat performances at concerts staged by Beethoven in January and February 1814. These concerts brought Beethoven more profit than any others in his career, and enabled him to buy the bank shares that were eventually to be the most valuable a*sets in his estate at his death.

Beethoven’s renewed popularity led to demands for a revival of Fidelio, which, in its third revised version, was also well received at its July opening in Vienna, and was frequently staged there during the following years. Beethoven’s publishers, Artaria, commissioned the 20-year old Moscheles to prepare a piano score of the opera, which he inscribed “Finished, with God’s help!” – to which Beethoven added “O Man, help thyself.”[n 9] That summer Beethoven composed a piano sonata for the first time in five years, his (Sonata in E minor, Opus 90). He was also one of many composers who produced music in a patriotic vein to entertain the many heads of state and diplomats who came to the Congress of Vienna that began in November 1814, with the cantata Der glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment) (Op. 136) and similar choral works which, in the words of Maynard Solomon “broadened Beethoven’s popularity, [but] did little to enhance his reputation as a serious composer.”

In April and May 1814, playing in his Archduke Trio, Beethoven made his last public appearances as a soloist. The composer Louis Spohr noted: “the piano was badly out of tune, which Beethoven minded little, since he did not hear it … there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist … I was deeply saddened.” From 1814 onwards Beethoven used for conversation ear-trumpets designed by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (a number of these are on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn).

His 1815 compositions include an expressive second setting of the poem “An die Hoffnung” (Op. 94) in 1815. Compared to its first setting in 1805 (a gift for Josephine Brunsvik), it was “far more dramatic … The entire spirit is that of an operatic scena.” But his energy seemed to be dropping: apart from these works, he wrote the two cello sonatas Op. 101 nos. 1 and 2, and a few minor pieces, and began but abandoned a sixth piano concerto.

Pause

Between 1815 and 1819 Beethoven’s output dropped again to a level unique in his mature life. He attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an “inflammatory fever”) that he had for more than a year, starting in October 1816. His biographer Maynard Solomon suggests it is also doubtless a consequence of the ongoing legal problems concerning his nephew Karl,  and of Beethoven finding himself increasingly at odds with current musical trends. Unsympathetic to developments in German romanticism that featured the supernatural (as in operas by Spohr, Heinrich Marschner and Carl Maria von Weber), he also “resisted the impending Romantic fragmentation of the … cyclic forms of the Classical era into small forms and lyric mood pieces” and turned towards study of Bach, Handel and Palestrina. An old connection was renewed in 1817 when Maelzel sought and obtained, Beethoven’s endorsement for his newly developed metronome. During these years the few major works he completed include the 1818 Hammerklavier Sonata (Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106) and his settings of poems by Alois Jeitteles, An die ferne Geliebte Op. 98, (1816), which introduced the song cycle into classical repertoire. In 1818 he began musical sketches that were eventually to form part of his final Ninth Symphony.

By early 1818 Beethoven’s health had improved, and his nephew Karl, now aged 11, moved in with him in January, (although within a year Karl’s mother had won him back in the courts). By now Beethoven’s hearing had again seriously deteriorated, necessitating Beethoven and his interlocutors writing in notebooks to carry out conversations. These ‘conversation books’ are a rich written resource for his life from this period onwards. They contain discussions about music, business, and personal life; they are also a valuable source for his contacts and for investigations into how he intended his music should be performed, and of his opinions of the art of music. His household management had also improved somewhat with the help of Nannette Streicher. A proprietor of the Stein piano workshop and a personal friend, Streicher had a*sisted in Beethoven’s care during his illness; she continued to provide some support, and in her he finally found a skilled cook. A testimonial to the esteem in which Beethoven was held in England was the presentation to him in this year by Thomas Broadwood, the proprietor of the company, of a Broadwood piano, for which Beethoven expressed thanks. He was not well enough, however, to carry out a visit to London that year which had been proposed by the Philharmonic Society.

Despite the time occupied by his ongoing legal struggles over Karl, which involved continuing extensive correspondence and lobbying, two events sparked off Beethoven’s major composition projects in 1819. The first was the announcement of Archduke Rudolf’s promotion to Cardinal-Archbishop as Archbishop of Olomouc (now in Czechia), which triggered the Missa Solemnis Op. 123, intended to be ready for his installation in Olomouc in March 1820. The other was the invitation by the publisher Antonio Diabelli to fifty Viennese composers, including Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Czerny and the 8-year old Franz Liszt, to compose a variation each on a theme which he provided. Beethoven was spurred to outdo the competition and by mid-1819 had already completed 20 variations of what were to become the 33 Diabelli Variations op. 120. Neither of these works was to be completed for a few years. A significant tribute of 1819, however, was Archduke Rudolf’s set of forty piano variations on a theme written for him by Beethoven (WoO 200) and dedicated to the master. Beethoven’s portrait by Ferdinand Schimon [de] of this year, which was one of the most familiar images of him for the next century, was described by Schindler as, despite its artistic weaknesses, “in the rendering of that particular look, the majestic forehead … the firmly shut mouth and the chin shaped like a shell, … truer to nature than any other picture.”

Beethoven’s determination over the following years to write the Mass for Rudolf was not motivated by any devout Catholicism. Although he had been born a Catholic, the form of religion as practised at the court in Bonn where he grew up was, in the words of Maynard Solomon, “a compromise ideology that permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between the Church and rationalism.”. Beethoven’s Tagebuch (a diary he kept on an occasional basis between 1812 and 1818) shows his interest in a variety of religious philosophies, including those of India, Egypt and the Orient and the writings of the Rig-Veda. In a letter to Rudolf of July 1821, Beethoven shows his belief in a personal God: “God … sees into my innermost heart and knows that as a man I perform most conscientiously and on all occasions the duties which Humanity, God, and Nature enjoin upon me.” On one of the sketches for the Missa Solemnis he wrote “Plea for inner and outer peace.”

Beethoven’s status was confirmed by the series of Concerts sprituels given in Vienna by the choirmaster Franz Xaver Gebauer in the 1819/1820 and 1820/1821 seasons, during which all eight of his symphonies to date, plus the oratorio Christus and the Mass in C, were performed. Beethoven was typically underwhelmed: when in an April 1820 conversation book a friend mentioned Gebauer, Beethoven wrote in reply “Geh! Bauer” (“Begone, peasant!”)

It was in 1819 that Beethoven was first approached by the publisher Moritz Schlesinger who won the suspicious composer round, whilst visiting him at Mödling, by procuring for him a plate of roast veal. One consequence of this was that Schlesinger was to secure Beethoven’s three last piano sonatas and his final quartets; part of the attraction to Beethoven was that Schlesinger had publishing facilities in Germany and France, and connections in England, which could overcome problems of copyright piracy. The first of the three sonatas, for which Beethoven contracted with Schlesinger in 1820 at 30 ducats per sonata, (further delaying completion of the Mass), was sent to the publisher at the end of that year (the Sonata in E major, Op. 109, dedicated to Maximiliane, Antonie Brentano’s daughter).

The start of 1821 saw Beethoven once again in poor health, suffering from rheumatism and jaundice. Despite this he continued work on the remaining piano sonatas he had promised to Schlesinger (the Sonata in A flat major Op. 110 was published in December), and on the Mass. In early 1822 Beethoven sought a reconciliation with his brother Johann, whose marriage in 1812 had met with his disapproval, and Johann now became a regular visitor (as witnessed by the conversation books of the period) and began to a*sist him in his business affairs, including him lending him money against ownership of some of his compositions. He also sought some reconciliation with the mother of his nephew, including supporting her income, although this did not meet with the approval of the contrary Karl. Two commissions at the end of 1822 improved Beethoven’s financial prospects. In November the Philharmonic Society of London offered a commission for a symphony, which he accepted with delight, as an appropriate home for the Ninth Symphony on which he was working. Also in November Prince Nikolai Galitzin of Saint Petersburg offered to pay Beethoven’s asking price for three string quartets. Beethoven set the price at the high level of 50 ducats per quartet in a letter dictated to his nephew Karl, who was then living with him.

During 1822, Anton Schindler, who in 1840 became one of Beethoven’s earliest and most influential (but not always reliable) biographers, began to work as the composer’s unpaid secretary. He was later to claim that he had been a member of Beethoven’s circle since 1814, but there is no evidence for this. Cooper suggests that “Beethoven greatly appreciated his a*sistance, but did not think much of him as a man.”

1823–1827: The final years

The year 1823 saw the completion of three notable works, all of which had occupied Beethoven for some years, namely the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony and the Diabelli Variations.

Beethoven at last presented the manuscript of the completed Missa to Rudolph on 19 March (more than a year after the Archduke’s enthronement as Archbishop). He was not however in a hurry to get it published or performed as he had formed a notion that he could profitably sell manuscripts of the work to various courts in Germany and Europe at 50 ducats each. One of the few who took up this offer was Louis XVIII of France, who also sent Beethoven a heavy gold medallion. The Symphony and the variations took up most of the rest of Beethoven’s working year. Diabelli hoped to publish both works, but the potential prize of the Mass excited many other publishers to lobby Beethoven for it, including Schlesinger and Carl Friedrich Peters. (In the end, it was obtained by Schotts).

Beethoven had become critical of the Viennese reception of his works. He told the visiting Johann Friedrich Rochlitz in 1822:

You will hear nothing of me here … Fidelio? They cannot give it, nor do they want to listen to it. The symphonies? They have no time for them. My concertos? Everyone grinds out only the stuff he himself has made. The solo pieces? They went out of fashion long ago, and here fashion is everything. At the most, Schuppanzigh occasionally digs up a quartet.

He, therefore, enquired about premiering the Missa and the Ninth Symphony in Berlin. When his Viennese admirers learnt of this, they pleaded with him to arrange local performances. Beethoven was won over, and the symphony was first performed, along with sections of the Missa Solemnis, on 7 May 1824, to great acclaim at the Kärntnertortheater.[ Beethoven stood by the conductor Michael Umlauf during the concert beating time (although Umlauf had warned the singers and orchestra to ignore him), and because of his deafness was not even aware of the applause which followed until he was turned to witness it. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung gushed, “inexhaustible genius had shown us a new world”, and Carl Czerny wrote that the Symphony “breathes such a fresh, lively, indeed youthful spirit … so much power, innovation, and beauty as ever [came] from the head of this original man, although he certainly sometimes led the old wigs to shake their heads.” The concert did not net Beethoven much money, as the expenses of mounting it were very high. A second concert on 24 May, in which the producer guaranteed him a minimum fee, was poorly attended; nephew Karl noted that “many people [had] already gone into the country”. It was Beethoven’s last public concert. Beethoven accused Schindler of either cheating him or mismanaging the ticket receipts; this led to the replacement of Schindler as Beethoven’s secretary by Karl Holz, (who was the second violinist in the Schuppanzigh Quartet), although by 1826 Beethoven and Schindler were reconciled.

Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Galitzin, despite failing health. The first of these, the quartet in E♭ major, Op. 127 was premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in March 1825. While writing the next, the quartet in A minor, Op. 132, in April 1825, he was struck by a sudden illness. Recuperating in Baden, he included in the quartet its slow movement to which he gave the title “Holy song of thanks (‘Heiliger Dankgesang’) to the Divinity, from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode.”  The next quartet to be completed was the Thirteenth, op. 130, in B♭ major. In six movements, the last, contrapuntal movement proved to be very difficult for both the performers and the audience at its premiere in March 1826 (again by the Schuppanzigh Quartet). Beethoven was persuaded by the publisher Artaria, for an additional fee, to write a new finale, and to issue the last movement as a separate work (the Grosse Fugue, Op. 133). Beethoven’s favourite was the last of this series, the quartet in C♯ minor Op. 131, which he rated as his most perfect single work.

Beethoven’s relations with his nephew Karl had continued to be stormy; Beethoven’s letters to him were demanding and reproachful. In August, Karl, who had been seeing his mother again against Beethoven’s wishes, attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived and after discharge from hospital went to recuperate in the village of Gneixendorf with Beethoven and his uncle Johann. Whilst in Gneixendorf, Beethoven completed a further quartet, (Op. 135 in F major) which he sent to Schlesinger. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement, Beethoven wrote in the manuscript “Muss es sein?” (“Must it be?”); the response, over the faster main theme of the movement, is “Es muss sein!” (“It must be!”). The whole movement is headed “Der schwer gefasste Entschluss” (“The Difficult Decision”). Following this in November Beethoven completed his final composition, the replacement finale for the op. 130 quartet.  Beethoven at this time was already ill and depressed; he began to quarrel with Johann, insisting that Johann made Karl his heir, in preference to Johann’s wife.

Death

On his return journey to Vienna from Gneixendorf in December 1826, illness struck Beethoven again. He was attended until his death by Dr. Andreas Wawruch, who throughout December noticed symptoms including fever, jaundice and dropsy, with swollen limbs, coughing and breathing difficulties. Several operations were carried out to tap off the excess fluid from Beethoven’s abdomen.

Karl stayed by Beethoven’s bedside during December, but left after the beginning of January to join the army at Iglau and did not see his uncle again, although he wrote to him shortly afterwards “My dear father … I am living in contentment and regret only that I am separated from you.” Immediately following Karl’s departure, Beethoven wrote a will making his nephew his sole heir. Later in January, Beethoven was attended by Dr. Malfatti, whose treatment (recognizing the seriousness of his patient’s condition) was largely centred on alcohol. As the news spread of the severity of Beethoven’s condition, many old friends came to visit, including Diabelli, Schuppanzigh, Lichnowsky, Schindler, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and his pupil Ferdinand Hiller. Many tributes and gifts were also sent, including £100 from the Philharmonic Society in London and a case of expensive wine from Schotts. During this period, Beethoven was almost completely bedridden despite occasional brave efforts to rouse himself. On March 24, he said to Schindler and the others present “Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est” (“Applaud, friends, the comedy is over.”) Later that day, when the wine from Schott arrived, he whispered, “Pity – too late.”

Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56; only his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner and a “Frau van Beethoven” (possibly his old enemy Johanna van Beethoven) were present. According to Hüttenbrenner, at about 5 in the afternoon there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder: “Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched … not another breath, not a heartbeat more.” Many visitors came to the death-bed; some locks of the dead man’s hair were retained by Hüttenbrenner and Hiller, amongst others. An autopsy revealed Beethoven suffered from significant liver damage, which may have been due to his heavy alcohol consumption,  and also considerable dilation of the auditory and other related nerves.

Beethoven’s funeral procession in Vienna on 29 March 1827 was attended by an estimated 10,000 people. Franz Schubert and the violinist Joseph Mayseder were among the torchbearers. A funeral oration by the poet Franz Grillparzer was read. Beethoven was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna, after a requiem mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche) in Alserstrasse. Beethoven’s remains were exhumed for study in 1863, and moved in 1888 to Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof where they were reinterred in a grave adjacent to that of Schubert.

Music

The “three periods”

The historian William Drabkin notes that as early as 1818 a writer had proposed a three-period division of Beethoven’s works and that such a division (albeit often adopting different dates or works to denote changes in period) eventually became a convention adopted by all of Beethoven’s biographers, starting with Schindler, F.-J. Fétis and Wilhelm von Lenz. Later writers sought to identify sub-periods within this generally accepted structure. Its drawbacks include that it generally omits a fourth period, that is, the early years in Bonn, whose works are less often considered; and that it ignores the differential development of Beethoven’s composing styles over the years for different categories of work. The piano sonatas, for example, were written throughout Beethoven’s life in a progression that can be interpreted as continuous development; the symphonies do not all demonstrate linear progress; of all of the types of composition, perhaps the quartets, which seem to group themselves in three periods (Op. 18 in 1801–1802, Opp. 59, 74 and 95 in 1806–1814, and the quartets, today known as ‘late’, from 1824 onwards) fit this categorization most neatly. Drabkin concludes that “now that we have lived with them so long … as long as there are programme notes, essays written to accompany recordings, and all-Beethoven recitals, it is hard to imagine us ever giving up the notion of discrete stylistic periods.”

Bonn 1782–1792

Some forty compositions, including ten very early works written by Beethoven up to 1785, survive from the years that Beethoven lived in Bonn. It has been suggested that Beethoven largely abandoned composition between 1785 and 1790, possibly as a result of negative critical reaction to his first published works. A 1784 review in Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s influential Musikalischer Almanack compared Beethoven’s efforts to those of rank beginners. The three early piano quartets of 1785 (WoO 36), closely modelled on violin sonatas of Mozart, show his dependency on the music of the period. Beethoven himself was not to give any of the Bonn works an opus number, save for those which he reworked for use later in his career, for example, some of the songs in his Op. 52 collection (1805) and the Wind Octet reworked in Vienna in 1793 to become his String Quintet, Op. 4. Charles Rosen points out that Bonn was something of a backwater compared to Vienna; Beethoven was unlikely to be acquainted with the mature works of Haydn or Mozart, and Rosen opines that his early style was closer to that of Hummel or Muzio Clementi. Kernan suggests that at this stage Beethoven was not especially notable for his works in sonata style, but more for his vocal music; his move to Vienna in 1792 set him on the path to develop the music in the genres he became known for.

The first period

The conventional “first period” begins after Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna in 1792. In the first few years he seems to have composed less than he did at Bonn, and his Piano Trios, op.1 were not published until 1795. From this point onward, he had mastered the ‘Viennese style’ (best known today from Haydn and Mozart) and was making the style his own. His works from 1795 to 1800 are larger in scale than was the norm (writing sonatas in four movements, not three, for instance); typically he uses a scherzo rather than a minuet and trio; and his music often includes dramatic, even sometimes over-the-top, uses of extreme dynamics and tempi and chromatic harmony. It was this that led Haydn to believe the third trio of Op.1 was too difficult for an audience to appreciate.

He also explored new directions and gradually expanded the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the early period are the first and second symphonies, the set of six string quartets Opus 18, the first two piano concertos, and the first dozen or so piano sonatas, including the famous Pathétique sonata, Op. 13.

The middle period

His middle (heroic) period began shortly after the personal crisis brought on by his recognition of encroaching deafness. It includes large-scale works that express heroism and struggle. Middle-period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3–8), the last two piano concertos, the Triple Concerto and violin concerto, five string quartets (Nos. 7–11), several piano sonatas (including the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas), the Kreutzer violin sonata and his only opera, Fidelio.

The “middle period” is sometimes a*sociated with a “heroic” manner of composing, but the use of the term “heroic” has become increasingly controversial in Beethoven scholarship. The term is more frequently used as an alternative name for the middle period. The appropriateness of the term “heroic” to describe the whole middle period has been questioned as well: while some works, like the Third and Fifth Symphonies, are easy to describe as “heroic”, many others, like his Symphony No. 6, Pastoral or his Piano Sonata No. 24, are not.

The late period

Beethoven’s late period began in the decade 1810-1819. He began a renewed study of older music, including works by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, that were then being published in the first attempts at complete editions. Many of Beethoven’s late works include fugal material. The overture The Consecration of the House (1822) was an early work to attempt to incorporate these influences. A new style emerged, now called his “late period”. He returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade: the works of the late period include the last five piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (see below), and two works for very large forces: the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony.[citation needed] Works from this period are characterised by their intellectual depth, their formal innovations, and their intense, highly personal expression. The String Quartet, Op. 131 has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement. Other compositions from this period include the Missa solemnis, the last five string quartets (including the massive Große Fuge) and the last five piano sonatas.

Legacy

The Beethoven Monument in Bonn was unveiled in August 1845, in honour of the 75th anniversary of his birth. It was the first statue of a composer created in Germany, and the music festival that accompanied the unveiling was the impetus for the very hasty construction of the original Beethovenhalle in Bonn (it was designed and built within less than a month, on the urging of Franz Liszt). A statue to Mozart had been unveiled in Salzburg, Austria, in 1842. Vienna did not honour Beethoven with a statue until 1880.

There is a museum, the Beethoven House, the place of his birth, in central Bonn. The same city has hosted a musical festival, the Beethovenfest, since 1845. The festival was initially irregular but has been organised annually since 2007.

The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies serves as a museum, research center, and host of lectures and performances devoted solely to this life and works.

His music features twice on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph record containing a broad sample of the images, common sounds, languages, and music of Earth, sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes.

The third largest crater on Mercury is named in his honour, as is the main-belt asteroid 1815 Beethoven.

A 7-foot cast bronze statue of Beethoven by sculptor Arnold Foerster was installed in 1932 in Pershing Square, Los Angeles; it was dedicated to William Andrews Clark Jr., founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Al Hoffman (September 25, 1902 – July 21, 1960) was an American song composer.[1] He was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number-one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today. He was posthumously made a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984. The popularity of Hoffman’s song, “Mairzy Doats”, co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article “Our Mairzy Dotage”. The New York Times simply wrote the headline, “That Song”.

Hoffman’s songs were recorded by singers such as Frank Sinatra (“Close To You”, “I’m Gonna Live Until I Die”), Billy Eckstine (“I Apologize”) Perry Como (“Papa Loves Mambo”, “Hot Diggity”), Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (“Who Walks In When I Walk Out”), Nat “King” Cole, Tony Bennett, the Merry Macs, Sophie Tucker, Eartha Kitt, Patsy Cline, Patti Page (“Allegheny Moon”) and Bette Midler. In October, 2007, Hoffman’s “I’m Gonna Live Til I Die” was the lead single from Queen Latifah’s album, Trav’lin’ Light.

Though Hoffman had apparently little connection to Chicago, he wrote the Chicago Bears fight song “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” in 1941 under the pseudonym Jerry Downs.

Life and career

Hoffman was born in Minsk in Russia (now Belarus), to a Jewish family. His parents moved to Seattle, Washington in the United States when he was six.[3] After graduating from high school in Seattle, he started his own band, playing the drums, and moved to New York City in 1928 to pursue a music career.[3] Though he continued playing the drums in night club bands and selling bagels door-to-door on Broadway, he began writing songs, collaborating with other songwriters such as Leon Carr, Leo Corday, Mann Curtis, Mack David, Milton Drake, Al Goodhart, Walter Kent, Sammy Lerner, Jerry Livingston, Al Sherman, Dick Manning, Bob Merrill, Ed Nelson, and Maurice Sigler.[3]

In 1934, he moved to London to work on stage productions and movies, co-writing the hit songs “She Shall Have Music” and “Everything Stops for Tea”.[3] He returned to the U.S. three years later. In 1984, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has over 1,500 songs registered with A.S.C.A.P. Hoffman died in New York City of prostate cancer, and was buried in New Jersey.

Partial list of published songs

Songs written by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning

• “Allegheny Moon” (1956)
• “Dennis The Menace Song” (1960)
• “Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea” (1954)
• “Hot Diggity” (1956)
• “I Can’t Tell A Waltz From A Tango” (1954)
• “I Love Her, That’s Why!” (for George Burns and Gracie Allen) (1955)
• “Mama, Teach Me to Dance” (1956)
• “Moon Talk” (1958)
• “O Dio Mio” (1960)
• “Takes Two to Tango” (1952)

Songs written by Al Hoffman, Dick Manning, and another collaborator

• “Are You Really Mine?” (1958) (with Mark Markwell)
• “Make Me a Miracle” (1958) (with Mark Markwell)
• “Mighty Pretty Waltz” (1950) (with Moon Mullican)
• “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958) (with Mark Markwell)
• “Papa Loves Mambo” (1954) (with Bix Reichner)
• “Secretly” (1958) (with Mark Markwell)

Songs written by Al Hoffman, Mack David, and Jerry Livingston

• “Close to you” (1943)
• “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” (1948)
• “Chi-Baba, Chi-Baba” (1947)
• “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” (1949)
• “Sing, Sweet Nightingale” (1950)
• “So This Is Love” (1950)
• “The Unbirthday Song” (1951)
• “Trick or Treat for Halloween” (1952)

Songs written by Al Hoffman, Maurice Sigler, and Al Goodhart

• “Everything Stops for Tea” (1935)
• “Everything’s in Rhythm with My Heart” (1935)
• “I Saw Stars” (1934)
• “I’m in a Dancing Mood” (1936)
• “There Isn’t Any Limit to My Love” (1936)
• “Why Don’t You Practice What You Preach?”
• “Where There’s You There’s Me”

Others

• “Apple Blossoms and Chapel Bells”
• “Auf Wiedersehn, My Dear”
• “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” (1941)^[4]
• “Black-Eyed Susan Brown”
• “Close to You” (with Jerry Livingston and Carl Lampl)
• “Don’t Stay Away Too Long”
• “Fit as a Fiddle” (1932) (with Arthur Freed and Al Goodhart)
• “From One Minute to Another”
• “Goodnight, Wherever You Are”
• “Heartaches” (1931) (lyrics by John Klenner)
• “I Apologize” (1931) (lyrics by Al Goodhart)
• “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake” (1950) (with Bob Merrill and Clem Watts)
• “I Must Have One More Kiss Kiss Kiss”
• “I Paid For The Lie I Told You” (1939) (with Al Sherman and Enoch Light)
• “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die” (1955) (with Walter Kent and Mann Curtis)
• “If You Saw What I Saw In Nassau” (1949) (with Al Sherman and Clem Watts)
• “Little Man You’ve Had a Busy Day” (1934) [with Maurice Sigler] [music by Mabel Wayne]
• “Mairzy Doats” (1943) (with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake)
• “Roll Up the Carpet” (1933) (with lyrics by Raymond Klages, music by Raymond Klages, Al Goodhart, and Hoffman)
• “She Broke My Heart in Three Places” (c. 1944) (with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake)
• “Fuzzy Wuzzy” (1944) (with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake)
• “The Story of a Starry Night” (1941) (with Jerry Livingston and Mann Curtis)
• “What’s the Good Word, Mr. Bluebird?” (1943) (with Allan Roberts and Jerry Livingston)
• “A Whale of a Tale” (1954) (with Norman Gimbel)
• “Who Walks in When I Walk Out?” (1933) (with Ralph Freed and Al Goodhart)
• “Without Rhythm”
• “You Meet the Nicest People in Your Dreams” (1939) (with Al Goodhart and Manny Kurtz)

George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham! and later embarked on a solo career. Michael sold over 80 million records worldwide making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He achieved seven number one songs on the UK Singles Chart and eight number one songs on the US Billboard Hot 100. Michael won various music awards including two Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three American Music Awards, 12 Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards and six Ivor Novello Awards. In 2008, he was ranked 40th on Billboard’s list of the Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time.

Born in East Finchley, Michael formed the duo Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981. The band’s first two albums, Fantastic (1983) and Make It Big (1984), reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. Certifying themselves as a global act, Wham!’s tour of China in April 1985 was the first visit to China by a Western popular music act, and generated worldwide media coverage. Michael’s first solo single “Careless Whisper” reached number one in over 20 countries, including the UK and US. His debut solo album, Faith, was released in 1987, topping the UK Albums Chart and staying at number one on the Billboard 200 for 12 weeks. Four singles from the album—”Faith”, “Father Figure”, “One More Try”, and “Monkey”—reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Faith was awarded Album of the Year at the 1989 Grammy Awards. Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990) was a UK number-one and included the Billboard Hot 100 number-one “Praying for Time”.[5] “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, a 1991 duet with Elton John, was also a transatlantic number one. Michael went on to release the albums Older (1996), Songs from the Last Century (1999) and Patience (2004). In 2004, the Radio Academy named him the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004.

Michael, who came out as gay in 1998, was an active LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser. Michael’s personal life and legal troubles made headlines during the late 1990s and 2000s, as he was arrested for public lewdness in 1998 and was arrested for multiple drug-related offences after that time. The 2005 documentary A Different Story covered his career and personal life. Michael’s first tour since 1991, the 25 Live tour, spanned three tours over the course of three years; 2006, 2007, and 2008. Four years later, he performed his final concert at London’s Earls Court in 2012. In the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael was found dead at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire aged 53. A coroner’s report attributed his death to natural causes.

Early life

George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (Greek: Γεώργιος Κυριάκου Παναγιώτου) on 25 June 1963 in East Finchley, London. His father, Kyriacos Panayiotou (nicknamed “Jack”), was a Greek Cypriot restaurateur who emigrated to England in the 1950s. His mother, Lesley Angold (née Harrison, died 1997), was an English dancer. In June 2008, Michael told the Los Angeles Times that his maternal grandmother was Jewish, but she married a non-Jewish man and raised her children with no knowledge of their Jewish background due to her fear during World War II. Michael spent most of his childhood in Kingsbury, London, in the home his parents bought soon after his birth; he attended Roe Green Junior School and Kingsbury High School. Michael had two sisters: Melanie (1960–2019) and Yioda (born 1962).

While he was in his early teens, the family moved to Radlett. There, Michael attended Bushey Meads School in Bushey, where he befriended his future Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley. The two had the same career ambition of being musicians.[9] Michael busked on the London Underground, performing songs such as “’39” by Queen. His involvement in the music business began with his working as a DJ, playing at clubs and local schools around Bushey, Stanmore, and Watford. This was followed by the formation of a short-lived ska band called The Executive, with Ridgeley, Ridgeley’s brother Paul, Andrew Leaver, and David Mortimer (later known as David Austin).

Wham!

Michael formed the duo Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981. The band’s first album Fantastic reached No. 1 in the UK in 1983 and produced a series of top 10 singles including “Young Guns”, “Wham Rap!” and “Club Tropicana”. Their second album, Make It Big, reached No. 1 on the charts in the US. Singles from that album included “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” (No. 1 in the UK and US), “Freedom”, “Everything She Wants”, and “Careless Whisper” which reached No. 1 in nearly 25 countries, including the UK and US, and was Michael’s first solo effort as a single. In 1985 Michael received the first of his three Ivor Novello Awards for Songwriter of the Year from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

Michael sang on the original Band Aid recording of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (which became the UK Christmas number one) and donated the profits from “Last Christmas” and “Everything She Wants” to charity. Michael sang “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with Elton John at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in London on 13 July 1985. He also contributed background vocals to David Cassidy’s 1985 hit “The Last Kiss”, as well as Elton John’s 1985 successes “Nikita” and “Wrap Her Up”. Michael cited Cassidy as a major career influence and interviewed Cassidy for David Litchfield’s Ritz Newspaper.

Wham!’s tour of China in April 1985, the first visit to China by a Western popular music act, generated worldwide media coverage, much of it centred on Michael. Before Wham!’s appearance in China, many kinds of music in the country were forbidden. The band’s manager, Simon Napier-Bell, had spent 18 months trying to convince Chinese officials to let the duo play.  The audience included members of the Chinese government, and Chinese television presenter, Kan Lijun, who was the on stage host, spoke of Wham!’s historic performance;

“No-one had ever seen anything like that before. All the young people were amazed and everybody was tapping their feet. Of course the police weren’t happy and they were scared there would be riots.”

Wham! performed their hits with scantily clad dancers and strobing disco lights. According to Napier-Bell, Michael tried to get the crowd to clap along to “Club Tropicana”, but “they hadn’t a clue – they thought he wanted applause and politely gave it”, before adding some Chinese did eventually “get the hang of clapping on the beat.” A UK embassy official in China stated “there was some lively dancing but this was almost entirely confined to younger western members of the audience.”[ The tour was documented by film director Lindsay Anderson and producer Martin Lewis in their film Wham! in China: Foreign Skies. With the success of Michael’s solo singles, “Careless Whisper” (1984) and “A Different Corner” (1986), rumours of an impending break up of Wham! intensified. The duo officially separated in 1986, after releasing a farewell single, “The Edge of Heaven” and a farewell compilation, The Final (their third album Music from the Edge of Heaven was released in North America and Japan), plus a sell-out concert at Wembley Stadium that included the world premiere of the China film. The Wham! partnership ended officially with the commercially successful single “The Edge of Heaven”, which reached No. 1 on the UK chart in June 1986.

Solo career

1987–1989

During early 1987, at the beginning of his solo career, Michael released “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)”, a duet with Aretha Franklin. “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” was a one-off project that helped Michael achieve an ambition by singing with one of his favourite artists. It scored number one on both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100 upon its release. For Michael, it became his third consecutive solo number one in the UK from three releases, after 1984’s “Careless Whisper” (though the single was actually from the Wham! album Make It Big) and 1986’s “A Different Corner”. The single was also the first Michael had recorded as a solo artist which he had not written himself. The co-writer, Simon Climie, was unknown at the time; he later had success as a performer with the band Climie Fisher in 1988. Michael and Aretha Franklin won a Grammy Award in 1988 for Best R&B Performance – Duo or Group with Vocal for the song.

In late 1987, Michael released his debut solo album, Faith. The first single released from the album was “I Want Your Sex”, in mid-1987. The song was banned by many radio stations in the UK and US, due to its sexually suggestive lyrics. MTV broadcast the video, featuring celebrity make-up artist Kathy Jeung in a basque and suspenders, only during the late night hours. Michael argued that the act was beautiful if the sex was monogamous, and he recorded a brief prologue for the video in which he said: “This song is not about casual sex.” One of the racier scenes involved Michael writing the words “explore monogamy” on his partner’s back in lipstick.  Some radio stations played a toned-down version of the song, “I Want Your Love”, with the word “love” replacing “sex”.

When “I Want Your Sex” reached the US charts, American Top 40 host Casey Kasem refused to say the song’s title, referring to it only as “the new single by George Michael.” In the US, the song was also sometimes listed as “I Want Your Sex (from Beverly Hills Cop II)”, since the song was featured on the soundtrack of the movie. Despite censorship and radio play problems, “I Want Your Sex” reached No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 in the UK. The second single, “Faith”, was released in October 1987, a few weeks before the album. “Faith” became one of his most popular songs. The song was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for four consecutive weeks, becoming the best-selling single of 1988 in the US. It also reached No. 1 in Australia, and No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. The video provided some definitive images of the 1980s music industry in the process—Michael in shades, leather jacket, cowboy boots, and Levi’s jeans, playing a guitar near a classic-design jukebox.

On 30 October, Faith was released in the UK and in several markets worldwide.[35] Faith topped the UK Albums Chart, and in the US, the album had 51 non-consecutive weeks in the top 10 of Billboard 200, including 12 weeks at No. 1. Faith had many successes, with four singles (“Faith”, “Father Figure”, “One More Try”, and “Monkey”) reaching No. 1 in the US. Faith was certified Diamond by the RIAA for sales of 10 million copies in the US. To date, global sales of Faith are more than 25 million units. The album was highly acclaimed by music critics, with AllMusic journalist Steve Huey describing it as a “superbly crafted mainstream pop/rock masterpiece” and “one of the finest pop albums of the ’80s”. In a review by Rolling Stone magazine, journalist Mark Coleman commended most of the songs on the album, which he said “displays Michael’s intuitive understanding of pop music and his increasingly intelligent use of his power to communicate to an ever-growing audience.”

In 1988, Michael embarked on a world tour. In Los Angeles, Michael was joined on stage by Aretha Franklin for “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)”. It was the second highest grossing event of 1988, earning $17.7 million. At the 1988 Brit Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on 8 February, Michael received the first of his two awards for Best British Male Solo Artist. Later that month, Faith won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 31st Grammy Awards. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September in Los Angeles, Michael received the Video Vanguard Award. According to Michael in his film, A Different Story, success did not make him happy and he started to think there was something wrong in being an idol for millions of teenage girls. The whole Faith process (promotion, videos, tour, awards) left him exhausted, lonely and frustrated, and far from his friends and family. In 1990, he told his record company Sony that, for his second album, he did not want to do promotions like the one for Faith.

1990s

Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 was released in September 1990. For this album, Michael tried to create a new reputation as a serious-minded artist; the title is an indication of his desire to be taken more seriously as a songwriter. Michael refused to do any promotion for this album, including no music videos for the singles released. The first single, “Praying for Time”, with lyrics concerning social ills and injustice, was released in August 1990. James Hunter of Rolling Stone magazine described the song as “a distraught look at the world’s astounding woundedness. Michael offers the healing passage of time as the only balm for physical and emotional hunger, poverty, hypocrisy and hatred.” The song was an instant success, reaching No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 in the UK. A video was released shortly thereafter, consisting of the lyrics on a dark background. Michael did not appear in this video or any subsequent videos for the album.

The second single “Waiting for That Day” was an acoustic-heavy single, released as an immediate follow-up to “Praying for Time”. It reached No. 23 in the UK and No. 27 in the US in October 1990. The album was released in Europe on 3 September 1990, and one week later in the US. It reached No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart[3] and peaked at No. 2 on the US Billboard 200. It spent a total of 88 weeks on the UK Albums Chart and was certified four-times Platinum by the BPI. The album produced five UK singles, which were released quickly, within an eight-month period: “Praying for Time”, “Waiting for That Day”, “Freedom! ’90”, “Heal the Pain”, and “Cowboys and Angels” (the latter being his only single not to chart in the UK top 40).

“Freedom ’90” was the second of only two of its singles to be supported by a music video (the other being the Michael-less “Praying for Time”). The song alludes to his struggles with his artistic identity, and prophesied his efforts shortly thereafter to end his recording contract with Sony Music. As if to prove the song’s sentiment, Michael refused to appear in the video (directed by David Fincher), and instead recruited supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, and Cindy Crawford to appear in and lip sync in his stead. It also featured lyrics critical of his sex symbol status. It reached No. 8 success on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US, and No. 28 on the UK Singles Chart.

“Mother’s Pride” gained significant radio play in the US during the first Persian Gulf War during 1991, often with radio stations mixing in callers’ tributes to soldiers with the music.[54] It reached No. 46 on Billboard Hot 100 with only airplay. In the end, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 sold approximately 8 million copies.

At the 1991 Brit Awards, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 won the award for Best British Album. Later in 1991, Michael embarked on the Cover to Cover tour in Japan, England, the US, and Brazil, where he performed at Rock in Rio. In the audience in Rio, he saw and later met Anselmo Feleppa, who later became his partner. The tour was not a proper promotion for Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. Rather, it was more about Michael singing his favourite cover songs. Among his favourites was “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, a 1974 song by Elton John; Michael and John had performed the song together at the Live Aid concert in 1985, and again for Michael’s concert at London’s Wembley Arena on 25 March 1991, where the duet was recorded. The single was released at the end of 1991 and reached No. 1 in both the UK and US. In 1991, Michael released an autobiography through Penguin Books titled Bare, co-written with Tony Parsons.

An expected follow-up album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2, was scrapped due to Michael’s lawsuit with Sony. Michael complained that Sony had not completely supported the release of his second album, resulting in its poor performance in the US as compared to Faith. Sony responded that Michael’s refusal to appear in promotional videos had caused the bad response. Michael ended the idea for Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2 and donated three songs to the charity project Red Hot + Dance, for the Red Hot Organization which raised money for AIDS awareness; a fourth track “Crazyman Dance” was the B-side of 1992’s “Too Funky”. Michael donated the royalties from “Too Funky” to the same cause.

“Too Funky” reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It did not appear on any George Michael studio album, but was included on his solo collections Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael in 1998 and Twenty Five in 2006. The video featured Michael (sporadically) as a director filming supermodels Linda Evangelista, Beverly Peele, Tyra Banks, Estelle Lefébure and Nadja Auermann at a fashion show.

Michael performed at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on 20 April 1992 at London’s Wembley Stadium. The concert was a tribute to the life of the late Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury, with the proceeds going to AIDS research. In his last ever radio interview Mercury had praised Michael, adding that he loved his track “Faith”. Michael performed “’39”, “These Are the Days of Our Lives” with Lisa Stansfield and “Somebody to Love”. The performance of the latter was released on the Five Live EP.

Five Live, released in 1993 for Parlophone in the UK and Hollywood Records in the US, features five live recordings (six in several countries) performed by Michael, Queen, and Lisa Stansfield. “Somebody to Love” and “These Are the Days of Our Lives” were recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. “Killer”, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”, and “Calling You” were recorded during his Cover to Cover Tour from 1991. Michael’s performance of “Somebody to Love” was hailed as “one of the best performances of the tribute concert”. All proceeds from the sale of the EP benefited the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Sales of the EP were strong through Europe, where it debuted at No. 1 in the UK and several European countries. Chart success in the US was less spectacular, where it reached No. 40 on the Billboard 200 (“Somebody to Love” reached No. 30 on the US Billboard Hot 100).

During November 1994, after a long period of seclusion, Michael appeared at the first MTV Europe Music Awards show, where he gave a performance of a new song, “Jesus to a Child”. The song was a melancholy tribute to his lover, Anselmo Feleppa, who had died in March 1993. The song entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 1 and No. 7 on Billboard upon release in 1996. It was Michael’s longest UK Top 40 single, at almost seven minutes long. The exact identity of the song’s subject—and the nature of Michael’s relationship with Feleppa—was shrouded in innuendo and speculation, as Michael had not confirmed he was homosexual and did not do so until 1998. The video for “Jesus to a Child” was a picture of images recalling loss, pain and suffering. Michael consistently dedicated the song to Feleppa before performing it live.

The second single, released in April 1996, was “Fastlove”, an energetic tune about wanting gratification and fulfilment without commitment. The single version was nearly five minutes long. “Fastlove” was supported by a futuristic virtual reality-related video. It reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, spending three weeks at the top spot. In the US, “Fastlove” peaked at No. 8, his most recent single to reach the top 10 in the US. Following “Fastlove”, Michael released Older, his first studio album in six years and only the third in his ten-year solo career. The album’s US and Canadian release was the first album released by David Geffen’s (now-defunct) DreamWorks Records.

Older was particularly notable for the release of its six singles. Each of them reached the UK top 3, a record for the most singles in the British top 3 released from a single album. At the time of release of the album’s fifth single, “Star People ’97”, chart specialist James Masterton noted Michael’s success on the singles charts, writing: “George Michael nonetheless makes an impressive Top 3 entry with this single. The Older album has now proved itself to be far and away his most commercially successful recording ever. Five singles now lifted and every single one has been a Top 3 hit. Compare this with the two Top 3 hits produced by Faith and Listen Without Prejudice’s scant total of one Top Tenner and one single which missed the Top 40 altogether. This sustained single success has been achieved with a little help from marketing tricks such as remixes – or in this case a new recording of the album track which gives it a much-needed transformation into a deserved commercial smash.”

In 1996, Michael was voted Best British Male, at the MTV Europe Music Awards and the Brit Awards;  and at the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Awards, he was awarded the title of Songwriter of the Year for the third time. Michael performed a concert at Three Mills Studios, London, for MTV Unplugged. It was his first long performance in years, and in the audience was Michael’s mother, who died of cancer the following year.

Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael was Michael’s first solo greatest hits collection released in 1998. The collection of 28 songs (29 songs are included on the European and Australian release) are separated into two halves, with each containing a particular theme and mood. The first CD, titled “For the Heart”, predominantly contains ballads; the second CD, “For the Feet”, consists mainly of dance tunes. It was released through Sony Music Entertainment as a condition of severing contractual ties with the label.

Ladies & Gentlemen was a success, peaking at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart for eight weeks. It spent over 200 weeks in the UK chart, and is the 38th best-selling album of all time in the UK.[80] It is certified seven-times platinum in the UK and multi-platinum in the US, and is Michael’s most commercially successful album in his homeland, having sold more than 2.8 million copies. To date, the album has reached worldwide sales of approximately 15 million copies. The first single of the album, “Outside” was a humorous song making a reference to his arrest for soliciting a policeman in a public toilet. “As”, his duet with Mary J. Blige, was released as the second single in many territories around the world. Both singles reached the top 5 in the UK Singles Chart.

Released in 1999, Songs from the Last Century is a studio album of cover tracks. The album was Michael’s penultimate album released through Virgin Records. To date, the album has achieved the lowest peak of his solo efforts. The album debuted at No. 157 on the American Billboard 200 albums chart, which was also the album’s peak position. It was also his lowest-charting album in the UK, becoming his only solo effort not to reach No. 1. It peaked at No. 2 in the UK Albums Chart. Each of the 11 tracks was co-produced by Phil Ramone and Michael.

2000s

In 2000, Michael worked on the hit single “If I Told You That” with Whitney Houston, a song which was meant to feature Michael Jackson, initially. Michael co-produced on the single along with Rodney Jerkins. Michael began working on what became his fifth studio album, spending two years in the recording studio. His first single “Freeek!”, taken from the new album, was successful in Europe going to No. 1 in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Denmark in 2002 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and the top 5 in Australia. It made 22 charts around the world. However, his next single “Shoot the Dog” proved to be controversial when released in July 2002. It was acutely critical of US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It reached No. 1 in Denmark and made the top 5 in most European charts. It peaked at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart.

In February 2003, Michael unexpectedly recorded another song in protest against the looming Iraq war, Don McLean’s “The Grave”. The original was written by McLean in 1971 and was a protest against the Vietnam War. Michael performed the song on numerous TV shows including Top of the Pops and So Graham Norton. His performance of the song on Top of the Pops on 7 March 2003 was his first studio appearance on the programme since 1986. He ran into conflict with the show’s producers for an anti-war, anti Blair T-shirt worn by some members of his band. In response, Don McLean issued a statement, through his website, praising Michael’s recording: “I am proud of George Michael for standing up for life and sanity. I am delighted that he chose a song of mine to express these feelings. We must remember that the Wizard is really a cowardly old man hiding behind a curtain with a loud microphone. It takes courage and a song to pull the curtain open and expose him. Good Luck George.”

On 17 November 2003, Michael re-signed with Sony Music, the company he had left in 1995 after a legal battle. When Michael’s fifth studio album, Patience, was released in 2004, it was critically acclaimed and went to No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, and became one of the fastest selling albums in the UK, selling over 200,000 copies in the first week alone. In Australia it reached No. 2 on 22 March. It reached the Top 5 on most European charts, and peaked at No. 12 in the US, selling over 500,000 copies to earn a Gold certification from the RIAA.

“Amazing”, the third single from the album, became a No. 1 hit in Europe. When Michael appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on 26 May 2004, to promote the album, he performed “Amazing”, along with his classic songs “Father Figure” and “Faith”. On the show Michael spoke of his arrest, revealing his homosexuality, and his resumption of public performances. He allowed Oprah’s crew inside his home outside London. The fourth single taken off the album was “Flawless”, which used the sample of the Ones’ original dance hit “Flawless”. It was a dance hit in Europe as well as North America, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play and became Michael’s last No. 1 single on the US Dance chart.

In November 2004, Sony released the fifth single – “Round Here”. It was the least successful single taken from Patience when it stalled the UK charts at No. 32. In 2005, “John and Elvis Are Dead” was released as the sixth and final single from the album; it was released as a download single and was therefore unable to chart in the UK. Michael told BBC Radio 1 on 10 March 2004 that future music that he puts out would be available for download, with fans encouraged to make a donation to charity.

Twenty Five is Michael’s second greatest hits album, celebrating the 25th anniversary of his music career. Released in November 2006 by Sony BMG, it debuted at no.1 in the UK.[98] The album contains songs chiefly from Michael’s solo career but also from his earlier days in Wham! It comes in two formats: two CDs or a limited edition three-CD set. The 2-CD set contained 26 tracks, including four recorded with Wham! and three new songs: “An Easier Affair”; “This Is Not Real Love” (a duet with Mutya Buena, formerly of Sugababes, which peaked at No.15 in the UK Charts); and a new version of “Heal the Pain” recorded with Paul McCartney. The limited edition three-CD version contains an additional 14 lesser known tracks, including one from Wham! and one new song, “Understand”.

Twenty Five was released in North America on 1 April 2008 as a 29-song, two-CD set featuring several new songs (including duets with Paul McCartney and Mary J. Blige and a song from the short-lived TV series Eli Stone)[100] in addition to many of Michael’s successful songs from both his solo and Wham! career. To commemorate the Twenty Five album, Michael toured North America for the first time in 17 years, playing large venues in major cities including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Paul/Minneapolis, Tampa/St. Pete, Chicago and Dallas. The DVD version of Twenty Five contains 40 videos on two discs, including seven with Wham!

During the 2005 Live 8 concert at Hyde Park, London, Michael joined Paul McCartney on stage, harmonising on The Beatles classic “Drive My Car”. In 2006, Michael embarked on his first tour in 15 years, 25 Live. The tour began in Barcelona, Spain, on 23 September and finished in December at Wembley Arena in England. According to his website, the 80-show tour was seen by 1.3 million fans. On 12 May 2007 in Coimbra, Portugal, he began the European “25 Live Stadium Tour 2007”, including London and Athens, and ending on 4 August 2007 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There were 29 tour dates across Europe. On 9 June 2007 Michael became the first artist to perform live at the newly renovated Wembley Stadium in London, where he was later fined £130,000 for over-running the programme for 13 minutes.

On 25 March 2008, a third part of the 25 Live Tour was announced for North America. This part included 21 dates in the United States and Canada. This was Michael’s first tour of North America in 17 years. Following news of Michael’s North American tour, Twenty Five was released in North America on 1 April 2008 as a 29-song, 2-CD set featuring several new songs (including duets with Paul McCartney and Mary J. Blige and a song from the short-lived TV series, Eli Stone) in addition to many of Michael’s successful songs from both his solo and Wham! career.

Michael made his American acting debut by playing a guardian angel to Jonny Lee Miller’s character on Eli Stone, a US TV series. In addition to performing on the show as himself and as “visions”, each episode of the show’s first season was named after a song of his. Michael appeared on the 2008 finale show of American Idol on 21 May singing “Praying for Time”. When asked what he thought Simon Cowell would say of his performance, he replied “I think he’ll probably tell me I shouldn’t have done a George Michael song. He’s told plenty of people that in the past, so I think that’d be quite funny.” On 1 December, Michael performed in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, as part of the 37th National Day celebrations.

On 25 December 2008, Michael released a new track “December Song” on his website for free. It was hoped that fans who downloaded the song would donate money to charity. Though the song is not available any more on his website, it remains available on file sharing networks and a remastered version of “December Song” went on sale on 13 December. The popularity of the single was boosted by a promotional appearance that Michael made on The X Factor.

2010s

In early 2010, Michael performed his first concerts in Australia since 1988. On 20 February 2010, Michael performed his first show in Perth at the Burswood Dome to an audience of 15,000. On 2 March 2011, Michael announced the release of his cover version of New Order’s 1987 hit “True Faith” in aid of the UK charity telethon Comic Relief. Michael appeared on Comic Relief itself, featuring in the first Carpool Karaoke sketch of James Corden, with the pair singing songs while Corden drove around London. On 15 April 2011, Michael released a cover of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 song, “You and I”, as an MP3 gift to Prince William and Catherine Middleton on the occasion of their wedding on 29 April 2011. Although the MP3 was released for free download, Michael appealed to those who downloaded the track to make a contribution to “The Prince William & Miss Catherine Middleton Charitable Gift Fund”.

The Symphonica Tour began at the Prague State Opera House on 22 August 2011. In October 2011, Michael was announced as one of the final nominees for the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. In November, he had to cancel the remainder of the tour as he became ill with pneumonia in Vienna, Austria, ultimately slipping into a coma.

In February 2012, two months after leaving hospital, Michael made a surprise appearance at the 2012 Brit Awards at the O2 Arena in London, where he received a standing ovation, and presented Adele the award for Best British Album. In March, Michael announced that he was healthy and that the Symphonica Tour would resume in autumn. The final concert of the tour—which was also the final concert of Michael’s life–was performed at London’s Earls Court on 17 October 2012.

Symphonica was released on 17 March 2014, and became Michael’s seventh solo No. 1 album in the UK, and ninth overall including his Wham! chart-toppers. The album was produced by Phil Ramone and Michael; the album was Ramone’s last production credit. On 2 November 2016, Michael’s management team announced that a second documentary on his life, entitled Freedom, was set to be released in March 2017. A month after, English songwriter Naughty Boy confirmed plans to collaborate with Michael, for a new song and album.Naughty Boy claimed that the song, currently untitled, is “amazing but […] bittersweet”. On 7 September 2017 (months after Michael’s death), the single “Fantasy”, featuring Nile Rodgers, was released.

Personal life

Sexuality and relationships

Michael stated that his early fantasies were about women, which “led me to believe I was on the path to heterosexuality”, but at puberty he started to fantasise about men, which he later said “had something to do with my environment”. At the age of 19, Michael told Andrew Ridgeley that he was bisexual. Michael also told one of his two sisters, but he was advised not to tell his parents about his sexuality. In a 1999 interview with The Advocate, Michael told the Editor in Chief, Judy Wieder, that it was “falling in love with a man that ended his conflict over bisexuality”. “I never had a moral problem with being gay”, Michael told her. “I thought I had fallen in love with a woman a couple of times. Then I fell in love with a man, and realised that none of those things had been love.”

In 2004, Michael said, “I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn’t want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them. I decided I had to stop, which I did when I began to worry about AIDS, which was becoming prevalent in Britain. Although I had always had safe sex, I didn’t want to sleep with a woman without telling her I was bisexual. I felt that would be irresponsible. Basically, I didn’t want to have that uncomfortable conversation that might ruin the moment, so I stopped sleeping with them.” In the same interview, he added: “If I wasn’t with Kenny [his boyfriend at the time], I would have sex with women, no question”. He said he believed that the formation of his sexuality was “a nurture thing, via the absence of my father who was always busy working. It meant I was exceptionally close to my mother”, though he stated that “there are definitely those who have a predisposition to being gay in which the environment is irrelevant.” In 2007 Michael said he had hidden the fact he was gay because of worries over what effect it might have on his mother. Two years later, he added: “My depression at the end of Wham! was because I was beginning to realise I was gay, not bisexual.”

During the late 1980s, Michael had a relationship with make-up artist Kathy Jeung, who was regarded for a time as his artistic “muse” and who appeared in the “I Want Your Sex” video. Michael later said that she had been his “only bona fide” girlfriend, and that she knew of his bisexuality. In 2016 Jeung reacted to Michael’s death by calling him a “true friend” with whom she had spent “some of the best time of [her] life”.

In 1992, Michael established a relationship with Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian dress designer who he had met at the Rock in Rio concert in 1991. Six months into their relationship, Feleppa discovered that he was HIV-positive. Michael later said: “It was terrifying news. I thought I could have the disease too. I couldn’t go through it with my family because I didn’t know how to share it with them – they didn’t even know I was gay.” In 1993, Feleppa died of an AIDS-related brain haemorrhage. Michael’s single, “Jesus to a Child”, is a tribute to Feleppa (Michael consistently dedicated it to him before performing it live), as is his album Older (1996). In 2008, speaking about the loss of Feleppa, Michael said: “It was a terribly depressing time. It took about three years to grieve, then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed.”

In 1996, Michael entered into a long-term relationship with Kenny Goss, a former flight attendant, cheerleading coach, and sportswear executive from Dallas. They had a home in Dallas, a 16th-century house in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire[140] and an £8 million mansion in Highgate, North London. In late November 2005, it was reported that Michael and Goss planned to register their relationship as a civil partnership in the UK, but because of negative publicity and his upcoming tour, they postponed their plans. On 22 August 2011, the opening night of his Symphonica world tour, Michael announced that he and Goss had split two years earlier.

Michael’s homosexuality became publicly known following his April 1998 arrest for public lewdness. In 2007, Michael said “that hiding his sexuality made him feel ‘fraudulent’, and his eventual outing, when he was arrested […] in 1998, was a subconsciously deliberate act.”

In 2012, Michael entered a relationship with Fadi Fawaz, a celebrity hairstylist and freelance photographer based in London. It was Fawaz who found Michael’s body on Christmas morning 2016.

Legal troubles

On 7 April 1998, Michael was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public restroom of the Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, California. Michael was arrested by undercover policeman Marcelo Rodríguez in a sting operation using so-called “pretty police”. In an MTV interview, Michael stated: “I got followed into the restroom and then this cop—I didn’t know it was a cop, obviously—he started playing this game, which I think is called, ‘I’ll show you mine, you show me yours, and then when you show me yours, I’m going to nick you!’”

After pleading “no contest” to the charge, Michael was fined US$810 and sentenced to 80 hours of community service. Soon afterwards, Michael made a video for his single “Outside”, which satirised the public toilet incident and featured men dressed as policemen kissing. Rodríguez claimed that this video “mocked” him, and that Michael had slandered him in interviews. In 1999, he brought a US$10 million court case in California against the singer. The court dismissed the case, but an appellate court reinstated it on 3 December 2002.  The court then ruled that Rodríguez, as a public official, could not legally recover damages for emotional distress.

On 23 July 2006, Michael was again accused of engaging in anonymous public sex, this time at London’s Hampstead Heath. The anonymous partner was incorrectly stated to be a 58-year-old unemployed van driver.  Michael stated that he cruised for anonymous sex and that this was not an issue in his relationship with partner Kenny Goss.

In February 2006, Michael was arrested for possession of Class C drugs, an incident that he described as “my own stupid fault, as usual”. He was cautioned by the police and released. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to drug–impaired driving after obstructing the road at traffic lights in Cricklewood in northwest London, and was subsequently banned from driving for two years and sentenced to community service. On 19 September 2008, Michael was arrested in a public restroom in the Hampstead Heath area for possession of Class A and C drugs. He was taken to the police station and cautioned for controlled substance possession.

In the early hours of Sunday 4 July 2010, Michael was returning from the Gay Pride parade, when he was spotted on CCTV crashing his car into the front of a Snappy Snaps store in Hampstead, north London, and was arrested on suspicion of being unfit to drive. On 12 August, London’s Metropolitan Police said he was “charged with possession of cannabis and with driving while unfit through drink or drugs”. It was reported that Michael had also been taking the prescription medication amitriptyline. On 24 August 2010, the singer pleaded guilty at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court in London after admitting driving under the influence of drugs. On 14 September 2010, at the same court, Michael was sentenced to eight weeks in prison, a fine, and a five-year ban from driving. Michael was released from Highpoint Prison in Suffolk on 11 October 2010, after serving four weeks.

Health

Michael struggled with substance abuse. He was arrested for drug-related offences in 2006, 2008, and 2010. In September 2007, on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Michael said that his cannabis use was a problem; he wished he could smoke less of it and was constantly trying to do so. On 5 December 2009, in an interview with The Guardian, Michael explained he had cut back on cannabis and was smoking only ‘seven or eight’ spliffs per day instead of the 25 per day he had formerly smoked. Michael also abused sleeping pills.

On 26 October 2011, Michael cancelled a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London due to a viral infection. On 21 November, Vienna General Hospital admitted Michael after he complained of chest pains while at a hotel two hours before his performance at a venue there for his Symphonica Tour. Michael appeared to be “in good spirits” and responded well to treatment following his admittance, but on 25 November hospital officials said that his condition had “worsened overnight”. This development led to cancellations and postponements of Michael’s remaining 2011 performances, which had been scheduled mainly for the United Kingdom. The singer was later confirmed to have suffered from pneumonia and, until 1 December, was in an intensive care unit; at one point, he was comatose. On 21 December the hospital discharged him. Michael told the press that the staff at the hospital had saved his life and that he would perform a free concert for them. While making the speech, he became emotional and breathless.  During the speech, he also mentioned that he had undergone a tracheotomy. After waking from the coma, Michael had a temporary West Country accent, and there was concern he had developed foreign accent syndrome.

On 16 May 2013, Michael sustained a head injury when he fell from his moving car on the M1 motorway, near St Albans in Hertfordshire, and was airlifted to hospital.

Politics

During the time of Margaret Thatcher as the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom throughout the 1980s, Michael voted Labour. In 2000, Michael joined Melissa Etheridge, Garth Brooks, Queen Latifah, the Pet Shop Boys, and k.d. lang, to perform in Washington, D.C. as part of Equality Rocks, a concert to benefit the Human Rights Campaign,[185] an American LGBT rights group. His 2002 single “Shoot the Dog” was critical of the friendly relationship between the UK and US governments, in particular the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, with their involvement in the Iraq War. Michael voiced his concern about the lack of public consultation in the UK regarding the War on Terror: “On an issue as enormous as the possible bombing of Iraq, how can you represent us when you haven’t asked us what we think?”

In 2006, Michael performed a free concert for NHS nurses in London to thank the nurses who had cared for his late mother. He told the audience: “Thank you for everything you do — some people appreciate it. Now if we can only get the government to do the same thing.” In 2007, Michael sent the £1,450,000 piano that John Lennon used to write “Imagine” around the United States on a “peace tour”, displaying at places where notable acts of violence had taken place, such as Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, where US President John F. Kennedy had been shot. He devoted his 2007 concert in Sofia, from his “Twenty Five Tour” to the Bulgarian nurses prosecuted in the HIV trial in Libya. On 17 June 2008, Michael said he was thrilled by California’s legalisation of same-sex marriage, calling the move “way overdue”.

Philanthropy

In November 1984, Michael joined other British and Irish pop stars of the era to form Band Aid, singing on the charity song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” for famine relief in Ethiopia. This single became the UK Christmas number one in December 1984, holding Michael’s own song, “Last Christmas” by Wham!, at No. 2; Michael also donated the royalties for “Last Christmas” to Ethiopia. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” sold 3.75 million copies in the UK and became the biggest selling single in UK chart history, a title it held until 1997 when it was overtaken by Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind 1997”, released in tribute to Princess Diana following her death (Michael attended Diana’s funeral with Elton John). Michael donated the royalties from “Last Christmas” to Band Aid and subsequently sang with Elton John at Live Aid (the Band Aid charity concert) in 1985.

In 1986, Michael took part in the Prince’s Trust charity concert held at Wembley Arena, performing “Everytime You Go Away” alongside Paul Young. In 1988, Michael participated in the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium in London together with many other singers (such as Annie Lennox and Sting), performing “Sexual Healing”.

A LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser, the proceeds from the 1991 single “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” were divided among 10 different charities for children, AIDS and education. He was also a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.[ Michael wore a red ribbon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992.

In 2003, he paired up with Ronan Keating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and won £32,000, after having their original £64,000 winnings halved by missing the £125,000 question. The same year, Michael joined other celebrities to support a campaign to help raise £20 million for terminally ill children run by the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity of which he was a patron. He said: “Loss is such an incredibly difficult thing. I bow down to people who actually have to deal with the loss of a child.”

Following his death, many charities revealed that Michael had privately been a supporter of them for many years. Dame Esther Rantzen, the founder and president of Childline, said he had given them “millions” over the years and said that he had given the royalties from his 1996 number one single “Jesus to a Child” to the charity. He had supported the Terrence Higgins Trust “for many years” as well as Macmillan Cancer Support. Michael also donated to individuals: he reportedly called the production team of the quiz show Deal or No Deal after a contestant had revealed that she needed £15,000 to fund IVF treatment, and anonymously paid for the treatment personally; and once tipped a student nurse working as a barmaid £5,000 ($6,121) because she was in debt. On 3 January 2017, another woman came forward and (with the permission of Michael’s family) revealed he had anonymously paid for her IVF treatment after seeing her talk about her problems conceiving on an episode of This Morning in 2010. The woman gave birth to a girl in 2012.

Assets

Between 2006 and 2008, according to reports, Michael earned £48.5 million ($97 million) from the 25 Live tour alone. In July 2014, he was reported to have been a celebrity investor in a tax avoidance scheme called Liberty. According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2015 of the wealthiest British musicians, Michael was worth £105 million.

A collector of works by the Young British Artists, including those of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, in March 2019 Michael’s art collection was auctioned in England for £11.3 million. The proceeds were donated to various philanthropical organisations Michael gave to while he was alive.

Death

In the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael died in bed at his home in Goring-on-Thames, aged 53. He was found by his partner, Fadi Fawaz.

In March 2017, a senior coroner in Oxfordshire attributed Michael’s death to dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and a fatty liver.

Owing to the delay in determining the cause of death, Michael’s funeral was held 29 March 2017. In a private ceremony, he was buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London, near his mother’s grave. That summer an informal memorial garden was created outside his former home in Highgate. The site, in a private square that Michael had owned, is tended by fans.

Tributes

Elton John was among those who paid tribute to Michael, emotionally addressing the audience in Las Vegas on 28 December, “What a singer, what a songwriter. But more than anything as a human being he was one of the kindest, sweetest, most generous people I’ve ever met.”

At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards on 12 February 2017, Adele performed a slowed-down version of “Fastlove” in tribute to Michael. On 22 February, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin performed “A Different Corner” at the 2017 Brit Awards.[ In June, Michael’s close friend, former Spice Girls member Geri Halliwell, released a charity single, “Angels in Chains”, a tribute to him, to raise money for Childline.

In August 2020 it was announced that a London artist named Dawn Mellor had been commissioned to create a nine metre tall mural of the singer in his native borough of Brent. The artwork, which formed part of the Brent Biennial, was commissioned to pay tribute to Michael’s outstanding contribution to the fields of music and entertainment.

Awards and achievements

Michael won numerous music awards throughout his 30-year career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male twice, four MTV Video Music Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards, three American Music Awards (including two in the traditionally-black Soul/R&B category ), and two Grammy Awards from eight nominations.

Alecia Beth Moore (born September 8, 1979), known professionally as Pink (stylized as P!nk), is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer, and spokesperson. She was originally a member of the girl group Choice. In 1995, LaFace Records saw potential in P!nk and offered her a solo recording contract. Her R&B-influenced debut studio album Can’t Take Me Home (2000) was certified double-platinum in the United States and spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs: “There You Go” and “Most Girls”. She gained further recognition with the collaborative single “Lady Marmalade” from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, which topped many charts worldwide. Refocusing her sound to pop rock with her second studio album Missundaztood (2001), the album sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and yielded the international number-one songs “Get the Party Started”, “Don’t Let Me Get Me”, and “Just Like a Pill”.

While Pink’s third studio album, Try This (2003), sold significantly less than her previous work, it earned her the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She returned to the top of record charts with her fourth and fifth studio albums, I’m Not Dead (2006) and Funhouse (2008), which generated the top-ten entries “Who Knew” and “U + Ur Hand”, as well as the number-one single “So What”. Pink’s sixth studio album, The Truth About Love (2012), was her first Billboard 200 number-one album and spawned her fourth US number-one single, “Just Give Me a Reason”. In 2014, Pink recorded a collaborative album, Rose Ave., with Canadian musician Dallas Green under a folk music duo named You+Me. Her next studio albums, Beautiful Trauma (2017) and Hurts 2B Human (2019), both debuted at atop the Billboard 200 chart, with the former becoming the world’s third best-selling album of the year.

Recognized for her distinctive, raspy voice and acrobatic stage presence,[1][2] Pink has sold 90 million records worldwide as of 2020,[citation needed] making her one of the world’s best-selling music artists.[3] Her career accolades include three Grammy Awards, two Brit Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award and seven MTV Video Music Awards, including the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. In 2009, Billboard named Pink the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade. Pink was also the second most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom during the 2000s decade, behind only Madonna. VH1 ranked her number 10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Women in Music, while Billboard awarded her the Woman of the Year award in 2013. At the 63rd annual BMI Pop Awards, she received the BMI President’s Award for “her outstanding achievement in songwriting and global impact on pop culture and the entertainment industry.”

Early life and family

Alecia Beth Moore was born on September 8, 1979,[5] in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to emergency room nurse Judith “Judy” Moore (née Kugel)[6] and insurance salesman James “Jim” Moore.[7][8][9][10] She has described herself as an “Irish-German-Lithuanian-Jew”,[11] and self-identifies as Jewish.[12][13] Although a healthy baby at birth, she quickly developed asthma that plagued her through her early years.[14] When Pink was a toddler, her parents began having marital problems and divorced before she was 10.[15]

Pink was trained as a competitive gymnast between the ages 4 and 12.[16][17] She developed her voice early in life. She attended Central Bucks High School West.[7] In high school, Pink joined her first band, Middleground, but it disbanded upon losing a Battle of the Bands competition. As a teenager, she wrote lyrics as an outlet for her feelings, and her mother commented, “Her initial writings were always very introspective. Some of it was very black, and very deep, almost worrisome.”

Career

1995–1998: Career beginnings

Pink began performing in Philadelphia clubs when she was about 14 years old. She adopted her stagename, “Pink”, around this time. She had that nickname for quite some time by that point, and initially it had been “a mean thing”.[18] She took that name from the character “Mr. Pink” in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs. At 14, she was convinced to audition to become a member of the all-female group Basic Instinct, and earned a spot in the lineup. Ultimately, the group disbanded without releasing any material.[19] At 16, Pink and two other teenage girls, Sharon Flanagan[20] and Chrissy Conway, formed the R&B group Choice. A copy of their first song, “Key to My Heart”, was sent to LaFace Records in Atlanta, Georgia, where L.A. Reid overheard it and arranged for the group to fly there so he could see them perform. After that, he signed them to a record deal. Since the three girls were under 18 at the time, their parents had to cosign the contract. The group relocated to Atlanta and recorded an album, which was never released, but “Key to My Heart” appeared on the soundtrack to the 1996 film Kazaam. During a Christmas party, Reid gave Pink an ultimatum: go solo or go home. Choice disbanded in 1998.

1999–2002: Can’t Take Me Home and Missundaztood

After Choice disbanded, Pink signed a recording contract with LaFace Records and began working on her debut solo album with producers such as Babyface, Kandi Burruss and Tricky Stewart.[22] Her debut single, “There You Go”, was released in February 2000 and became her first top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it peaked at number seven.[23] Internationally, the song also charted inside the top ten in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[24] In April, Pink’s debut album, Can’t Take Me Home, was released to commercial success. It peaked 26 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for two million units shipped in the United States.[25][26] It also went platinum in the United Kingdom and multi-platinum in Australia and Canada, while selling over four million copies worldwide.[27][28] Critical reception to the album was mixed.[29] The album’s second single, “Most Girls”, peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100[23] and became her first chart-topping single in Australia.[30] “You Make Me Sick” was released as the final single and reached number 33 on the Hot 100.[23]

Pink won the trophy for Female New Artist of the Year at the 2000 Billboard Music Awards.[31] She was billed as a supporting act on the North American leg of NSYNC’s No Strings Attached Tour throughout the summer of 2000.[32] In 2001, Pink, alongside singers Christina Aguilera and Mýa as well as rapper Lil’ Kim, performed a cover of “Lady Marmalade” for the soundtrack of the film Moulin Rouge!. In the US it became the most successful airplay-only single in history, as well as Pink’s first #1 single.[33] The success of the single was helped by its music video, which was popular on music channels[34] and won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year.[35] The song won Pink’s first Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals[36]

Tired of being marketed as another cookie cutter pop act, as well as eager both to be seen as a more serious songwriter and musician and to perform the type of music she wanted to, Pink took her sound in a new direction and sought more artistic or creative control during the recording of her second album, Missundaztood.[37] She recruited Linda Perry, former singer of 4 Non Blondes (one of Pink’s favorite groups in her teenage years).[38] Pink moved into Perry’s Los Angeles home where the pair spent several months writing songs for the album.[39] Perry co-wrote and co-produced the album with Dallas Austin and Scott Storch, and according to VH1’s Driven program, Antonio “LA” Reid of LaFace Records was not initially content with the new music Pink was making. The album, named Missundaztood because of Pink’s belief that people had a wrong image of her,[38] was released in November 2001.[40]

“Get the Party Started” was released as the lead single and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It also became a worldwide hit, reaching number one in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, and Spain, as well as spending four weeks at the top of the European Hot 100 Singles chart.[41] At the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, its music video won in the categories of Best Female Video and Best Dance Video. The album’s other singles—”Don’t Let Me Get Me”, “Just Like a Pill”, and “Family Portrait”—were also radio and chart successes, with “Just Like a Pill” becoming Pink’s second number-one hit in the United Kingdom. Missundaztood remains Pink’s best-selling record with over 13 million copies sold worldwide.[42][43] According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Missundaztood was the eighth best-selling album of 2002 globally.[44] Pink won a World Music Award for Best Selling American Pop/Rock Female Artist.[45] She was also nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 45th Grammy Awards. Faith Hill’s 2002 album, Cry, features a song co-written by Pink and Perry (“If You’re Gonna Fly Away”). In 2002, Pink headlined a tour of America, Europe and Australia, the Party Tour, as well as becoming a supporting act for Lenny Kravitz’s American tour. Pink was named the Top Female Billboard 200 Artist of 2002.

2003–2007: Try This and I’m Not Dead

In mid-2003, Pink contributed the song “Feel Good Time” to the soundtrack of the film Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, in which she had a cameo appearance as a motocross race ramp owner/promoter. Featuring electronic music artist William Orbit, it became Pink’s first single to miss the top 40 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, although it was a hit in Europe and in Australia. It was later included on non-U.S. editions of Pink’s third album, Try This, which was released on November 11, 2003. Eight of the 13 tracks were co-written with Tim Armstrong of the band Rancid. Linda Perry was featured on the album as a writer and musician. Despite the album reaching the top ten on album charts in the US, in Canada, in the UK, and in Australia, sales were considerably lower than those of Missundaztood. However, it did go platinum in the US. The singles “Trouble” and “God Is a DJ” did not reach the US top 40 but did reach the top ten in other countries, and “Last to Know” was released as a single outside North America. “Trouble” earned Pink the Grammy award in Best Female Rock Vocal Performance category at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, and “Feel Good Time” was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.[36] She toured extensively on the Try This Tour through Europe and Australia, where the album was better received.

During the same period, Pink co-wrote the song “Take A Picture” with Damon Elliott which was released on Mýa’s album Moodring. In 2005, Pink collaborated with Lisa Marie Presley on the track “Shine”, released on Presley’s second album Now What. Pink took a break to write the songs for her fourth album, I’m Not Dead, which she said she titled as such because “It’s about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up even though people would like you to.”[47] Pink worked with producers Max Martin, Billy Mann, Christopher Rojas, Butch Walker, Lukasz Gottwald, and Josh Abraham on the album. The album’s release through LaFace Records in April 2006 was a substantial success throughout the world, particularly in Australia. The album reached the top ten in the US, the top five in the UK, No. 1 in Germany, and was No. 1 in Australia for two non-consecutive weeks.

The album’s lead single, “Stupid Girls”, was Pink’s biggest US hit since 2002 and earned her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Its music video, in which she parodies celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Paris Hilton,[48] won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Pop Video. Subsequent singles “Who Knew” and “U + Ur Hand” were substantial hits in Australia and Europe, and they later became top ten singles in the US. in 2007. The non-US singles were “Nobody Knows”, a minor hit in the UK, Australia and Germany; “Dear Mr. President”, an open letter to the US President George W. Bush which featured the Indigo Girls and became a No. 1 hit in Belgium as well as a top five hit in Germany, Australia, and other countries; “Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely)”, a UK top 40 and Australian top five entry; and “‘Cuz I Can”. The album has sold over 1.3 million copies in the US, as well as over 700,000 copies in Australia. The album proved very popular in Australia, with six top five singles and a record-breaking 62 weeks in the top 10; so far the album has gone 10 times platinum.

In support of the album, Pink embarked on the world I’m Not Dead Tour, for which ticket sales in Australia were particularly high; she sold approximately 307,000 tickets in Australia, giving her the record for the biggest concert attendance for an arena tour by a female artist.[49] One of the London shows on the tour was taped and released as a DVD, Pink: Live from Wembley Arena, where she sang Linda Perry’s “Whats Up?”. In 2006, Pink was chosen to sing the theme song for NBC Sunday Night Football, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night”, which is a take on “I Hate Myself for Loving You” by Joan Jett.[50] She contributed a cover of Rufus’s “Tell Me Something Good” to the soundtrack of the film Happy Feet, and lent her name to PlayStation to promote the PSP, a special pink edition of which was released.[51]

Pink collaborated with several other artists in 2006 and 2007, when she opened for Justin Timberlake on the American leg of his FutureSex/LoveShow Tour. She sang on the Indigo Girls album Despite Our Differences. She was featured on India.Arie’s song “I Am Not My Hair” from the Lifetime Television film Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy. She wrote a song, “I Will”, for Natalia’s third album, Everything and More. “Outside of You”, another song she co-wrote, was recorded by dance-pop singer Hilary Duff and released on her 2007 album Dignity. Pink recorded a song with Annie Lennox and twenty-two other female acts for Lennox’s fourth solo studio album, Songs of Mass Destruction; titled “Sing”, it was written as an anthem for HIV/AIDS, according to Lennox’s website.[52] In December 2007, a special edition Pink Box, which comprises her second to fourth albums and the DVD Live in Europe, was released in Australia. It reached the top twenty on the albums chart and was certified Gold, selling over 35,000 units.

2008–2011: Funhouse and Greatest Hits… So Far!!!

On August 7, 2008, Pink’s single “So What” was leaked online, and radio stations across Australia were quick to give it massive airplay. Less than six hours after the leak, “So What” was voted No.1 on Nova 100 Melbourne and shot to No.1 on the Today Network’s national radio Hot30 Countdown.[54] On August 22, Pink announced a new track, titled “Crystal Ball”. On September 18, 2008, “So What” became her second number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100.[55] Pink was the guest of honor at the 2008 ARIA Music Awards, which were held in Sydney, Australia, in October 2008. There she sang “So What”. On November 3, 2008, Funhouse debuted at No. 1 on the ARIA charts. In Australia it sold over 86,000 units in its first week, and was eventually certified eleven times platinum.

On November 23, 2008, Pink performed “Sober”, the second single from Funhouse, at the American Music Awards. The third single was “Please Don’t Leave Me”, with a video directed by Dave Meyers. In Australia, “Bad Influence” was released as the album’s fourth single[57] as a promotional single for her Funhouse Tour, and “Funhouse” was later released as the fifth single. However, “Bad Influence” was not released as a single in Europe until March 2010, which was after “Funhouse” had been released. In May 2009, Pink released a four-CD box set of her first four albums; this set peaked at No. 7 in the UK Album Chart.[58] In 2009, Pink performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.[59]

Pink’s Funhouse Tour started in France on February 24, 2009, and continued through Europe until mid-May, with supporting act Raygun. Pink then performed a series of shows in Australia, all of which sold out. Between May and August 2009, she performed for a total of more than 600,000 Australian fans at 58 shows around the country.[60]

On September 13, 2009, Pink performed “Sober” while doing a trapeze act at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where she was nominated for Best Female Video for “So What”.[61] On January 31, 2010, Pink did another circus act in the form of aerial silks at the 2010 Grammy Awards, this time performing the song “Glitter in the Air”. She received a standing ovation. In 2013, Billboard ranked the performance as the best between 2000 and 2012.[62] Billboard recognized Pink as the Pop Songs Artist of the Decade.[63] According to the BBC countdown compiled by PPL, Pink was the second most-played female solo artist in the United Kingdom during the 2000s decade, behind Madonna.[64]

Pink was a soloist in the remake of the 1985 charity single, “We Are the World”. She collaborated on the 2010 Herbie Hancock album, The Imagine Project, in which she sang Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” with John Legend and contributed vocals to John Lennon’s “Imagine” with Seal, India.Arie, Jeff Beck, Konono Nº1, Oumou Sangaré, and others.[65] The last collaboration earned Pink a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.[36] She was featured on a track titled “Won’t Back Down” for Eminem’s 2010 album Recovery; Eminem explained that he included Pink because he “felt like she would smash this record.”[66]

On July 15, 2010, during a concert in Nurnberg, Germany, Pink was preparing to end her concert with an aerial acrobatic routine when she was pulled offstage and onto a barricade below. Her left-side flywire had been activated before the right-side one had been properly attached to her harness.[67] She was taken to a local hospital where it was determined that she had not been seriously injured.[68] Pink sold a total of 3,000,000 concert tickets on her 2009–10 worldwide tour, according to a statement on behalf of UK tour promoter Marshall Arts.[69]

In the first week of October 2010, Pink released “Raise Your Glass”, the first single from her first compilation album, Greatest Hits… So Far!!!. The song celebrates a decade since Pink’s debut in 2000 and is dedicated to her fans who have been supporting her over the years. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Pink’s tenth Top 10 hit, and her third number-one on the chart.[70] She released the compilation album on November 12, 2010, and almost a month later she released the album’s second single, named “Fuckin’ Perfect”. The song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100,[71] and peaked at number one on the airplay charts in Germany.[72] On the German singles chart, the song entered at number seven in March 2011.[73]

Pink voiced the character of Gloria in Happy Feet Two, which premiered on November 18, 2011 in the United States. She also sings the movie’s theme song, “Bridge of Light”.[74]

On October 7, 2011, RCA Music Group announced that it would be disbanding Jive Records, along with Arista Records and J Records. With the shutdown, Pink and all other artists previously signed to the labels would release any future material through RCA Records.

2012–2015: The Truth About Love and You+Me

In February 2012, Pink confirmed that she was in the writing process for her next studio album, The Truth About Love. She was scheduled to perform at a fundraiser for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama that June, but had to cancel her performance after she was hospitalized and underwent the removal of her gallbladder.[76] The Truth About Love was preceded with the release of its lead single, “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”, in July.[77] The single peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100, while reaching number one in Australia and Hungary, and the top five in Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Released in September, The Truth About Love made its debut atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 281,000, making it her first number-one album in the United States.[78] It also topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and Switzerland,[79] and became the world’s sixth best-selling album of 2012 according to the IFPI. The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA for two million copies shipped and has sold over seven million copies worldwide.[80] The Truth About Love received positive response from music critics and was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.[81]

“Try” was released as the second single from The Truth About Love in October 2012 and became a worldwide top-ten hit, peaking at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. In February 2013, Pink released the fourth single, “Just Give Me a Reason”, featuring guest vocals by Nate Ruess of fun. It became the most successful single from The Truth About Love, topping the record charts in more than 20 countries worldwide and becoming Pink’s fourth number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100. According to the IFPI, the song was the fourth best-selling digital single of 2013 with 9.9 million copies sold worldwide.[82] The song won the Billboard Mid-Year Award for Favorite Hot 100 No.1 Song, and garnered two nominations for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Song of the Year at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.[83] Three further singles, “True Love”, “Walk of Shame”, and “Are We All We Are”, was released throughout 2013 to less commercial success. On February 13, 2013, Pink kicked off her sixth tour, known as The Truth About Love Tour, in Phoenix, Arizona.[84] Billboard released a statement on June 14, announcing that Pink held the No. 1 spot on their Hot Tours chart, as the American leg of her Truth About Love Tour grossed over $23.6 million.[85] She still held the title a week later, as the European leg grossed $30.7 million.[86]

In addition to her work for The Truth About Love, Pink appeared on the track “Guns and Roses” on T.I.’s album Trouble Man: Heavy Is the Head.[87] The song has been certified Gold by the ARIA for sales of 35,000 digital downloads shipped in Australia.[88][89] She also wrote two songs, “I Walk Alone” and “Lie to Me”, for Cher’s new album, Closer to the Truth.[90][91][92] Pink starred as a sex addict alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Mark Ruffalo in the 2013 movie Thanks for Sharing.[93] The official trailer was released on June 27 and the movie premièred on September 20, 2013.[94] Her legal name, Alecia Moore, is used for the movie credits. Her role as Dede was heavily praised by critics. rogerebert.com commented on her performance saying “Of all the cast here, the least experienced is the pop singer Pink, yet she does the best acting in the film: natural, a little harsh, a little unstable. Pink, like Macy Gray in her Lee Daniels movie roles, knows instinctively how to behave on camera by just pretending that the camera isn’t there.”

Billboard named Pink Woman of the Year 2013.[96] In December, the magazine also named The Truth About Love Tour the 3rd best selling tour of 2013 with $147.9 million in ticket sales; falling only behind Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour.[97] Also in Billboard’s end of year charts, Pink was ranked the 6th top artist of 2013 and she scored her highest charting end-of-year song and album; with Just Give Me a Reason sitting at number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and The Truth About Love placing at number 8 on Billboard 200.[98][99][100] In Australia, Pink has had an album placed at number one or two in the ARIA End of Year Albums Chart for six out of the past seven years as The Truth About Love topped the chart for two years in a row.[101] She was the 9th top grossing music artist of 2013, with $20,072,072.32 earned.[102] RCA Records later announced that they have signed Pink for a multi-album deal that will last for years to come. The singer was quoted about the deal saying “I am super-duper excited to continue onwards and upwards with RCA and my team there”.[103]

It was announced in September 2014, that Pink and Dallas Green, lead singer of City and Colour, worked together on a collaborative album, under the band name You+Me. The album, titled Rose Ave., was released on October 14, 2014.[104] The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and at number one on the US Folk Albums chart.[105][106]

In August 2015, Pink recorded the theme song for the 13th season of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The song, “Today’s the Day”, was performed during the show’s premiere week in New York City on September 10, 2015.

2016–present: Beautiful Trauma, Hurts 2B Human and hiatus

It was announced in February 2016 that Pink will cover a Beatles song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, for the upcoming Netflix original series Beat Bugs.[108] In the same month, it was announced that she had recorded a cover of “White Rabbit” for the movie Alice Through the Looking Glass, while in April it was revealed that she contributed the song “Just like Fire” to the soundtrack of the movie.[109][110] In Australia, it topped the ARIA Charts.[111] The following July, it was announced that Pink had written a song for French-Canadian singer Celine Dion called “Recovering” for inclusion on her upcoming English-language album.[112] Pink provided guest vocals on country singer Kenny Chesney’s single “Setting the World on Fire” which was released on August 1, 2016. The single topped on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and went platinum in the United States and Canada.[113][114][115] On March 10, 2017, Pink teamed up with Stargate and Australian star Sia on the former’s debut single, “Waterfall”.

Pink took a break to write songs for her upcoming seventh album. In June 2017, Pink confirmed that she was making her next studio album.[116] On July 17, 2017, she announced via her official Twitter account that the video shoot for the first single will take place the following week.[117] “What About Us”, the lead single from Pink’s seventh studio album, Beautiful Trauma, was released on August 10, 2017[118] and reached number one in Australia.[111] The album was released on October 13, 2017 and became the third best-selling album of the year worldwide.[119][120] On August 27, 2017, Pink received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Video Music Awards. She also performed a medley of some of her hits, including her new single, “What About Us”, before accepting the award, which was presented to her by Ellen DeGeneres. “What About Us” reached number one on the Adult Pop Songs chart, earning Pink her ninth leader on the chart, breaking her out of a tie with Katy Perry for the solo female artist with the most number-ones in the chart’s history and placing her in second place amongst all acts.[121] The song received one nomination at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards for Best Pop Solo Performance. “Beautiful Trauma” was released on November 21, 2017, as the second single from Beautiful Trauma to less commercial success, reaching top thirty in Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and Scotland. While it only managed to peak at number seventy-eight on the Billboard Hot 100, it topped on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart.[122] On December 5, 2017, rapper Eminem revealed that Pink would be collaborating on the song “Need Me” for his ninth studio album Revival.[123] The album received the nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album erned Pink’s 20th nomination at the Annual Grammy Awards.

Although sick with influenza, Pink sang the U.S. national anthem ahead of Super Bowl LII, a dream she had had since, as a child, seeing Whitney Houston sing at Super Bowl XXV in 1991.[124] On March 1, 2018, Pink started her seventh concert tour, the Beautiful Trauma World Tour, which was scheduled to visit North America and Oceania until September 8, 2018. She later decided to extend the tour until May 2019 including Europe.[125] On April 6, 2018, she was featured on Elton John’s Revamp & Restoration, singing the song “Bennie and the Jets”, with Elton John himself and Logic.[126]

On April 17, 2018, People teased its 2018 “Most Beautiful” cover star by calling her “a performer, mother and role model whose honesty, humour, confidence and sheer star power make her one of the most beloved and fascinating entertainers on the planet.” The next day the magazine revealed the cover, which features Pink with her two kids Willow and Jameson. The magazine issue was named the “beautiful issue.” Similar covers had featured Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston.[127][128] On October 23, 2018, Pink released her version of the song “A Million Dreams” from the upcoming “The Greatest Showman – Reimagined” album, a reworking of the soundtrack with contributions from various artists including Kelly Clarkson, Kesha, Jess Glynne and Missy Elliott. Pink’s daughter, Willow Sage Hart is also featured on the album performing the song’s reprise.[129]

On February 5, 2019, Pink received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame;[130] she further announced the release of her eighth album, Hurts 2B Human, which was released on April 26, 2019. The album’s lead single, “Walk Me Home” was released on February 20, 2019.[131][132] On the release date, Pink performed the song alongside a medley of her biggest hits at the BRIT Awards, including “Try”, “Just Give Me a Reason”, with Fun. lead singer Nate Ruess, and “What About Us”. She was also awarded with the Outstanding Contribution to Music Award at the ceremony.[133][134] In December 2019, Pollstar named her Artist of the Year.[135] Pink confirmed that in 2020 she will take a break from music to focus on her family.

Artistry

Influences

Pink has named Madonna and Janis Joplin as her biggest musical influences.[137] In a 2000 interview with MTV, Pink said that during her childhood she used to think that she was Madonna’s daughter, saying: “I’ve always been the type of person that followed Madonna like a lost puppy. I didn’t speak to my mother for a year, because I was sure she adopted me.”[138] She stated, “Madonna has always been an inspiration for me… I was a fan right from the first time I heard ‘Holiday’.”[139] Pink also won her first talent show singing Madonna’s “Oh Father”.[140] Of Janis Joplin, Pink said “She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn’t culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie.”[139] In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin “a woman who inspired me when everyone else … didn’t!”[141]

As a child, she admired the leader of 4 Non Blondes, Linda Perry, whom she would later track down and form a close relationship with on her second album. She said:

“Literally this woman spoke to me. Being in pain and being on drugs and being misunderstood and, yeah she spoke my language. Without having to say anything, she could sing a note and it was what I was feeling. I used to sit at three or four o’ clock in the morning, tripping on whatever, screaming 4 Non Blondes out the window until the cops were called”.

Other influences for Pink include Joan Jett, Mary J. Blige, Billy Joel, and Whitney Houston.

Voice and timbre

Throughout her career, Pink has received acclaim from critics for her powerful vocal prowess.[145][146][147][148] Her voice has been described as “raspy”, “husky”, and “distinctive.”[149] James Montgomery of MTV calls her “a deceptively good singer … who can out-sing almost anyone”.[148] The Guardian describes her voice as “prodigious”.[150] Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times labeled her “a powerhouse vocalist”.[151] Pink has also been noted for her “raw”, “soulful” voice and her ability to emote. The Inquirer defined her voice as “husky” and “gutsy”, further complimenting her for developing into a “powerfully emotive vocalist”, while comparing her to Janis Joplin.[152] The Star Tribune commends her by writing, “Her slightly raspy, slightly soulful voice made you feel the dysfunction in ‘Family Portrait’, the longing of ‘Who Knew’ and the empowerment in ‘Perfect’.”[153] CNN has said that Pink is known for singing “with the right level of emotion”.[154] Fellow artist Kelly Clarkson has called Pink’s voice “the best of our generation”.[155] Troy L. Smith, writing for Cleveland.com, called Pink one of her generation’s most underrated vocals, writing that she is capable of “sing[ing] anything, from rock and pop to folk and R&B.” Smith named her 2006’s second best vocalist, runner-up to Carrie Underwood.

Public image

Aside from her music, Pink has been noted for her fashion style, such the “adventurous” hairstyles she has worn, which have included fluorescent spikes to pink-streaked dreadlocks to a pitch-black skater cut.[157] Regarding her style, she told InStyle, “I’m eclectic. I’m a tomboy, but I’m kind of a hippie and kind of a gangster […] I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but it is my thing.”[157]

Pink is an animal-rights activist and a prominent campaigner for PETA, contributing her voice toward causes such as the protest against KFC.[158] In conjunction with PETA, she criticized the Australian wool industry over its use of mulesing. In January 2007, she stated that she had been misled by PETA about mulesing and that she had not done enough research before lending her name to the campaign.[159] Her campaigning led to a headlining concert called PAW (Party for Animals Worldwide) in Cardiff, Wales on August 21, 2007.[160] In 2015, she posed nude for PETA’s “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur”, campaign.[161]

Pink is also outspoken about LGBT rights and supports same-sex marriage.[162] In October 2012, Pink told The Advocate that she does not define her sexual orientation saying, “I never felt the need to.”[163]

Pink is also involved with several charities, including Human Rights Campaign, ONE Campaign, Prince’s Trust, New York Restoration Project, Run for the Cure Foundation, Save the Children, Take Back the Night, UNICEF and World Animal Protection.[164] As of May 2008, Pink has been officially recognized as an advocate for the RSPCA in Australia. On February 16, 2009, Pink announced she was donating $250,000 to the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal to aid the victims of the bushfires that swept through the Australian state of Victoria earlier that month.[165] Pink stated that she wanted to make “a tangible expression of support”.[166] Pink also donated money to Autism Speaks.[167]

In August 2012, Pink became a spokesmodel for CoverGirl, featuring in a fall 2013 advertising campaign themed “beauty with an edge”.[168]

On August 21, 2018, Pink stopped her concert in Brisbane for a grieving fan. A girl named Leah lost her mother one month prior to the concert, and she and her family hung up signs all around the concert, saying “My name is Leah – I’m 14 years old. I lost my beautiful Mum last month. I would LOVE a hug… Please!”. The signs grabbed the attention of Pink.

Legacy

Pink has been credited for breaking boundaries and pushing the envelope throughout her career. She is regarded as the “most trailblazing artist” of her pop generation.[151][170] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times says, “Pink stood up for her music, broke the music industry’s mold and scored a breakout hit, challenging a school of teen singers to find their own sounds as well.” He adds, “[Pink] also started a race among other teen pop stars like Christina Aguilera to add substance to their own sound.”[171] Ann Powers refers to her as a “powerhouse vocalist”, stating her mix of rebellion, emotional rawness, humor, and “infectious” dance beats created “a model for the mashup approach of latter-day divas such as Katy Perry, Kesha, and Rihanna.”[151] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone commented: “I think people respond to her sense of independence and dedication. It inspires people… This is a prolific pop artist who is sometimes famous and successful, sometimes obscure, who nonetheless keeps making her own kind of music.”[151]

James Montgomery of MTV describes her as “a fabulously fearless pop artist” who can “out-sing almost anyone out there. She can out-crazy Gaga or Lily. She’s the total pop-star package, everything you’d want in a singer/entertainer/icon. And still, she remains oddly off the radar. Such is the price of busting borders”.[170] Entertainment Weekly said: “She essentially invented the whole modern wave of Pop Diva Domination: You can draw a straight line from “Get This Party Started” to Katy Perry, Kesha, pre-messianic Lady Gaga, and post-weird Rihanna.”[172] Glamour Magazine wrote: “When Pennsylvania-born Alecia Moore debuted in 2000, pop was dominated by long-locked blonds like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson. Pink changed the game. Without her, the last 13 years of big-voiced, tough chick music is hard to imagine.”[173][better source needed]

Following her performance at the American Music Awards of 2012, LZ Granderson of CNN wrote:

“… our culture’s biggest sin may well be the auto-tuned syrup we’ve allowed to dominate the pop charts. All-time chart records are handed to vacuous acts such as the Black Eyed Peas and singing awards are given to vocal lightweights such as Taylor Swift […] But thank God for Pink. […] While Christina Aguilera has a tendency to oversing, Britney Spears can’t sing, and Lauryn Hill sorta stopped singing, Pink has managed to carve a brilliant 13-year career by being something that is incredibly rare these days—an artist.”

British soul singer Adele considers Pink’s performance at Brixton Academy in London as one of “the most defining moments” in her life, saying “It was the Missundaztood record, so I was about 13 or 14. I had never heard, being in the room, someone sing like that live. I remember sort of feeling like I was in a wind tunnel, her voice just hitting me. It was incredible.”[175][176]

Pink’s work has inspired several other artists including Christina Aguilera[177], Demi Lovato,[178] Kelly Clarkson,[179] Taylor Swift,[180] Katy Perry,[181] Tegan and Sara,[182] Ashley Tisdale,[183] Alessia Cara,[184] Victoria Justice,[185] Adele,[186] Julia Michaels,[187] Ben Hopkins of Pwr Bttm[188] Dua Lipa,[189] Bebe Rexha,[190] Halsey,[191] Anne Marie,[192] Kehlani[193] and Daya

Personal life

Pink met professional motocross racer Carey Hart at the 2001 X Games in Philadelphia. Following a brief separation in 2003, Pink proposed to Hart in June 2005 during a Mammoth Lakes motocross race; she was “assisting” in his race and wrote “Will You Marry Me? I’m serious!” on a pit board. He initially didn’t notice and continued on for another lap. When he did notice later, he veered off the track to accept right then. She then made him finish the race.[195][196] They married in Costa Rica on January 7, 2006.[197]

After months of speculation, Pink announced in February 2008, that she and Hart had separated.[198][199] Hart subsequently appeared in the video for her 2008 song “So What”,[200] which deals with their separation.[201] The couple sought marriage counseling during their separation[202] in hopes of reconciliation.[203] In February 2010, Pink confirmed that she and Hart were back together.[204] Hart also appears with Pink in the music video for her songs “Just Give Me a Reason”, “True Love”, and “Just like Fire”.[205][206]

In November 2010, Pink announced on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she and Hart were expecting their first child.[207] In June 2011, she gave birth to their daughter, Willow Sage.[208] In December 2016, she gave birth to their second child, a son, Jameson Moon.[209][210]

Pink is a supporter of attachment parenting.[211]

In 2010, she appeared on Forbes’ “The Celebrity 100” list at number 27, with earnings of $44 million.[212] In 2011, she appeared on Forbes’ The Top-Earning Women in Music list at number 6 with earnings of $22 million, with an average of $1 million per show on the road.[213] In 2009, Billboard put her number 6 on their “Money Makers” list, listing her earnings as $36,347,658.[214] In 2013, she appeared on Forbes’ list of “Highest Paid Musicians”, with earnings of $32 million.[215] In 2018, she appeared on Forbes’ list of “Highest Paid Female Celebrities”, with earnings of $52 million.[216]

On April 4, 2020, Pink announced that she and her three-year-old son, Jameson, showed symptoms for COVID-19 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and she subsequently tested positive then fully recovered.[217] She also announced donations of $500,000 each to the Temple University Hospital Fund in Philadelphia, where her mother worked for nearly two decades, and the City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer, musician and actor. He is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century and is often referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll” or simply “the King”. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to great success—and initial controversy.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family when he was 13 years old. His music career began there in 1954, recording at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on rhythm acoustic guitar, and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley’s classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for more than two decades. Presley’s first RCA single, “Heartbreak Hotel”, was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. With a series of successful network television appearances and chart-topping records, he became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll.

In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Years of prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

With his rise from poverty to significant fame, Presley’s success seemed to epitomize the American Dream. He is the best-selling solo music artist of all time, and was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, R&B, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. Presley holds several records; the most RIAA certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, and the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Life and career

1935–1953: Early years

Childhood in Tupelo

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi to Vernon Elvis (April 10, 1916 – June 26, 1979) and Gladys Love (née Smith; April 25, 1912 – August 14, 1958) Presley in a two-room shotgun house that his father built for the occasion. Elvis’s identical twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. Presley became close to both parents and formed an especially close bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church, where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley’s father, Vernon, was of German[8] or Scottish origin.[9] Through his mother, Presley was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman.[10] His mother, Gladys, and the rest of the family, apparently believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee; this was confirmed by Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017. Elaine Dundy, in her biography, supports the belief – although one genealogy researcher has contested it on multiple grounds. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family.

Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evincing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food a*sistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by his landowner and sometime-employer. He was jailed for eight months, while Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his teachers regarded him as “average”. He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley’s country song “Old Shep” during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, was his first public performance. The ten-year-old Presley was dressed as a cowboy; he stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang “Old Shep”. He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family’s church. Presley recalled, “I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it.”

In September 1946, Presley entered a new school, Milam, for sixth grade; he was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar to school on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a “trashy” kid who played hillbilly music. By then, the family was living in a largely black neighborhood. Presley was a devotee of Mississippi Slim’s show on the Tupelo radio station WELO. He was described as “crazy about music” by Slim’s younger brother, who was one of Presley’s classmates and often took him into the station. Slim supplemented Presley’s guitar instruction by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was twelve years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.
Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Lauderdale Courts. Enrolled at L. C. Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him that he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, “Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me”, to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher “agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn’t appreciate his kind of singing”. He was usually too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a “mama’s boy”. In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Lee Denson, a neighbor two and a half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began working as an usher at Loew’s State Theater. Other jobs followed: Precision Tool, Loew’s again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. In his free time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis’s thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing those clothes. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Lauderdale Courts, he competed in Humes’ Annual “Minstrel” show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with “Till I Waltz Again with You”, a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: “I wasn’t popular in school … I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show … when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, ’cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became in school after that.”

Presley, who received no formal music training and could not read music, studied and played by ear. He also frequented record stores that provided jukeboxes and listening booths to customers. He knew all of Hank Snow’s songs, and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills.[38] The Southern gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African-American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.[38] Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations, such as WDIA-AM, that played “race records”: spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African-American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he had known Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated from high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

1953–1956: First recordings

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley checked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin”. He later claimed that he intended the record as a birthday gift for his mother, or that he was merely interested in what he “sounded like”, although there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argued that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, “I sing all kinds.” When she pressed him on who he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, “I don’t sound like nobody.” After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man’s name, which she did along with her own commentary: “Good ballad singer. Hold.”

In January 1954, Presley cut a second acetate at Sun Records—”I’ll Never Stand in Your Way” and “It Wouldn’t Be the Same Without You”—but again nothing came of it. Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, “They told me I couldn’t sing.” Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver.[ His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith’s professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving “because you’re never going to make it as a singer”.

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring to a broader audience the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused. As Keisker reported, “Over and over I remember Sam saying, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.’” In June, he acquired a demo recording by Jimmy Sweeney of a ballad, “Without You”, that he thought might suit the teenage singer. Presley came by the studio but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield “Scotty” Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session.

The session held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to abort and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right”. Moore recalled, “All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open … he stuck his head out and said, ‘What are you doing?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ‘Well, back up,’ he said, ‘try to find a place to start, and do it again.’” Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played “That’s All Right” on his Red, Hot, and Blue show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the remaining two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended to clarify his color for the many callers who had a*sumed that he was black. During the next few days, the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, again in a distinctive style and employing a jury rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed “slapback”. A single was pressed with “That’s All Right” on the A-side and “Blue Moon of Kentucky” on the reverse.

Early live performances and RCA Victor contract

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming.[63] Moore recalled, “During the instrumental parts, he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild”. Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as “really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something”. Soon after, Moore and Black left their old band, the Starlite Wranglers, to play with Presley regularly, and DJ/promoter Bob Neal became the trio’s manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle’s Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, “His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He’d do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick.” Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry stage on October 2; after a polite audience response, Opry manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was “not bad” but did not suit the program.

Louisiana Hayride, radio commercial, and first television performances

In November 1954, Presley performed on Louisiana Hayride—the Opry’s chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D. J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley’s movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the Hayride engaged Presley for a year’s worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales, including Houston, Texas and Texarkana, Arkansas.

Many fledgling performers, like Minnie Pearl, Johnny Horton, and Johnny Cash, sang the praises of Louisiana Hayride sponsor, The Southern Maid Donut Flour Company (Texas), including Elvis Presley, who developed a lifelong love of doughnuts. Presley made his singular product endorsement commercial for the doughnut company, which was never released, recording a radio jingle, “in exchange for a box of hot glazed doughnuts.”

Elvis made his first television appearance on the KSLA-TV television broadcast of Louisiana Hayride. Soon after, he failed an audition for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on the CBS television network. By early 1955, Presley’s regular Hayride appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought him to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—who claimed to be from West Virginia (he was actually Dutch)—had acquired an honorary colonel’s commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, Parker was working with the new number-one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow’s February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: “His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. … I just didn’t know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it.” By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to “Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill”; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like “That’s All Right”, were in what one Memphis journalist described as the “R&B idiom of negro field jazz”; others, like “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, were “more in the country field”, “but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both”. This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley’s music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country-music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm-and-blues stations would touch him because “he sounded too much like a hillbilly.” The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as “The King of Western Bop”, “The Hillbilly Cat”, and “The Memphis Flash”.

Presley renewed Neal’s management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, “It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we’d have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody’d always try to take a crack at him. They’d get a gang and try to waylay him or something.” The trio became a quartet when Hayride drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose “Rock Around the Clock” track had been a number-one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year’s most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley’s Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract.[86] Parker arranged with the owners of Hill & Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forgo one-third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month’s end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

1956–1958: Commercial breakout and controversy

First national TV appearances and debut album

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending Presley’s by-now customary backup of Moore, Black, Fontana, and Hayride pianist Floyd Cramer—who had been performing at live club dates with Presley—RCA enlisted guitarist Chet Atkins and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill in the sound.[94] The session produced the moody, unusual “Heartbreak Hotel”, released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS’s Stage Show for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA’s New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins’ rockabilly anthem “Blue Suede Shoes”. In February, Presley’s “I Forgot to Remember to Forget”, a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the Billboard country chart. Neal’s contract was terminated, and, on March 2, Parker became Presley’s manager.

RCA released Presley’s self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: “Blue Suede Shoes”—”an improvement over Perkins’ in almost every way”, according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B numbers that had been part of Presley’s stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these “were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists … who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B versions of songs in the ’50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases.” It became the first rock and roll album to top the Billboard chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative guitarist like Moore or contemporary African-American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argued that the album’s cover image, “of Elvis having the time of his life on stage with a guitar in his hands played a crucial role in positioning the guitar … as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music.

Milton Berle Show and “Hound Dog”

On April 3, Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC’s Milton Berle Show. His performance, on the deck of the USS Hancock in San Diego, California, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, “Heartbreak Hotel” became Presley’s first number-one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—”like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party”, wrote a critic for Newsweek. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas and was struck by their cover of “Hound Dog”, a hit in 1953 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese’s newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that “Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. … [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. … After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley’s room at the auditorium. … Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls … whose abdomen and thigh had Presley’s autograph.”

The second Milton Berle Show appearance came on June 5 at NBC’s Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded Presley to leave his guitar backstage, advising, “Let ’em see you, son.” During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of “Hound Dog” with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley’s gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of The New York Times wrote, “Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. … His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner’s aria in a bathtub. … His one specialty is an accented movement of the body … primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway.” Ben Gross of the New York Daily News opined that popular music “has reached its lowest depths in the ‘grunt and groin’ antics of one Elvis Presley. … Elvis, who rotates his pelvis … gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos”. Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation’s most popular, declared him “unfit for family viewing”. To Presley’s displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as “Elvis the Pelvis”, which he called “one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin’ from an adult.”

Steve Allen Show and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC’s Steve Allen Show in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a “new Elvis” in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang “Hound Dog” for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, “Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd … [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition”. Allen later wrote that he found Presley’s “strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing” and simply worked him into the customary “comedy fabric” of his program.[113] Just before the final rehearsal for the show, Presley told a reporter, “I’m holding down on this show. I don’t want to do anything to make people dislike me. I think TV is important so I’m going to go along, but I won’t be able to give the kind of show I do in a personal appearance.” Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on Hy Gardner Calling, a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, “No, I haven’t, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. … I don’t see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it’s only music. … I mean, how would rock ‘n’ roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?”

The next day, Presley recorded “Hound Dog”, along with “Any Way You Want Me” and “Don’t Be Cruel”. The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on The Steve Allen Show; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, Presley made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis, at which he announced, “You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I’m gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight.”[116] In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order.[117] The single pairing “Don’t Be Cruel” with “Hound Dog” ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley’s second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of “Hound Dog”, contributed “Love Me”.

Allen’s show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS’s Ed Sullivan Show in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked Presley for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan was recovering from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley “got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants—so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. … I think it’s a Coke bottle. … We just can’t have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!” Sullivan publicly told TV Guide, “As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots.” In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming.[ Presley’s performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad “Love Me Tender”, prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley’s rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the “biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra … Presley brought rock’n’roll into the mainstream of popular culture”, writes historian Marty Jezer. “As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. … Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture.”

Crazed crowds and film debut

The audience response at Presley’s live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, “He’d start out, ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a Hound Dog,’ and they’d just go to pieces. They’d always react the same way. There’d be a riot every time.” At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi–Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to ensure that the crowd would not cause a ruckus. Elvis, Presley’s second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one on the billboard. The album includes “Old Shep”, which he sang at the talent show in 1945, and which now marked the first time he played piano on an RCA session. According to Guralnick, one can hear “in the halting chords and the somewhat stumbling rhythm both the unmistakable emotion and the equally unmistakable valuing of emotion over technique.” Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley’s recordings from “That’s All Right” through Elvis, rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that “these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become.”

Presley returned to the Sullivan show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, Love Me Tender, was released on November 21. Though he was not top-billed, the film’s original title—The Reno Brothers—was changed to capitalize on his latest number-one record: “Love Me Tender” had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley’s popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The film was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and had an impromptu jam session, along with Johnny Cash. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure that the session was captured on tape. The results, none officially released for 25 years, became known as the “Million Dollar Quartet” recordings. The year ended with a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and Billboard’s declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted.[134] In his first full year at RCA, one of the music industry’s largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label’s singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final Ed Sullivan Show appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley “did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik, with all stops out.” To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan’s wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, “Peace in the Valley”. At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley “a real decent, fine boy”.[136] Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1-A and would probably be drafted sometime that year.

Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: “Too Much”, “All Shook Up”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”. Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline “Presley Records a Craze in Soviet”, The New York Times reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, Presley also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. Loving You—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley’s third straight number-one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for Jailhouse Rock, Presley’s next film. The songwriting team effectively produced the Jailhouse sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his “good-luck charm”. “He was fast,” said Leiber. “Any demo you gave him he knew by heart in ten minutes.” The title track was yet another number-one hit, as was the Jailhouse Rock EP.

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that “the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you’re liable to get killed.” Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia,[143] and in Vancouver the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had inspired the swooning of teenage girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as “brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. … It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. … This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.” Asked for a response, Presley said, “I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn’t have said it. … This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago.”

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of Elvis’ Christmas Album. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley’s request: “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”, an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley’s string of number-one albums to four and would become the best-selling Christmas album ever in the United States, with eventual sales of over 20 million worldwide. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley’s massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley’s inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming King Creole, in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, “Don’t”, another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley’s tenth number-one seller. It had been only 21 months since “Heartbreak Hotel” had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the King Creole soundtrack were held in Hollywood in mid-January 1958. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they and Presley worked closely together. As Stoller recalled, Presley’s manager and entourage sought to wall him off: “He was removed. … They kept him separate.” A brief soundtrack session on February 11 marked another ending—it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

1958–1960: Military service and mother’s death

On March 24, 1958, Presley was drafted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the fort. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying that he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: “The Army can do anything it wants with me.”

Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas. During a two-week leave in early June, he recorded five songs in Nashville. In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis, and her condition rapidly worsened. Presley was granted emergency leave to visit her and arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure at the age of 46. Presley was devastated and never the same; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1.[161] While on maneuvers, Presley was introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant. He became “practically evangelical about their benefits”, not only for energy but for “strength” and weight loss as well, and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, training with Jürgen Seydel. It became a lifelong interest, which he later included in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley’s wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla said that Presley was concerned that his 24-month spell as a GI would ruin his career. In Special Services, he would have been able to give musical performances and remain in touch with the public, but Parker had convinced him that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier. Media reports echoed Presley’s concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck”, the best-selling “Hard Headed Woman”, and “One Night” in 1958, and “(Now and Then There’s) A Fool Such as I” and the number-one “A Big Hunk o’ Love” in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully Elvis’ Golden Records (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

1960–1968: Focus on films

Elvis Is Back

Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged three days later with the rank of sergeant. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA’s Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single, “Stuck on You”, which was rushed into release and swiftly became a number-one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads “It’s Now or Never” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, along with the rest of Elvis Is Back! The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues “menace, driven by Presley’s own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis’ singing wasn’t sexy, it was pornographic.” As a whole, the record “conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things”, according to music historian John Robertson: “a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer;  raucous rocker”. Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on The Frank Sinatra Timex Special—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra’s earlier excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as Welcome Home Elvis, the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

G.I. Blues, the soundtrack to Presley’s first film since his return, was a number-one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, His Hand in Mine, followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in the UK, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records.[181] A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley’s next studio album, Something for Everybody. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely “a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis’ birthright”. It would be his sixt

h number-one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley’s last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy film making schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley, at first, insisted on pursuing higher roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—Flaming Star (1960) and Wild in the Country (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 films he made during the 1960s, there were a few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; critic Andrew Caine dismissed them as a “pantheon of bad taste”. Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, “A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood.”[

Of Presley’s films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The films’ rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: “three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie”. As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew “progressively worse”.[189] Julie Parrish, who appeared in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), says that he disliked many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires’ Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: “The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn’t sing it.” Most of the film albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be “written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll”. Regardless of the songs’ quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: “Presley isn’t trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like ‘No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car’ and ‘Rock-A-Hula Baby’.”

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley’s soundtrack albums were ranked number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (1961) and “Return to Sender” (1962). (“Viva Las Vegas”, the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top-ten hit: “Crying in the Chapel” (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-film albums, between the June 1962 release of Pot Luck and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album How Great Thou Art (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was “arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs”.

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic films and a*sembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the Clambake soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. “By then, of course, the damage had been done”, as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. “Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans.

1968–1973: Comeback

Elvis: the ’68 Comeback Special

Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, Speedway, would rank at number 82 on the Billboard chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, simply called Elvis, aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the ’68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley’s first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley dressed in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and co-producer Steve Binder had worked hard to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC’s highest-rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of Eye magazine remarked, “There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock ‘n’ roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy.” Dave Marsh calls the performance one of “emotional grandeur and historical resonance”.

By January 1969, the single “If I Can Dream”, written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album rose into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what “he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. … He was out of prison, man.” Binder said of Presley’s reaction, “I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, ‘Steve, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don’t believe in.’”

From Elvis in Memphis and the International

Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed From Elvis in Memphis. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is “a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement.” The album featured the hit single “In the Ghetto”, issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley’s first non-gospel top ten hit since “Bossa Nova Baby” in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: “Suspicious Minds”, “Don’t Cry Daddy”, and “Kentucky Rain”.[208]

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, “That’s fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?” In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley a*sembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Costume designer Bill Belew, responsible for the intense leather styling of the Comeback Special, created a new stage look for Presley, inspired by Presley’s passion for karate. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley’s return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.[

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s).[ At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as “The King”, Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. “No,” Presley said, “that’s the real king of rock and roll.” The next day, Parker’s negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. Newsweek commented, “There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.” Rolling Stone called Presley “supernatural, his own resurrection.” In November, Presley’s final non-concert film, Change of Habit, opened. The double album From Memphis to Vegas/From Vegas to Memphis came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. “Suspicious Minds” reached the top of the charts—Presley’s first U.S. pop number-one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television’s Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as a showgirl. She recalled of their encounter, “He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’” Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year’s two-month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album On Stage. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single “The Wonder of You” was issued—a number one hit in the UK, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary Elvis: That’s the Way It Is. Presley was performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts succeeded without any incidents.

The album, That’s the Way It Is, produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson noted, “The authority of Presley’s singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis.” After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and explained how he believed he could reach out to the hippies to help combat the drug culture he and the president abhorred. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was, therefore, important that he “retain his credibility”. Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism. Presley and his friends previously had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles at his home in Bel Air, California in August 1965. On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he “felt a bit betrayed. … The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him”, a reference to Presley’s early death, linked to prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located “Elvis Presley Boulevard”. The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-film Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was Elvis Country, a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, “the truest statement of all”, according to Greil Marcus. “In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of ‘Merry Christmas Baby,’ a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. … If [Presley’s] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life”.

Marriage breakdown and Aloha from Hawaii

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for Elvis on Tour, which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album He Touched Me, released that month, would earn him his second competitive Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in an LP form a week later. Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden became one of Presley’s biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single “Burning Love” was released—Presley’s last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. “The most exciting single Elvis has made since ‘All Shook Up’,” wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. “Who else could make ‘It’s coming closer, the flames are now licking my body’ sound like an a*signation with James Brown’s backup band?”
High-collared white jumpsuit resplendent with red, blue, and gold eagle motif in sequins
Presley came up with his outfit’s eagle motif, as “something that would say ‘America’ to the world”.

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving into Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla related that when she told him, Presley “grabbed … and forcefully made love to” her, declaring, “This is how a real man makes love to his woman.” She later stated in an interview that she regretted her choice of words in describing the incident, and said it had been an overstatement. Five months later, Presley’s new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley’s marriage “was a blow from which he never recovered.” At a rare press conference that June, a reporter had asked Presley whether he was satisfied with his image. Presley replied, “Well, the image is one thing and the human being another … it’s very hard to live up to an image.”

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, Aloha from Hawaii, which would be the first concert by a solo artist to be aired globally. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. On January 14, Aloha from Hawaii aired live via satellite to prime-time audiences in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to U.S. servicemen based across Southeast Asia. In Japan, where it capped a nationwide Elvis Presley Week, it smashed viewing records. The next night, it was simulcast to 28 European countries, and in April an extended version finally aired in the U.S., where it won a 57 percent share of the TV audience.[248] Over time, Parker’s claim that it was seen by one billion or more people would be broadly accepted, but that figure appeared to have been sheer invention. Presley’s stage costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely a*sociated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, “At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure.”[254] The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley’s last U.S. number-one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men came to Presley’s defense, and he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, “There’s too much pain in me … Stone [must] die.” His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, “Aw hell, let’s just leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy.”

1973–1977: Health deterioration and death

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley’s divorce was finalized on October 9, 1973. By then, his health was in major and serious decline. Twice during the year, he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Towards the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semi-comatose from the effects of a pethidine addiction. According to his primary care physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley “felt that by getting drugs from a doctor, he wasn’t the common everyday junkie getting something off the street”. Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974, he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley’s condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembered Presley’s arrival at a University of Maryland concert: “He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, ‘Don’t help me.’ He walked on stage and held onto the mic for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody’s looking at each other like, ‘Is the tour gonna happen’?” Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, “He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so f*cked up. … It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. … I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions.” Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, “I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, ‘Boss, why don’t you just cancel this tour and take a year off …?’ I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you worry about it.’” Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. Cultural critic Marjorie Garber wrote that he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: “In effect, he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers.”

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son’s financial affairs—fired “Memphis Mafia” bodyguards Red West (Presley’s friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to “cut back on expenses”. Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggested that he was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another a*sociate of Presley’s, John O’Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits.[268] However, Presley’s stepbrother, David Stanley, claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley’s drug dependency.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA yet another concert record, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of “How Great Thou Art” that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker’s attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley’s home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process became a struggle for him.

Despite concerns from his label and manager, between July 1973 and October 1976 Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: Promised Land (1975), From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee (1976), and Moody Blue (1977).[278] Similarly, his singles in this era did not prove to be major pop hits, but Presley remained a significant force in the country and adult contemporary markets. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. “My Boy” was a number-one adult contemporary hit in 1975, and “Moody Blue” topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the adult contemporary chart in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his “apocalyptic attack” on the soul classic “Hurt”. “If he felt the way he sounded”, Dave Marsh wrote of Presley’s performance, “the wonder isn’t that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long.”

Final months and death

Presley and Linda Thompson split in November 1976, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden.[282] He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again. Journalist Tony Scherman wrote that by early 1977, “Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts.”[284] In Alexandria, Louisiana, he was on stage for less than an hour, and “was impossible to understand”.[ On March 31, Presley failed to perform in Baton Rouge, unable to get out of his hotel bed; a total of four shows had to be canceled and rescheduled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. According to Guralnick, fans “were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Presley, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books.” A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.

“Way Down”, Presley’s last single issued during his career, was released on June 6. That month, CBS filmed two concerts for a TV special, Elvis in Concert, to be aired in October. In the first, shot in Omaha on June 19, Presley’s voice, Guralnick writes, “is almost unrecognizable, a small, childlike instrument in which he talks more than sings most of the songs, casts about uncertainly for the melody in others, and is virtually unable to articulate or project”. Two days later, in Rapid City, South Dakota, “he looked healthier, seemed to have lost a little weight, and sounded better, too”, though, by the conclusion of the performance, his face was “framed in a helmet of blue-black hair from which sweat sheets down over pale, swollen cheeks”. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at Market Square Arena, on June 26.

he book Elvis: What Happened?, co-written by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley’s years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each magnified—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.

On the evening of Tuesday, August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis to begin another tour. That afternoon, Ginger Alden discovered him in an unresponsive state on a bathroom floor. According to her eyewitness account, “Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the commode and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position, directly in front of it. … It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had landed on the floor, Elvis hadn’t moved.” Attempts to revive him failed, and his death was officially pronounced the next day at 3:30 p.m. at the Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having “permanently changed the face of American popular culture”. Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley’s cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer’s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the Enquirer for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley’s funeral was held at Graceland on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. About 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few weeks, “Way Down” topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal Presley’s body in late August, the remains of both Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland’s Meditation Garden on October 2.

Cause of death

While an autopsy, undertaken the same day Presley died, was still in progress, Memphis medical examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco announced that the immediate cause of death was cardiac arrest. Asked if drugs were involved, he declared that “drugs played no role in Presley’s death”.[301] In fact, “drug use was heavily implicated” in Presley’s death, writes Guralnick. The pathologists conducting the autopsy thought it possible, for instance, that he had suffered “anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist, to which he was known to have had a mild allergy”. A pair of lab reports filed two months later strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported “fourteen drugs in Elvis’ system, ten in significant quantity”. In 1979, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht conducted a review of the reports and concluded that a combination of central nervous system depressants had resulted in Presley’s accidental death.[301] Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden viewed the situation as complicated: “Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call.”

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Dr. Francisco had offered a cause of death before the autopsy was complete; claimed the underlying ailment was cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive; and denied drugs played any part in Presley’s death before the toxicology results were known. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread.[303] While a 1981 trial of Presley’s main physician, Dr. George Nichopoulos, exonerated him of criminal liability for his death, the facts were startling: “In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics: all in Elvis’ name.” His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy report was reopened. Dr. Joseph Davis, who had conducted thousands of autopsies as Miami-Dade County coroner, declared at its completion, “There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack.” More recent research has revealed that Dr. Francisco did not speak for the entire pathology team. Other staff “could say nothing with confidence until they got the results back from the laboratories, if then. That would be a matter of weeks.” One of the examiners, Dr. E. Eric Muirhead “could not believe his ears. Francisco had not only presumed to speak for the hospital’s team of pathologists, he had announced a conclusion that they had not reached. … Early on, a meticulous dissection of the body … confirmed [that] Elvis was chronically ill with diabetes, glaucoma, and constipation. As they proceeded, the doctors saw evidence that his body had been wracked over a span of years by a large and constant stream of drugs. They had also studied his hospital records, which included two admissions for drug detoxification and methadone treatments.” Writer Frank Coffey thought Elvis’s death was due to “a phenomenon called the Valsalva maneuver (essentially straining on the toilet leading to heart stoppage—plausible because Elvis suffered constipation, a common reaction to drug use)”. In similar terms, Dr. Dan Warlick, who was present at the autopsy, “believes Presley’s chronic constipation—the result of years of prescription drug abuse and high-fat, high-cholesterol gorging—brought on what’s known as Valsalva’s maneuver. Put simply, the strain of attempting to defecate compressed the singer’s abdominal aorta, shutting down his heart.”

However, in 2013, Dr. Forest Tennant, who had testified as a defense witness in Nichopoulos’ trial, described his own analysis of Presley’s available medical records. He concluded that Presley’s “drug abuse had led to falls, head trauma, and overdoses that damaged his brain”, and that his death was due in part to a toxic reaction to codeine—exacerbated by an undetected liver enzyme defect—which can cause sudden cardiac arrhythmia. DNA analysis in 2014 of a hair sample purported to be Presley’s found evidence of genetic variants that can lead to glaucoma, migraines, and obesity; a crucial variant a*sociated with the heart-muscle disease hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was also identified.

Later developments

Between 1977 and 1981, six of Presley’s posthumously released singles were top-ten country hits.

Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it became the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House.[310] It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into five music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007), and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (2012). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music’s first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards’ Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” (credited as “Elvis Vs JXL”) was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries and was included in a compilation of Presley’s number-one hits, ELV1S, which was also an international success. The album returned Presley to the Billboard summit for the first time in almost three decades.

In 2003, a remix of “Rubberneckin’”, a 1969 recording of Presley’s, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of “That’s All Right” the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Britain, debuting at number three on the pop chart; it also made the top ten in Canada. In 2005, another three reissued singles, “Jailhouse Rock”, “One Night”/”I Got Stung”, and “It’s Now or Never”, went to number one in the United Kingdom. They were part of a campaign that saw the re-release of all 18 of Presley’s previous chart-topping UK singles. The first, “All Shook Up”, came with a collectors’ box that made it ineligible to chart again; each of the other 17 reissues hit the British top five.

In 2005, Forbes named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity for the fifth straight year, with a gross income of $45 million. He was placed second in 2006, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was ranked second, with his highest annual income ever—$60 million—spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, Viva Elvis: The Album was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products, and he was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity. Six years later, he ranked fourth with earnings of $35 million, up $8 million from 2016 due in part to the opening of a new entertainment complex, Elvis Presley’s Memphis, and hotel, The Guest House at Graceland.

For much of his adult life, Presley, with his rise from poverty to riches and massive fame, had seemed to epitomize the American Dream. In his final years and even more so after his death, and the revelations about its circumstances, he became a symbol of excess and gluttony. Increasing attention, for instance, was paid to his appetite for the rich, heavy Southern cooking of his upbringing, foods such as chicken-fried steak and biscuits and gravy. In particular, his love of calorie-laden fried peanut butter, banana, and (sometimes) bacon sandwiches, now known as “Elvis sandwiches”, came to stand for this aspect of his persona. But the Elvis sandwich represents more than just unhealthy overindulgence—as media and culture scholar Robert Thompson describes, the unsophisticated treat also signifies Presley’s enduring all-American appeal: “He wasn’t only the king, he was one of us.”

Since 1977, there have been numerous alleged sightings of Presley. A long-standing conspiracy theory among some fans is that he faked his death. Adherents cite alleged discrepancies in the death certificate, reports of a wax dummy in his original coffin, and accounts of Presley planning a diversion so he could retire in peace.An unusually large number of fans have domestic shrines devoted to Presley and journey to sites with which he is connected, however faintly. Every August 16, the anniversary of his death, thousands of people gather outside Graceland and celebrate his memory with a candlelight ritual. “With Elvis, it is not just his music that has survived death”, writes Ted Harrison. “He himself has been raised, like a medieval saint, to a figure of cultic status. It is as if he has been canonized by acclamation.”

Artistry

Influences

Presley’s earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, “he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them.” In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley’s future stage act:

The Statesmen were an electric combination … featuring some of the most thrillingly emotive singing and daringly unconventional showmanship in the entertainment world … dressed in suits that might have come out of the window of Lansky’s. … Bass singer Jim Wetherington, known universally as the Big Chief, maintained a steady bottom, ceaselessly jiggling first his left leg, then his right, with the material of the pants leg ballooning out and shimmering. “He went about as far as you could go in gospel music,” said Jake Hess. “The women would jump up, just like they do for the pop shows.” Preachers frequently objected to the lewd movements … but audiences reacted with screams and swoons.

As a teenager, Presley’s musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about both white and African-American musical idioms. Though he never had any formal training, he had a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings aged 19 in 1954. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues, and, as Stoller put it, “He certainly knew a lot more than we did about country music and gospel music.” At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, “I know practically every religious song that’s ever been written.”

Musicianship

Presley received his first guitar when he was 11 years old. He learned to play and sing; he gained no formal musical training but had an innate natural talent and could easily pick up music. Presley played guitar, bass, and piano. While he couldn’t read or write music and had no formal lessons, he was a natural musician and played everything by ear. Presley often played an instrument on his recordings and produced his own music. Presley played rhythm acoustic guitar on most of his Sun recordings and his 1950s RCA albums. He played electric bass guitar on “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” after his bassist Bill Black had trouble with the instrument.[348] Presley played the bass line including the intro. Presley played piano on songs such as “Old Shep” and “First in Line” from his 1956 album Elvis.[349] He is credited with playing piano on later albums such as From Elvis in Memphis and Moody Blue, and on “Unchained Melody” which was one of the last songs that he recorded.[350] Presley played lead guitar on one of his successful singles called “One Night”. Presley also played guitar on one of his successful singles called “Are You Lonesome Tonight”. In the 68 Comeback Special, Elvis took over on lead electric guitar, the first time he had ever been seen with the instrument in public, playing it on songs such as “Baby What You Want Me to Do” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”. Elvis played the back of his guitar on some of his hits such as “All Shook Up”, “Don’t Be Cruel”, and “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear”, providing percussion by slapping the instrument to create a beat. The album Elvis is Back! features Presley playing a lot of acoustic guitar on songs such as “I Will Be Home Again” and “Like a Baby”.

Musical styles and genres

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. “Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley’s first release, on the Sun label”, writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as “essentially … an Elvis Presley construction”: “the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country”. In “That’s All Right”, the Presley trio’s first record, Scotty Moore’s guitar solo, “a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion.” While Katherine Charlton likewise calls Presley “rockabilly’s originator”, Carl Perkins has explicitly stated that “[Sam] Phillips, Elvis, and I didn’t create rockabilly” and, according to Michael Campbell, “Bill Haley recorded the first big rockabilly hit.” In Moore’s view, too, “It had been there for quite a while, really. Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old.”

At RCA, Presley’s rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard “Blue Moon” at Sun to the country ballad “How’s the World Treating You?” on his second LP to the blues of “Santa Claus Is Back in Town”. In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP Peace in the Valley. Certified as a million-seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life.

After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number-one hit “Stuck on You”, is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its “mild rock beat”; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it “upbeat pop”. The number five “She’s Not You” (1962) “integrates the Jordanaires so completely, it’s practically doo-wop”. The modern blues/R&B sound captured with success on Elvis Is Back! was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as “Down in the Alley” and “Hi-Heel Sneakers”. Presley’s output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”, a number-one in 1960. “It’s Now or Never”, which also topped the chart that year, was a classically influenced variation of pop based on the Neapolitan “‘O sole mio” and concluding with a “full-voiced operatic cadence”. These were both dramatic numbers, but most of what Presley recorded for his many film soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the ’68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were “hard to find”. A significant exception was “Burning Love”, his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley’s subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of Elvis in Memphis, as well as “Suspicious Minds”, cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

The developmental arc of Presley’s singing voice, as described by critic Dave Marsh, goes from “high and thrilled in the early days, [to] lower and perplexed in the final months.” Marsh credits Presley with the introduction of the “vocal stutter” on 1955’s “Baby Let’s Play House”. When on “Don’t Be Cruel”, Presley “slides into a ‘mmmmm’ that marks the transition between the first two verses,” he shows “how masterful his relaxed style really is.” Marsh describes the vocal performance on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as one of “gentle insistence and delicacy of phrasing”, with the line “‘Shall I stay’ pronounced as if the words are fragile as crystal”.

Jorgensen calls the 1966 recording of “How Great Thou Art” “an extraordinary fulfillment of his vocal ambitions”, as Presley “crafted for himself an ad-hoc arrangement in which he took every part of the four-part vocal, from [the] bass intro to the soaring heights of the song’s operatic climax”, becoming “a kind of one-man quartet”. Guralnick finds “Stand By Me” from the same gospel sessions “a beautifully articulated, almost nakedly yearning performance,” but, by contrast, feels that Presley reaches beyond his powers on “Where No One Stands Alone”, resorting “to a kind of inelegant bellowing to push out a sound” that Jake Hess of the Statesmen Quartet had in his command. Hess himself thought that while others might have voices the equal of Presley’s, “he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime.” Guralnick attempts to pinpoint that something: “The warmth of his voice, his controlled use of both vibrato technique and natural falsetto range, the subtlety and deeply felt conviction of his singing were all qualities recognizably belonging to his talent but just as recognizably not to be achieved without sustained dedication and effort.”

Marsh praises his 1968 reading of “U.S. Male”, “bearing down on the hard guy lyrics, not sending them up or overplaying them but tossing them around with that astonishingly tough yet gentle a*surance that he brought to his Sun records.” The performance on “In the Ghetto” is, according to Jorgensen, “devoid of any of his characteristic vocal tricks or mannerisms”, instead relying on the exceptional “clarity and sensitivity of his voice”. Guralnick describes the song’s delivery as of “almost translucent eloquence … so quietly confident in its simplicity”. On “Suspicious Minds”, Guralnick hears essentially the same “remarkable mixture of tenderness and poise”, but supplemented with “an expressive quality somewhere between stoicism (at suspected infidelity) and anguish (over impending loss)”.

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that “Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass … and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion.” He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, “from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley’s best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down.” In Pleasants’ view, his voice was “variable and unpredictable” at the bottom, “often brilliant” at the top, with the capacity for “full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy”. Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley’s range as two-and-a-quarter octaves, emphasizes that “his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles, and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all.” Presley was always “able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers”, writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to a*similate many other vocal styles.

VERSE 1

6 7 7 7 7 -7 -6 -6 -6 6
You say that we’ve got no-thing in common,

6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
No common ground to start from,

4 5 5 -4 -4 4
And we’re falling a–part.

6 7 7 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
You’ll say the world has come be-tween us.

6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
Our lives have come be-tween us,

4 5 5 -4 -4 -4 4
But I know you just don’t care.

CHORUS

6 7 6 7 -6 6 -7 -7 -7 7 -6 6
And I said what a–bout “Breakfast at Tiffa-ny’s?”

6 7 6 7 6 6 -7 -7 -7 7 -6
She said, “I think I remember the film, and

7 7 -6 6 7 6 6 -7 -7 -7 7 -6
as I re-call, I think, we both kinda- liked it.”

7 7 6 7 6
And I said, “Well, that’s

6 -7 -7 -7 7
the one thing we’ve got.”

VERSE 2

6 -6 6 6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
I see you – the only one who knew me,

6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
And now your eyes see through me;

5 5 -4 -4 4
I guess I- was wrong.

5 6 7 6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
So what now? It’s plain to see we’re o–ver,

6 6 7 7 -7 -6 -6 6
And I hate when things are o–ver,

4 5 5 5 -4 -4 4
When so much is left un-done.

REPEAT CHORUS

REPEAT VERSE 1

REPEAT CHORUS

And I said what about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?
She said, “I think I remember the film,
And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it.”
And I said, “Well, that’s the one thing we’ve got.”

This is my first tab uploaded at harptabs.com
It is certainly not my favorite song, but very easy to play for beginners (like me).

(REFRAIN:)

C
4 -4 5 5 5
I’m a big big girl

G/B
5 -5 -4 -4 -4
in a big big world

F/A C G
-4 -4 5 4 4 4 4 -4 5 -4 5
It’s not a big big thing if you leave me

C
4 -4 5 5 5
but I do, do feel

G/B
5 -5 -4 -4 -4
that I do, do will

F/A
-4 5 5 -4 4
miss you much

C G C
-5 5 -4 5
miss you much…

(END REFRAIN)

C G/B
5 5 5 -4 -4 5 5 4
I can see the first leafs fall-ing

F/A C G
4 4 4 5 -4 -4 4
it’s all so yel-low and nice

Am G
4 -4 -4 4 -4 -4 4 -4 5 -4 5
It’s so ve-ry cold out-side

F C G
-4 -4 -4 4 5 -4 4 5
like the way I’m feel-ing inside

REFRAIN

(Outside it’s now raining
and tears are falling from my eyes (Like first couplet)
Why did it have to happen?
Why did it all have to end?)

REFRAIN

Dm G
-5 -5 5 5 -4 4 -4
I have your arms a-round me

Am F
5 -4 -4 4
warm like fire

Dm G
5 -5 -5 6 -5 5 5 -4 5
but when I o-pen my eyes

C
4 4
you’re gone…

REFRAIN

2x, ending:

D A D
-5 -4 -4
miss you much…

very similar to the version posted by Walt, just a little higher

-8 -7 -8 -7 7 <-6 -77-7 7 This is the night, its a beautiful night6 <-6 7 <-6 -7 <-6 6 -5 and we call it bella notte-7 7 -7 7 6 <-6 7 <-6 7 <-6 look at the skies, they have stars in their eyes,6 -5 6 6 7 <-6 6 -5 on this lovely bella notte-5 -9 -9 -9 8 -9 8 8 -7 -8 -8 -7-8 7 -8 So take the love of your loved one, you'll need it about this time6 -8 -7 7<-6 -7 -7 <-6 7 <-6 6 6 <-67 -7 to keep from falling like a star, when you make that dizzy climb<-7 -8 -7 -8 -7 <-6 7 -9 -9 -7 8 for this is the night, and the heavens are right<-7 -8 8 6 -8 <-6 -7 7 on this lovely Bella Notte