Julianne Hough is a country singer in the choir
Foxx began piano lessons at age five. He is releasing his fourth album in March 2010. He has been featured on several singles that have hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. His second album, Unpredictable, debuted at number two, and sold 598,000 copies in its first week. The following week, the album rose to number one, selling an additional 200,000 copies. To date, the album has sold 1.98 million copies in the United States, and was certified double Platinum by the RIAA. Foxx is the fourth artist to have won an Academy Award for an acting role and to have achieved a number-one record album in the US. (The other three to accomplish this feat were Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand.)
To begin with, “We Are the World” was to be written by Jackson, Richie and Wonder. As Wonder had limited time to work on the project, Jackson and Richie proceeded to write “We Are the World” themselves…They began work on the song’s creation at Hayvenhurst, the Encino home of Jackson and his family. For a week, the two spent every night working on lyrics and melodies in the latter’s bedroom. They knew that they wanted a song which would be easy to sing and memorable…Jackson’s older sister, La Toya, watched the two work on the song, and later revealed that Richie only wrote a few lines for the track.[4] She stated that her younger brother wrote 99 percent of the lyrics, “but he’s never felt it necessary to say that”.La Toya further commented on the song’s creation in an interview with the American celebrity news magazine People. “I’d go into the room while they were writing and it would be very quiet, which is odd, since Michael’s usually very cheery when he works. It was very emotional for them.”
Richie had recorded two melodies for “We Are the World”, which Jackson took, adding music and words to the song in the same day. Jackson stated, "I love working quickly. I went ahead without even Lionel knowing, I couldn’t wait. I went in and came out the same night with the song completed—drums, piano, strings, and words to the chorus."Jackson then presented his demo to Richie and Jones, who were both shocked; they did not expect the pop star to see the structure of the song so quickly…
Sometimes you guys crack me up.
I totally agree that it sucks. Rather than inspiring me to donate money to Haiti, it inspired me to want to give some of the “singers” singing lessons. Seriously, a lot of them cannot sing, period. Good thing they included some “old timers,” to give it some class.
And the rap section was embarrassing to watch.
It wasn’t terrible.
Are they going to release a full-length album like the original poseurs did? That one went to #1. When somebody suggested a second album should be released with contributions from such participants as Paul Simon and Bob Dylan. Ken Kragen, manager for Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers, shot this down saying such an album wouldn’t go to number one and it was important for such an album to go to number one. Silly me, I thought it was important to save some people’s lives.
There was some heavy metal song at the time on which the guitarists made the ultimate sacrifice. They lowered the volume of their guitars to get a good recording.
Could Tony Bennet have possibly looked more out of place?
Who was that guy with the plaid shirt, shaved head, and the shockingly pale skin? He looked like Sean Patrick Flannery’s stunt double from Powder.
That rap section should never have seen the light of day.
Th song was called “Stars,” by Hear 'n Aid. A project that was largely put together by Ronnie James Dio. I remember that one well. It had like 24 guitar solos on it. Not to knock it, because it was a well-intentioned project, but the sheer number of guitar solos made it sound kind of Spinal Tap-ish. Come to think of it, I think Spinal Tap was actually one of the bands that participated.
Isaac Slade from The Fray.
I thought it was okay at first, but it went completely off the rails at the end.
Where’s Mark David Chapman now that we need him?
Yeah, who was that screamer who came on right after Babs? Waaaaay too much screaming from that point on.
I thought Michael Jackson looked eerily similar to his appearance in the original.
Thumbs down from me.
I watched an interview of Lionel Ritchie (can’t remember if it was on the Today Show or on Private Sessions?) and he mentioned that at the recording of the original, there was literally a sign above the door that said “Check your egos at the door”. The solo singers sang thier parts in the same studio, in front of the group. For this one, many of the solo singers were too embarassed and self-conscious to sing in front of the group. They actually did the recording in three separate rooms so that pople wouldn’t be too embarassed to sing thier parts in front of the others. Some of the singers actually refused to sing alone in front of the group. If I sounded like some of those folks, I wouldn’t want to sing live in front of them either! It’s obvious that many of them need to be “sweetened up” via synthesizers, autotuners, etc to sound halfway decent!
Also, I appreicate many kinds of music but that one guy with the warbling voice thing? Irritated the hell out of me!
I set my DVR to record something and when I went to watch it, this was at the beginning. I watched a little bit of it and started skipping forward. I stopped when it got to a group of people that looked like rappers. I literally laughed out loud! Since I was skipping around, I was hearing the traditional version of the song and was all of a sudden hit with a bad rap in the middle. It was like watching something on SNL. It also made me miss the first five minutes of Equilibrium.:mad:
Am I missing the part where it said Foxx had all his major hit albums before he played Ray Charles? Or that he didn’t actually continue to impersonate Ray in recordings after his portrayal of Ray?
Sorry, I stand by my opinion that he played a famous singer in a movie and he’s built a recording career on that.
If you make a record and it bombs, how does that help anyone?
I’m also not so cynical about the original record.
:rolleyes:
I agree entirely, and he belongs to the same genre as Jennifer Lopez (J-LO/Selena) in that respect. Pop grotesqueries of manufactured talent.
I counted at least three who used autotune.
I was going to say ‘who DIDN’T use an autotune?’
hh
Yup, they were there!
Yeah, it was just an awful job of meshing the different genres. I think it would have been better to give some of the rap artists solos rather than having them all “rappping” as a chorus. Switching between 80s Michael Jackson and autotune and whatever Wyclef was doing was good for a laugh, though.
You too? Wow, I thought I was the only one.
(The only pop star whose use of autotune I will excuse is Cher, because she had a couple of decades demonstrating that she had real singing chops before using it as a gimmick. Everyone else - if you can’t sing in tune, STFU.)