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Funkytown
"Funkytown" is a song by the American disco/funk band Lipps Inc., released in 1980 as the second single from their 1979 debut album, '' Mouth to Mouth''. It was successful globally, reaching top spots in places such as the United States, West Germany, Canada, Austria, Switzerland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. Composition It was written by musician, composer, and record producer Steven Greenberg and sung by Cynthia Johnson. The lyrics pine for a metaphorical place that will "keep me movin', keep me groovin' with some energy", while the band members were dreaming of relocating from Minneapolis to New York City. It is in the key of C major. Music videos "Funkytown" has at least two music videos. In one, a black singer mimes the vocals and some women dance in a pub. In another video, Debbie Jenner, who fronted the band in the Netherlands and West Germany, dances while miming the vocals. Johnson claims on her website that she "was never asked to perform a video of 'Fun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cynthia Johnson
Cynthia Johnson (born April 22, 1956) is an American singer, songwriter and television personality. She is best known as the lead singer of the band Lipps Inc. with the worldwide smash hit "Funkytown". Musical career Beginnings Prior to becoming the lead singer of Lipps Inc., Johnson had become well-known locally for winning the 1976 Miss Black Minnesota, USA pageant, and for being the lead vocalist of the well-known Minneapolis band Flyte Tyme for seven years. Being also an accomplished saxophone player, Johnson utilized her saxophone talents in Flyte Tyme, and she was also the songwriter of many of their songs. Johnson also co-wrote some songs with band members Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, today a multi-Grammy award winning songwriting and producing team. Johnson completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Minnesota, Morris in 1978, and continued to perform with Flyte Tyme for a brief time. Shortly after she left Flyte Tyme, the band evolved into The Time, a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Greenberg (musician)
Steven Greenberg (born October 24, 1950) is an American musician, record producer and the owner of the independent label October Records. He is best known for his band Lipps Inc.'s 1980 hit song "Funkytown" (which was also a hit for Australian band Pseudo Echo). Career Greenberg was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. In his twenties, Greenberg was a multi-instrumentalist who played in several bands. He had been trying for some time to secure a production deal, and he drew the interest of the Casablanca label with a disco track called " Rock It," which became a hit locally. Released nationally in late 1979, "Rock It" made it into the Top 20 on the Billboard Disco Charts. Casablanca asked Greenberg for a full album, so he gathered several session players, among them guitarists David Rivkin and Tom Riopelle; keyboardist Ivan Rafowitz; synth and vocoder programmer Roger Dumas (not to be confused with French actor Roger Dumas); and bassist Terry Grant. Most importantly, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Casablanca Records
Casablanca Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Republic Records. Under its founder Neil Bogart, Casablanca was most successful during the disco era of the mid to late 1970s. The label currently focuses on dance and electronic music under the direction of Brett Alperowitz. Biography Casablanca was founded in 1973 by former Buddah Records executive Neil Bogart, who named the label in homage to the 1942 film ''Casablanca''. He partnered with Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris and Buck Reingold in 1973, and was based in Los Angeles. The label was formed after they left Buddah and secured financing from Warner Bros. Records to start the venture. Casablanca became one of the most successful American labels of the 1970s, signing and releasing albums by such acts as Kiss, Donna Summer, Village People, Cher, Lipps Inc. (with lead vocalist Cynthia Johnson), and Parliament (featuring George Clinton). In 1976, the label merged with indie-film c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doris D
Doris D (born Debbie Jenner; 22 February 1959) is a British singer and dancer who spent her career in the Netherlands. Biography Jenner was born in Skegness, England, and settled in the Netherlands at the age of 20 to start a ballet school there. There, she was a featured dancer in the Dutch pop music television program ''TopPop'', and she worked with the girl group Babe. In 1980 she was asked to become the face of the studio band Lipps Inc. in the Netherlands, which had a big hit with "Funkytown". In the spring of 1980, the record also reached the number 1 position in the Netherlands on the then-three hit lists on the Dutch public radio station Hilversum 3: the Dutch Top 40, the National Hitparade and the TROS Top 50. Jenner's striking appearance also caught the eye of Piet Souer, producer of fellow girl group Luv', and he asked her to become the lead singer in a new girl group he formed called Doris D & The Pins. The first song Jenner sang for the group was "Shine Up", which w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars. Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular with Italian Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans and Black Americans "'Broadly speaking, the typical New York discothèque DJ is young (between 18 and 30) and Italian,' journalist Vince Lettie declared in 1975. ..Remarkably, almost all of the important early DJs were of Italian extraction .. Italian Americans have played a significant role in America's dance music culture .. While Italian Americans mostly from Brooklyn largely created disco from scratch .." in Philadelphia and New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco can be seen as a reaction by the 1960s counterculture to both the dominance of rock music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars. Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular with Italian Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans and Black Americans "'Broadly speaking, the typical New York discothèque DJ is young (between 18 and 30) and Italian,' journalist Vince Lettie declared in 1975. ..Remarkably, almost all of the important early DJs were of Italian extraction .. Italian Americans have played a significant role in America's dance music culture .. While Italian Americans mostly from Brooklyn largely created disco from scratch .." in Philadelphia and New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco can be seen as a reaction by the 1960s counterculture to both the dominance of rock music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vocoder
A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was invented in 1938 by Homer Dudley at Bell Labs as a means of synthesizing human speech. This work was developed into the channel vocoder which was used as a voice codec for telecommunications for speech coding to conserve bandwidth in transmission. By encrypting the control signals, voice transmission can be secured against interception. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication. The advantage of this method of encryption is that none of the original signal is sent, only envelopes of the bandpass filters. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same filter configuration to re-synthesize a version of the original signal spectrum. The vocoder has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auto-Tune
Auto-Tune (or autotune) is an audio processor introduced in 1996 by American company Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a proprietary device to measure and alter pitch in vocal and instrumental music recording and performances. Auto-Tune was originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-pitch. The 1998 Cher song " Believe" popularized the technique of using Auto-Tune to distort vocals. In 2018, the music critic Simon Reynolds observed that Auto-Tune had "revolutionized popular music", calling its use for effects "the fad that just wouldn't fade. Its use is now more entrenched than ever." In its role distorting vocals, Auto-Tune operates on different principles from the vocoder or talk box and produces different results. Description Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dotdash
Dotdash Meredith (formerly About.com) is an American digital media company based in New York City. The company publishes online articles and videos about various subjects across categories including health, home, food, finance, tech, beauty, lifestyle, travel, and education. It operates brands including Verywell, Investopedia, The Balance, Byrdie, MyDomaine, ''Brides'', The Spruce, Simply Recipes, Serious Eats, Liquor.com, Lifewire, TripSavvy, ''TreeHugger'', and ThoughtCo. In August 2012, About.com became a property of IAC, owner of Ask.com and numerous other online brands, and its revenue is generated by advertising. In addition to its Manhattan headquarters, Dotdash Meredith also maintains offices elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area, as well as in Des Moines, Iowa and Birmingham, Alabama. History 1997–2005: launch, renaming, Primedia acquisition Founded in 1996 as The Mining Company, the site was launched on April 21, 1997 by Scott Kurnit, owner of General Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard Hot 100
The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States. The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming, is readily available on a real-time basis, is also tracked on a Friday to Thursday cycle effective with the chart dated July 17, 2021 (previously Monday to Sunday and before July 2015, Wednesday to Tuesday). A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by ''Billboard'' on Tuesdays but post-dated to the following Saturday. The first number-one song of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 was " Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dance Club Songs
Dance Club Songs is a chart published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine in the United States. It is a national look over of club disc jockeys to determine the most popular songs being played in nightclubs across the country. It was launched as the Disco Action Top 30 chart on August 28, 1976, and became the first chart by ''Billboard'' to document the popularity of dance music. The first number-one song on the chart for the issue dated August 28, 1976, was "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees, spending five weeks atop the chart and the group's only number-one song on the chart. In January 2017, ''Billboard'' proclaimed Madonna as the most successful artist in the history of the chart, ranking her first in their list of the 100 top all-time dance artists. Madonna holds the record for the most number-one songs with 50. Katy Perry holds the record for having eighteen consecutive number-one songs. Perry's third studio album, '' Teenage Dream'' (2010), became the first album in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kent Music Report
The Kent Music Report was a weekly record chart of Australian music singles and albums which was compiled by music enthusiast David Kent from May 1974 through to January 1999. The chart was re-branded the Australian Music Report (AMR) in July 1987. From June 1988, the Australian Recording Industry Association, which had been using the top 50 portion of the report under licence since mid-1983, chose to produce their own listing as the ARIA Charts. Before the Kent Report, ''Go-Set'' magazine published weekly Top-40 Singles from 1966, and Album charts from 1970 until the magazine's demise in August 1974. David Kent later published Australian charts from 1940 to 1973 in a retrospective fashion, using state by state chart data obtained from various Australian radio stations. Background Kent had spent a number of years previously working in the music industry at both EMI and Phonogram records and had developed the report initially as a hobby. The Kent Music Report was first release ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
