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I Am What I Am (Village People Song)
"I Am What I Am" is a song written by Victor Willis, Henri Belolo, Peter Whitehead and Jacques Morali that was first released by the Village People on their 1978 album '' Macho Man''. It was also released as a single with "Key West" as the b-side in some countries including Germany and the UK. It did not chart in those countries, but it reached #4 on the Billboard Dance Chart in a medley with "Key West" and " Macho Man". It has since been released on several Village People greatest hits compilation albums. It was also included on the soundtrack for the 1978 film '' Thank God It's Friday''. ''Rolling Stone'' critic Mitchell Schneider described "I Am What I Am" as a "human-rights anthem". Village People singer Randy Jones describes the song as "a gay liberation statement, aimed directly at gays and lesbians who were standing up without apology for their lifestyle" and as the group's "first gay liberation song". He says that the theme of the song is the virtue of being yours ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village People
Village People is an American disco group known for its on-stage costumes and suggestive lyrics in their music. The group was originally formed by French producers Jacques Morali, Henri Belolo and lead singer Victor Willis following the release of the debut album ''Village People'', which targeted disco's large gay audience. The group's name refers to Manhattan's Greenwich Village, with its reputation as a gay neighborhood. The characters were a symbolic group of American masculinity and macho gay-fantasy personas. As of 2022, Victor Willis is the only original member of the group. The group quickly became popular and moved into the mainstream, scoring several disco and dance hits internationally, including the hit singles " Macho Man", "In the Navy", " Go West", and "Y.M.C.A.", which was their biggest hit. In March 2020, the Library of Congress described "Y.M.C.A." as "an American phenomenon", and added the song to the National Recording Registry, which preserves audio recordin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Randy Jones (singer)
Randy Jones (born September 13, 1952) is an American disco and pop singer and best known as the cowboy from Village People from 1977 to 1980, and again from 1987 until 1990. Early life Jones attended William G. Enloe High School in Raleigh, North Carolina and graduated in 1970. While there, he was a founder of Enloe's Drama Club, which was then called Amicus Scaena, Latin for "friend of scene" or "friend of theatre". He then studied at North Carolina School of the Arts before moving to New York. Personal life and career Jones had a marriage ceremony with his boyfriend of 20 years, Will Grega, at a New York City club on May 7, 2004. Although the marriage was not legally binding at the time, as gay marriage was not yet recognized in New York State, Jones commented, "It's only a matter of time before the courts rule in favor of what's morally right and humanly decent." The pair had published a book together in 1996, titled ''Out Sounds: The Gay and Lesbian Music Alternative''. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reebok
Reebok International Limited () is an American fitness footwear and clothing manufacturer that is a part of Authentic Brands Group. It was established in England in 1958 as a companion company to J.W. Foster and Sons, a sporting goods company which had been founded in 1895 in Bolton, Lancashire. From 1958 until 1986, the brand featured the flag of Great Britain in its logo to signify the origins of the company. It was bought by German sporting goods company Adidas in 2005, then sold to Authentic Brands Group in 2021. The company's global headquarters are located in Boston, Massachusetts, in the Seaport District. History Early years In 1895, Joseph William Foster at the age of 14 started work in his bedroom above his father's sweetshop in Bolton, England, and designed some of the earliest spiked running shoes. After his ideas progressed, he founded his business "''J.W. Foster''" in 1900; later he joined with his sons and changed the company name to J.W. Foster and Sons. Foste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloria Gaynor
Gloria Gaynor ( née Fowles; born September 7, 1943) is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits "I Will Survive" (1978), " Let Me Know (I Have a Right)" (1979), " I Am What I Am" (1983), and her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974). Early life Gaynor was born Gloria Fowles in Newark, New Jersey, to Daniel Fowles and Queenie Mae Proctor. Her grandmother lived nearby and was involved in her upbringing. "There was always music in our house", Gaynor wrote in her autobiography ''I Will Survive''. She enjoyed listening to the radio, and to records by Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. Her father played the ukulele and guitar and sang professionally in nightclubs with a group called Step 'n' Fetchit. Gloria grew up a tomboy; she had five brothers and one sister. Her brothers sang gospel and formed a quartet with a friend. Gaynor was not allowed to sing with the all-male group, nor was her younger brother Arthur, as Gloria was a girl and he was too young. Arthur later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I Am What I Am (Broadway Musical Song)
"I Am What I Am" is a song originally introduced in the Broadway musical '' La Cage aux Folles''. The song is the finale number of the musical's first act, and performed by the character of Albin Mougeotte, first played by George Hearn. His version appears on the original cast album released in 1983. The song was composed by Jerry Herman. Gloria Gaynor version The song was released as a single by Gloria Gaynor in 1983 and went on to become one of the singer's best known songs. Producer Joel Diamond recognized the song's disco potential when he saw ''La Cage Aux Folles'' on Broadway and arranged for Gaynor – whose 1978 '' Park Avenue Sound'' album he'd produced – to record it. A club hit in America, arranged by Marcus Barone, with a remix by Shep Pettibone, Gaynor's version of "I Am What I Am" was a Top 40 hit throughout Europe, becoming established as a global gay anthem. Track listing *7" single :A. "I Am What I Am" – 3:51 :B. "More Than Enough" – 4:46 *12" sing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Herman
Gerald Sheldon Herman (July 10, 1931December 26, 2019) was an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway theatre. One of the most commercially successful Broadway songwriters of his time, Herman was the composer and lyricist for a number of hit musicals, starting in the 1960s, that were characterized by an upbeat and optimistic outlook and what Herman called "the simple, hummable showtune". His shows include '' Hello, Dolly!'' (1964), at one time the longest-running musical in Broadway history, which also produced the hit title song for Louis Armstrong; ''Mame'' (1966), a vehicle for Angela Lansbury; and '' La Cage aux Folles'' (1984), the first hit Broadway musical about a gay couple. In 2009, Herman received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. He was a recipient of the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. Early life Herman was born in Manhattan and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, the only child of musically inclined, middle-class Jewish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Groove (music)
In music, groove is the sense of an effect ("feel") of changing pattern in a propulsive rhythm or sense of " swing". In jazz, it can be felt as a quality of persistently repeated rhythmic units, created by the interaction of the music played by a band's rhythm section (e.g. drums, electric bass or double bass, guitar, and keyboards). Groove is a significant feature of popular music, and can be found in many genres, including salsa, rock, soul, funk, and fusion. From a broader ethnomusicological perspective, groove has been described as "an unspecifiable but ordered sense of something that is sustained in a distinctive, regular and attractive way, working to draw the listener in." Musicologists and other scholars have analyzed the concept of "groove" since around the 1990s. They have argued that a "groove" is an "understanding of rhythmic patterning" or "feel" and "an intuitive sense" of "a cycle in motion" that emerges from "carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns" t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats: In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music, the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of the style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed mov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard Magazine
''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs, and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox, phonograph, and radio became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billboard (magazine)
''Billboard'' (stylized as ''billboard'') is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by Penske Media Corporation. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, the 200, and the Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows. ''Billboard'' was founded in 1894 by William Donaldson and James Hennegan as a trade publication for bill posters. Donaldson later acquired Hennegan's interest in 1900 for $500. In the early years of the 20th century, it covered the entertainment industry, such as circuses, fairs, and burlesque shows, and also created a mail service for travelling entertainers. ''Billboard'' began focusing more on the music industry as the jukebox, phonograph, and radio became commonplace. Many topics it covered were spun-off ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
In The Navy
"In the Navy" is a song by American disco group Village People. It was released as the first single from their fourth studio album, '' Go West'' (1979). It was a number one hit in Canada, Flanders, Japan and the Netherlands, while reaching number two in Ireland, Norway and the UK. In 1994, a remix charted at number 36 in the UK. "In the Navy" was the last top 10 hit for the group in the United States. Background, writing and video After the enormous commercial success of their 1978 hit "Y.M.C.A." which unexpectedly became the unofficial hymn and powerful advertising tool for the YMCA, the group took on another national institution, the United States Navy. The Navy contacted group manager Henri Belolo to use the song in a recruiting advertising campaign for television and radio. Belolo gave the rights for free on the condition that the Navy help them shoot the music video. Less than a month later, the Village group arrived at Naval Base San Diego where the Navy provided them with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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