Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and activist. Her career has spanned over 40 years. Her album She's So Unusual (1983) was the first debut album by a female artist to achieve four top-five hits on the Billboard Hot 100—"Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Time After Time", "She Bop", and "All Through the Night"—and earned Lauper the Best New Artist award at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards in 1985. Her success continued with the soundtrack for the motion picture The Goonies (1985) and her second record True Colors (1986). This album included the number-one single "True Colors" and "Change of Heart", which peaked at number three. In 1989, she had a hit with "I Drove All Night".
Darkness on the Edge of Town is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen. It was released on June 2, 1978, by Columbia Records. Recorded following a period of legal disputes between Springsteen and his former manager Mike Appel, the sessions took place in New York City with the E Street Band from June 1977 to March 1978. Springsteen and Jon Landau co-produced, with assistance from Steven Van Zandt. The sessions yielded a large number of outtakes, several of which were given to other artists while others later appeared on compilations.
Aimee Elizabeth Mann is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released more than a dozen albums as a solo artist and with other musicians. Her work with the producer Jon Brion in the 1990s was influential on American alternative rock, and she is noted for her sardonic and literate lyrics about dark subjects.
Kelly Brianne, known professionally as Kelly Clarkson, is an American singer, songwriter, author and television personality. She rose to fame after winning the first season of American Idol in 2002, which earned her a record deal with RCA. Her debut single, "A Moment Like This", topped the US Billboard Hot 100, and became the country's best selling single of 2002. It was included on her debut studio album, Thankful (2003), which debuted atop the Billboard 200. Trying to reinvent her image, Clarkson parted ways with Idol management and shifted to pop rock for her second studio album, Breakaway (2004). Supported by four US top-ten singles – the title track, "Since U Been Gone", "Behind These Hazel Eyes", and "Because of You" – Breakaway sold over 12 million copies worldwide and won two Grammy Awards.
Karl Martin Sandberg, known professionally as Max Martin, is a Swedish record producer and songwriter. He rose to prominence in the late 1990s making a string of hit singles such as Britney Spears's "...Baby One More Time" (1998), the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" (1999), Céline Dion's "That's the Way It Is" (1999) and NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me" (2000).
Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright is a Canadian-American singer, songwriter, and composer. He has recorded 10 studio albums and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written two classical operas and set Shakespeare's sonnets to music for a theatre piece by Robert Wilson.
Patrick Ray Leonard is an American songwriter, keyboardist, film composer, and music producer, best known for his longtime collaboration with Madonna. His work with Madonna includes her albums True Blue (1986), Who's That Girl (1987), Like a Prayer (1989), I'm Breathless (1990) and Ray of Light (1998). He scored Madonna's 2008 documentary I Am Because We Are, played keyboards with her at Live Aid (1985), and was musical director and keyboardist on The Virgin Tour (1985) and the Who's That Girl World Tour (1987).
Songs of Leonard Cohen is the debut album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released on December 27, 1967, on Columbia Records. Less successful in the US than in Europe, Songs of Leonard Cohen foreshadowed the kind of chart success Cohen would go on to achieve. It reached number 83 on the Billboard 200. It peaked at number 13 on the UK Albums Chart, spending nearly a year and a half on it.
"Suzanne" is a song written by Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen in the 1960s. First published as a poem in 1966, it was recorded as a song by Judy Collins in the same year, and Cohen performed it as his debut single, from his 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen. Many other artists have recorded versions, and it has become one of the most covered songs in Cohen's catalogue.
"The Scientist" is a song by British rock band Coldplay. The song was written collaboratively by all the band members for their second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. It is built around a piano ballad, with lyrics telling the story about a man's desire to love and an apology. The song was released in the United Kingdom on 11 November 2002 as the second single from A Rush of Blood to the Head and reached number 10 in the UK Charts. It was released in the United States on 15 April 2003 as the third single and reached number 18 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 34 on the Adult Top 40 chart.
"Hallelujah" is a song written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, originally released on his album Various Positions (1984). Achieving little initial success, the song found greater popular acclaim through a new version recorded by John Cale in 1991. Cale's version inspired a 1994 recording by Jeff Buckley that in 2004 was ranked number 259 on Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
"Famous Blue Raincoat" is a song by Leonard Cohen. It is the sixth track on his third album, Songs of Love and Hate, released in 1971. The song is written in the form of a letter. The lyric tells the story of a love triangle among the speaker, a woman named Jane, and the male addressee, who is identified only briefly as "my brother, my killer."
Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. Her genre-spanning discography, songwriting, and artistic reinventions have received critical praise and wide media coverage. Born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville at age 14 to become a country artist. She signed a songwriting deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing in 2004 and a recording contract with Big Machine Records in 2005. Her 2006 self-titled debut album made her the first female country artist to write a U.S. platinum-certified album.
"Everybody Knows" is a song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and collaborator Sharon Robinson. It has often been covered and used in soundtracks.
Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter and poet who was active in music from 1967 until his death in 2016. Cohen released 14 studio albums and eight live albums during the course of a recording career lasting almost 50 years, throughout which he remained an active poet. His entire catalogue is available on Columbia Records. His 1967 debut Songs of Leonard Cohen earned an RIAA gold record; he followed up with three more highly acclaimed albums: Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971) and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974), before allowing Phil Spector to produce Death of a Ladies' Man for Warner Bros. Records in 1977. Cohen returned to Columbia in 1979 for Recent Songs, but the label declined to release his next album, Various Positions (1984) in the US, leaving it to American shops to import it from CBS Canada. In 1988, Columbia got behind Cohen again and gave full support to I'm Your Man, which brought his career to new heights, and Cohen followed it with 1992's The Future.
Leonard Norman Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, social and political conflict, and sexual and romantic love, desire, regret, and loss. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was invested as a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour. In 2011, he received one of the Prince of Asturias Awards for literature and the ninth Glenn Gould Prize.
"So Long, Marianne" is a song written by Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen. It was featured on his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen.
Jack Michael Antonoff is an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. Antonoff is the lead singer of rock band Bleachers, and is the guitarist and drummer in the pop rock band Fun. He was previously the lead singer of the indie rock band Steel Train. Aside from his work with Bleachers and Fun, Antonoff has worked as a songwriter and record producer with various artists, including Taylor Swift, the 1975, Lorde, St. Vincent, Florence and the Machine, Lana Del Rey, Fifth Harmony, Kevin Abstract, Carly Rae Jepsen, the Chicks, Tegan and Sara and Clairo. Antonoff has often been credited with having a significant impact on the sound of contemporary popular music.
You Want It Darker is the fourteenth studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, released on October 21, 2016, by Columbia Records, 17 days before Cohen's death. The album was created at the end of his life and focuses on death, God, and humor. It was released to critical acclaim. The title track was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance in January 2018. It was Cohen's last album released during his lifetime and was followed by the posthumous album Thanks for the Dance in November 2019.
Giveon Dezmann Evans, known mononymously as Giveon, is an American singer. He rose to prominence with his collaboration with Drake on their 2020 single, "Chicago Freestyle". That same year, Giveon released the EPs, Take Time and When It's All Said and Done, the former being nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, and the latter reaching the Top 10 on the US Top R&B Albums chart. He released "Heartbreak Anniversary", as the second single from Take Time, which reached the Top 40 in the US and was certified Platinum by RIAA. In 2021, Giveon was featured alongside Daniel Caesar on the Justin Bieber single "Peaches", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Global 200 and US Billboard Hot 100 charts. In 2022, he released his debut studio album Give or Take.
