Read All About It, Emeli Sande

Let’s fix our attention today on one of those girls whose popularity in music shoot off quite fast bringing her songs to billboards’ tops. It’s all about Adele Emeli Sande, or simply known as Emeli Sande. The girl had to opt for her middle name for performing because of the simultaneous growth of Adele’s career at that time. A talented Scottish songwriter, she was brought up by her dad who was a teacher and became spotted at various music competitions from early childhood. Subsequently Emeli signed contracts with EMI, Virgin and Capitol and started writing song texts for such well-known performers as Cher Lloyd, Rihanna, Cheryl Cole, Leona Lewis. Her music style was strongly influenced by Nina Simone (Emeli’s idol), Joni Mitchell and Lauryn Hill. Simon Cowell named her as his favorite songwriter.

Emeli Sande

Emeli wrote a lot for other performers but at the same time she is a splendid performer herself. One of her most recognized songs today is the “Read All About It” that was originally written for the British rapper Professor Green. Emeli herself appears in the “Part III” version of the song that was included in the album “Our Version of Events”. The song hit the records in the UK becoming the 1st number-one hit both for Emeli and Professor Green. The two also appeared live in “The X Factor” show performing the freshly popular song. According to Emeli, the key to creating a good song is the honesty and raw emotion, most of her songs touch politics and world peace issues.

New Year’s Day, U2

Once again – congratulations on the beginning of the New Year! I do hope you’ve had a terrific celebration and are still being in the festive atmosphere of holidays. So so, let’s proceed into the new year with a fresh post about some curious song, shall we?

Not to step too far from the topic of holidays, today’s post will be dedicated to a song titled “New Year’s Day” by the rock band U2. For those who never heard it, it will seem that the contents of the song are all about this joyous time of the year with all the usual NY symbols. But it’s much more than that. Though originally composed by Bono as a gift for his wife, the song was later reshaped and received a completely new form and sense, too. It acquired an inspirational touch of the Polish Solidarity movement having become not just a one-week-pop-hit but a long-living single. It was the obligatory part of band’s tour program and one of its most performed live singles. The video has quite an interesting story too. It was shot in Sweden in the coldest peak of its winter. The members of the band were so frozen that by the end of the clip could hardly articulate the lyrics and had to hire double to take part in some shots instead of them.

It all was not in vain and as a result the single got its fine reviews by the Rolling Stone magazine, hit the Billboard 100 and got in the list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".