http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iimFkeci36w

Taylor Swift is an American singer-songwriter who has won a total of seven Grammy Awards, including winning Album of the Year for her second album, Fearless, making her the youngest ever winner of that award. Her most recent album, 1989, sold more copies in its first week than any album in the previous twelve years. Of creating albums, Swift says: “I like to take two years to make an album, because I like to give myself time to evolve and change and challenge myself and try new things. I tend to write for the entire two year process ,but usually the things I write in the first six to eight months get thrown out. Not because they weren’t great songs, but because they don’t fit my idea of what the new album should be.”

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Taylor Swift On Her Writing Style appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ7y-7cjdCs

Milli Vanilli was a pop group of the late 1980s and early 1990s, comprised of members Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. The duo won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist on February 21, 1990. Later on that year, reporter Chuck Philips of the Los Angeles Times revealed that Morvan and Pilatus were not responsible for the lead vocals on their record. This revelation lead to their Grammy Award being taken away. In this video, Morvan and Pilatus attend their first press conference after the story broke. In the press conference, they claim that they wanted it to be public knowledge that they were not responsible for the lead vocals on their album, however their contract prevented them from speaking out. Pilatus says that he told their producer: “We told him: ‘If we can’t sing on our record, you have to – you have to go to the press and say that we don’t sing’, because we couldn’t break out of our contract. Just the producer can stop the contract.” Pilatus also says that he believes the men who actually did the vocals for the album deserve to be given the Grammy.

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Milli Vanilli Are Stripped of Their Grammy Award appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q77XLg_zGg

Michael Jackson’s thirteen minute video for his song Thriller was released in 1982, and is still widely considered to be the most influential music video of all time. In this clip, Rick Baker, makeup artist for the music video, discusses the inspiration behind it. Of Jackson, he says: “Michael Jackson loved American Werewolf and wanted to do a similar thing…. I always thought it would be funny to do a musical zombie thing, so I suggested that we do a dance with the zombies.” When asked what it was like to work with Michael Jackson, Baker says: “Michael came in and was very shy, very quiet and like I said I knew very little about him. The first thing he did was go into our bathroom and stay in there for a really long time just to get himself used to coming out in front of strange people.”

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The Inspiration For Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib0-GbPCk1M

Singer-songwriter Janis Jopin is asked in an interview who her favorite musician is and she answers, Tina Turner, explaining, “She’s the best chick ever. Fantastic singer, great dancer, fantastic show…” Tina Turner also shares her admiration for Janis Joplin’s music, saying, “She had a black soul. She felt. Her singing wasn’t about anything else except the feeling that she got. And she wasn’t trying to be anything else but Janis Joplin.”

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Janis Joplin & Tina Turner’s Admiration for Each Other appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP-fiR0psYw

David Hasselhoff recalls his emotional performance of “Looking for Freedom” as he was dressed in motion lights, singing atop of the rubble of the Berlin Wall. The performance took place on New Year’s Eve in 1989 after the wall had been partially taken down. The footage of his performance became one of the viral videos in the late ’90s when it was rediscovered.

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David Hasselhoff’s recalls his Performance on Berlin Wall appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50l5HAWTjwE

Katherine Jackson, mother of Michael Jackson, reminisces about her famous son’s younger years. Here, she revisits the old Jackson family house in Indiana and remembers Michael as a child. Jackson recalls how her son used to run around the living room in his older siblings shoes that were too big for him.

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Katherine Jackson: ‘He’s the Only One That Can’t Come Back’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwU2yUEtaDk

Ellen Degeneres talks with La Toya Jackson about her famous brother, Michael. Jackson opens up about her brother’s death, including where she was when she got the news and how her family reacted.

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La Toya Jackson on Her Brother’s Death appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Julie Davis Canter

A 50-year old memory keeps me linked with my mother years after her death.

I remember my mother tightly holding my hand, almost pulling me up as we climbed the dimly lit metal stairs. We were on a landing between floors when we ran right into them. They all stopped for a moment, bubbly, euphoric, perhaps a bit startled to find anyone in the stairwell. But I was harmless. At seven years old, I was much younger than the screaming fans in the theater and certainly not old enough to even consider grabbing at their hair or clothes, much less truly comprehend how momentous this was. I had them almost to myself in the recesses of the building that, years later, would be renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater.

“Hello, Julie,” John said with a sweetness that mindboggling stardom hadn’t yet erased. He had quickly read the huge name button pinned to my coat, a fad held over from the ’50s. They were between sets on The Ed Sullivan Show and making their way back to the stage from their dressing room, my mother’s intended destination.

Our personal “Meet The Beatles” mission accomplished, my mother decided we could go back to the wings where we had been standing, hopefully without incident. She had told my father and me that, at the dress rehearsal the day before, Mr. Sullivan yelled at her for getting in the way. Not that she was particularly bothered by it–she just didn’t want a repeat. I had seen the photos many times growing up—my mother, on the stage in her polka dot wool dress and her Jackie Kennedy bouffant, and Ed, his outstretched arm directing her to move along.

My mother had chutzpah, part of her birthright. A writer for a fan magazine that sounded just enough like Ladies Home Journal to get her on press lists, she had no qualms about interviewing anyone and making her way to the head of the line to do so. She had been on a press junket to the White House just days before President Kennedy was assassinated. She was on the tarmac when the Beatles landed and came home with one of their roses.

She was still Rochelle Davis then and her first humor book had just come out, a political parody called “Happiness Is a Rat Fink,” a decidedly dark yet funny riff on Charles Schulz’ bestseller “Happiness Is a Warm Puppy,” with the same hot pink cover. She had already gotten the Beatles to sign a copy for me. Well, John, Paul and Ringo–no George. His absence at the rehearsal hadn’t been explained and, in fact, it took the publication of Bob Spitz’s Beatles biography for me to find out that he had skipped the session to rest a sore throat.

Just 28 years old at the time, she must have been as starstruck by the Fab Four as I was, but she found a way to balance that with the gravitas she probably thought she needed to display as a parent. Thinking back, it seems as though she shared the Beatles with me like a friend would. We were cohorts in this escapade and forever after, no longer just mother and child, a relationship she was less comfortable with.

In the hysteria inside the theater that day, there was no way to actually hear the Beatles perform. So my mother took me to see them at Carnegie Hall a few days later. When she couldn’t scavenge two press seats, she gave me hers, which was on stage right. From my chair, I could hear the Beatles, but see only Ringo’s face and only in profile. The others had their backs to me, their bodies outlined with the glow from all the lights, another image I would never forget.

I wasn’t an innately precocious kid. It was more that my mother exposed me to the world in real time and scale. Not just the Beatles, but also Motown and all of soul music, which would be the subject of her first non-fiction book. She sent me to a French language school so that I wouldn’t be limited by an American-only education (to this day, my husband delights in telling people they can ask me any questions they’d like about 1789, but not to bother with 1776). She soon joined the Congress on Racial Equality and told me about injustice that had to be overcome. Practicing what she preached, she divorced my father after she fell in love with a Black musician and became Rochelle Larkin. We ate at the original Red Rooster when he was playing in Harlem and we kept a map of the United States marked with adhesive dots for every race riot that took place in the ’60s. Soon I had two little brothers and I fought bigotry on our own block, from our super and his kids. Fortunately familiarity bred détente.

I didn’t always appreciate these gifts, the hundreds of moments my mother insisted I share, like taking me to meet Abbie Hoffman in a dark alley so he could give her a manuscript to publish when he was still underground or her giving me my first book assignment when I was 16 because she had moved on to a more exciting project. I had Auntie Mame when I thought I wanted Donna Reed.

Of all our adventures, I always come back to the Beatles. The night before a business meeting some years ago, everyone but me had watched a compilation of the greatest moments on TV. Guess what was number one, my colleague Pete asked. There could only be one right answer. And I was there for it…because of my mother.

Check out Julie’s latest children’s picture book series, “Waddley Sees The World,” published by RedSkyPresents.

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Backstage With the Beatles At the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Ben Nussbaum

The Berlin Wall is remembered as one of the 20th century’s great monstrosities: A literal wall that cut a city in half–separating families and friends, cutting off West Berlin from Communist East Berlin. It was the site of about 100 deaths (some estimates are much higher) as East Berliners tried to escape to freedom and were killed by their own military. The most famous victim was 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who was shot by the East German guards and allowed to slowly bleed to death in front of Western witnesses. The last person killed trying to cross the wall, Chris Gueffroy, was shot ten times in the chest by East German guards who were later given an award and a cash prize.

When the wall finally fell in November of 1989 it signaled the eventual reunification of Germany, the fall of communism, and a radical reshaping of world politics.

David Hasselhoff is best known for his role on as a lifeguard on Baywatch.

So why is David Hasselhoff connected to the history of the Berlin Wall?

Hasselhoff long had ambitions to be a singer. In the U.S., those ambitions amounted to very little – mainly a guest spot singing “Do You Love Me” on Kids Incorporated. In Germany, though, Hasselhoff had a huge hit in 1989 with “Looking for Freedom,” which topped the German charts for eight weeks. The song—a clichéd, forgettable rocker to American ears—become something of an anthem on both sides of the wall that summer as Germans felt the first rumblings of what would become the fall of communism.

Late in the summer, Hungary and Czechoslovakia loosened or dismantled travel restrictions, allowing East Germans an easy passage to the West. As the East German government responded by cracking down on all travel, massive demonstrations broke out, with chanters shouting, “We want out.” The wall fell on November 9.

On New Year’s Eve, Hasselhoff was in Berlin to perform the song standing on top of the wall, with East Germans and West Germans celebrating below. He was a hit with the crowds and the performance remains memorable today. The footage of Hasselhoff singing on the Berlin Wall became one of the viral videos in the late ’90s when it was rediscovered.

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[Blog] David Hasselhoff & the Berlin Wall appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zXiClnK8oE

Curiously, David Hasselhoff had a huge hit in West Germany in 1989 with a song called “Looking for Freedom.” He performed it standing on the remains of the Berlin Wall–sporting an iconic piano-keyboard tie while covered in motion lights–on New Year’s Eve after the wall had been partially taken down.

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Footage of David Hasselhoff Performing on Berlin Wall appeared first on Witnify.