Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Norman Dolph, early Velvet Underground producer, has died
nme.comThe Velvet Underground, has died at the age of 83.Dolph’s death was confirmed in a statement issued on Friday (May 20) by Planetary Group, who said that he had passed away on May 11 in New Haven, Connecticut after a battle with cancer (via Consequence).Dolph first encountered the Velvet Underground while working as a sales executive for Columbia Records in 1966, and he set about arranging the recording sessions which yielded the majority of the songs which featured on the band’s classic 1967 album ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’.Those April 1966 sessions took place at Scepter Records Studios in Manhattan, New York City, which Dolph organised and co-financed.“I was not the producer in any sense that Quincy Jones is a producer,” Dolph later recalled about the sessions in an interview for Richie Unterberger’s White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day. “The only thing I would say is because they were doing it on my money – and we had limited time resources fiscally, ’cause we were always bumping up against commitments that Scepter had in the studio – that I kept the thing on the rails.“And it’s also quite highly probable to say if they had made the same record, and I had not even been anywhere near it, it would have been ultimately played out the same way.
But I think part of the way the record sounds the way it sounds is because of [engineer] John [Licata] and I keeping it on the rails, to keep the damned thing going and moving.
You know what I mean: “OK, next take, let’s do it, blah blah.” I think that’s my contribution as a producer.”Dolph later took the recordings to his bosses at Columbia, who told him “you’re out of your mind with this”.
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