Cyndi Lauper

USA for Africa was the name under which forty-seven predominantly U.S. artists, led by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, recorded the hit single... "We Are the World" in 1985. The song was a US and UK Number One for the collective in April of that year. This super group was inspired by Bob Geldof's Band Aid. The considerable profits from the enterprise went to the USA for Africa Foundation, which used them for the relief of famine and disease in Africa and specifically to 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia; critics, however, claim that this money went directly to the governments of the affected countries rather than the people. USA for Africa also held a benefit event, Hands Across America, in which approximately seven million people held hands in a human chain for fifteen minutes along a path across the continental United States. Participants paid ten dollars to stand in line and the money raised was used to fight hunger and homelessness in Africa. The combined revenues raised from the sales of "We Are the World" and Hands Across America was almost $100 million.
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Portrait Records was a sister label of Epic Records and later of Columbia Records. Cyndi Lauper and Sade signed with Portrait, but their contracts were absorbed by Epic after that incarnation of the label was shuttered. Portrait began in 1976 as a sister label of Epic; its initial signings were... Joan Baez, Burton Cummings, and the McCrarys. Cummings' "Stand Tall" was the lead-off single. Baez's Blowin' Away album and the McCrarys' self-titled debut bowed in early 1977. The label design was similar to that of Columbia's single design on it was in grey tones, while the logo was handwritten orange with a red outline. This was also the launch of Epic/Portrait/Associated under the CBS moniker. One of the signings the label had was the band Heart. The band had been signed with Mushroom Records but left after a dispute in advertising its Dreamboat Annie album. The print ads led some fans to think that the sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were lesbians. Portrait snatched the group up quickly, releasing the "Barracuda" single before Little Queen was to hit the shelves. The McCrarys also scored big with "You.
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Daylight Records was an American record label and subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, operated through Epic Records. Daylight was founded by David Massey in late 2000 as an Epic Records Group label, and has subsequently signed and helped to develop a broad array of artists, in the process... achieving global sales in excess of 20 million records. Daylight also serves as an A&R resource for all the labels within the Sony Music Label Group family, including Columbia Records Group, Epic Records and RED Distribution.
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Edel AG is a German music and entertainment group, based in Hamburg. Edel Music was founded in 1986 by Michael Haentjes in Germany as a mail order record company selling mostly soundtracks. With artists such as Scooter, SASH!, Holly Johnson and many others, it became a very successful pop music... label. Edel was listed in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1998. Over the years, Edel purchased the music labels Eagle Rock Records, Face Down Records , Gang Go Music, Club Tools, Control Records and Belgian Play It Again Sam. Edel's main office is based in Hamburg, but the Edel network extends the label presence all over Europe with affiliates offices and labels and in the rest of the world with a strong network of distributors, Edel is in fact still present in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and France.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the... United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues chord progression is the most common. The blue notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent in relation to the pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound. The blues genre is based on the blues form but possesses other characteristics such as specific lyrics, bass lines and instruments. Blues can be subdivided into several subgenres ranging from country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues styles.
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