Hits and misses: crafting a pop single for the top-40 market in the 1960s

Popular Music ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-281
Author(s):  
Robert Toft

AbstractThe art of crafting successful pop singles can be a hit and miss affair, and this essay addresses the notion of hits and misses through a consideration of ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’ by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. In September 1963, Bacharach produced the first version of the song with Richard Chamberlain, but the recording was, and still is, considered an artistic failure, as was the version Bacharach produced with Dionne Warwick a year later. It was not until Richard and Karen Carpenter recorded the song in 1970, without input from Bacharach, that the full potential of ‘Close to You’ was realised. But what made the two Bacharach versions miss the mark, while the Carpenters, to use Bacharach's words, ‘nailed it’? If one identifies the elements of a recording's sonic surface that contribute to its success, the deficiencies of Bacharach's misses become as readily apparent as the strategies The Carpenters employed to score a hit. Specifically, this essay considers how groove, instrumentation, melodic style, tempo, manner of performance (both vocal and instrumental), and the disposition of the song's sections (verses and bridge) generate an expressive flow that either enhances (The Carpenters) or diminishes (Bacharach) the emotional impact of the story told in the lyrics.

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rael J. Dawtry ◽  
Mitchell J. Callan ◽  
Annelie J. Harvey ◽  
Ana I. Gheorghiu

Research during the 1960s found that observers could be moved enough by an innocent victim’s suffering to derogate their character. However, recent research has produced inconsistent evidence for this effect. We conducted the first meta-analysis ( k = 55) of the experimental literature on the victim derogation effect to test the hypothesis that it varies as a function of the emotional impactfulness of the context for observers. We found that studies which employed more impactful contexts (e.g., that were real and vivid) reported larger derogation effects. Emotional impact was, however, confounded by year of appearance, such that older studies reported larger effects and were more impactful. To disentangle the role of emotional impact, in two primary experiments we found that more impactful contexts increased the derogation of an innocent victim. Overall, the findings advance our theoretical understanding of the contexts in which observers are more likely to derogate an innocent victim.


Author(s):  
Gloria Macassa ◽  
Cormac McGrath ◽  
Mamunur Rashid ◽  
Joaquim Soares

In recent years, there has been a revival of the term “structural violence (SV)” which was coined by Johan Galtung in the 1960s in the context of Peace Studies. “Structural violence” refers to social structures—economic, legal, political, religious, and cultural—that prevent individuals, groups and societies from reaching their full potential. In the European context, very few studies have investigated health and well-being using an SV perspective. Therefore, this paper sought to systematically and descriptively review studies that used an SV framework to examine health-related outcomes across European countries. The review included two studies each from Spain and France, one each from the UK, Ukraine and Russia, and another study including the three countries Sweden, Portugal and Germany. With the exception of one mixed-method study, the studies used a qualitative design. Furthermore, the eight studies in the review used different conceptualizations of SV, which indicates the complexity of using SV as a concept in public health in the European context. Future research that attempts to identify and standardize measures of SV is needed; the knowledge gained is hoped to inform appropriate interventions aiming to reduce the effects of SV on population health.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 8904
Author(s):  
Mesut Dinler

Cultural heritage has a central role in sustainable development, and it has the potential to re-imagine more democratic cities. Yet, critical theory has framed cultural heritage not only as the material remains of the past, but also as a dynamic interaction of humans with their past that encompasses tangible and intangible entities. Thus, it is necessary to research these dynamics to understand the role of cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable development. In this context, the main research question of this article is: “How does heritage is shaped and managed by the ‘present’? Can we understand this process through the opportunities of digital humanities?”. To confront this question, the research adapts the counter-mapping methodology with the digital humanities perspective focusing on the urban protest movements that took place in the historic areas of Istanbul throughout the 1960s. It is seen that the spatial pattern of these movements was the result of the urban operations of the 1950s. In the 1950s, an autocratic government shaped the urban space and redefined the urban heritage to concentrate more power. However, in the 1960s, workers and students used the very same spaces and again redefined the urban heritage by exercising their social rights. Based on these results, the main conclusion is that for revealing the full potential of cultural heritage in sustainable development, it is necessary to deepen our knowledge on how heritage operates in a society, considering that heritage changes meaning depending on the socio-political context of the period.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Eccles

It is undoubtedly true that a number of British women turned their back on religion, from the beginning of the period of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and onwards. To what might we attribute these defections and the taking up of a new nonreligious identity?  Was it the change in sexual mores and the rise of second wave feminism, the increase in women entering higher education opening up new worldviews to them or increasing affluence? This article examines a variety of factors through the eyes of self-identified women atheists/humanists most of whom have lived through that period. It notes that, while these factors may well be significant to different degrees for different women, the turn to atheism, specifically, results largely from women having been damaged by religion and the deep emotional impact thus left behind. The turn to atheism is not a uniform experience as the women are enmeshed in differing types of ‘emotional regime’ which affects how they respond.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-180
Author(s):  
Benjamin Jozef Banasik

This article examines the life of Walter Day, a key figure in the history of competitive video gaming and whose involvement in this industry has been connected to his own spiritual beliefs and directions. Here, the influence of Day, the former owner of Twin Galaxies and creator of the first International Scoreboard, will be presented by examining the history of his life. A pivotal religious experience of Day, while under the influence of LSD in the 1960s, will be shown to have directly informed his decision to join the Eastern influenced new religious movement of Transcendental Meditation under the stewardship of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi which gave him the tools and direction that would be essential for his video gaming career. The training that the Maharishi would provide to Day will be explored and shown to have informed his understanding of religious experiences, or flow states, and how this could manifest with a player of a classic video game at an arcade. This understanding will be shown to have interested Day enough not only to endeavour to be the first video game pilgrim, but for him to continue a lifelong pilgrimage of recording and sharing oral history of players who reach their full potential.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.


Author(s):  
R.W. Horne

The technique of surrounding virus particles with a neutralised electron dense stain was described at the Fourth International Congress on Electron Microscopy, Berlin 1958 (see Home & Brenner, 1960, p. 625). For many years the negative staining technique in one form or another, has been applied to a wide range of biological materials. However, the full potential of the method has only recently been explored following the development and applications of optical diffraction and computer image analytical techniques to electron micrographs (cf. De Hosier & Klug, 1968; Markham 1968; Crowther et al., 1970; Home & Markham, 1973; Klug & Berger, 1974; Crowther & Klug, 1975). These image processing procedures have allowed a more precise and quantitative approach to be made concerning the interpretation, measurement and reconstruction of repeating features in certain biological systems.


Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Siegel

The potential advantages of high voltage electron microscopy for extending the limits of resolution and contrast in imaging low contrast objects, such as biomolecular specimens, is very great. The results of computations will be presented showing that at accelerating voltages of 500-1000 kV it should be possible to achieve spacial resolutions of 1 to 1.5 Å and using phase contrast imaging achieve adequate image contrast to observe single atoms of low atomic number.The practical problems associated with the design and utilization of the high voltage instrument are, optimistically, within the range of competence of the state of the art. However, there are some extremely important and critical areas to be systematically investigated before we have achieved this competence. The basic electron optics of the column required is well understood, but before the full potential of an instrument capable of resolutions of better than 1.5 Å are realized some very careful development work will be required. Of great importance for the actual achievement of high resolution with a high voltage electron microscope is the fundamental limitation set by the characteristics of the high voltage electron beam that can be obtained from the accelerator column.


Author(s):  
Richard B. Mott ◽  
John J. Friel ◽  
Charles G. Waldman

X-rays are emitted from a relatively large volume in bulk samples, limiting the smallest features which are visible in X-ray maps. Beam spreading also hampers attempts to make geometric measurements of features based on their boundaries in X-ray maps. This has prompted recent interest in using low voltages, and consequently mapping L or M lines, in order to minimize the blurring of the maps.An alternative strategy draws on the extensive work in image restoration (deblurring) developed in space science and astronomy since the 1960s. A recent example is the restoration of images from the Hubble Space Telescope prior to its new optics. Extensive literature exists on the theory of image restoration. The simplest case and its correspondence with X-ray mapping parameters is shown in Figures 1 and 2.Using pixels much smaller than the X-ray volume, a small object of differing composition from the matrix generates a broad, low response. This shape corresponds to the point spread function (PSF). The observed X-ray map can be modeled as an “ideal” map, with an X-ray volume of zero, convolved with the PSF. Figure 2a shows the 1-dimensional case of a line profile across a thin layer. Figure 2b shows an idealized noise-free profile which is then convolved with the PSF to give the blurred profile of Figure 2c.


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