Tag: music

News Politics

East German Man Receives Contest Prize 45 Years Later

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Gunter Zettl won a radio contest in 1969.

He correctly identified a song the radio station played, and he sent a postcard to the station with the name of the song (“Painter Man,” By The Creation).

Last week, 45 years later, he was finally given his prize.

The reason for the delay was political.

Following World War II, in 1945, Germany was seperated into two states: East Germany and West Germany.

At the time, Zettl was a teenager living in East Germany. Pop music was banned in East Germany at the time.

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News

New Study Links Teens, Music And Overall Happiness

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A new study shows that the way teenagers listen to music is linked to how happy they are.

“Happiness” seems like a simple concept, but you can think about it in two different ways.

First, there is feeling happy in the moment, like when you hear your favourite song on the radio.

Second, there is the happiness that comes from feeling good about your life overall.

We know that music can contribute to the first kind of happiness, but can it also contribute to the second kind?

It turns out that the answer depends on why people listen to music.

Researchers asked more than 200 college students about their reasons for listening to music.

They wanted to know if the students were listening for their own reasons–for example, because music gives them pleasure.

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Lighter News

Fun Quiz: 2013 In Review (Part II)

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How much do you remember about the news that happened in 2013? Our fun 2013 quiz continues.

The answers to the quiz can be found by clicking on the TKN article beside each question.

16) What is a Bitcoin?

17) In April 2014, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health was worried about the large number of overweight people in the city so he put out a news release saying he wants restaurants to add something to their menus. What does he want added?

18) In May 2013, Chris Hadfield went home. Where was he coming from?

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Entertainment News

What Does The Fox Say? — The Picture Book

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The latest viral music video is being turned into a children’s picture book.

“What Does the Fox Say?” is a catchy music video that’s been seen by more than 200 million people.

Never heard of it? Read the TKN article about it here.

It was created by two Norwegian brothers, Bard and Vegard Ylvisaker, collectively known as Ylvis.

The video was meant to be silly and almost meaningless. But the tune was so darned catchy, it caught on, big-time.

Now, it will be a picture book called “What Does The Fox Say?”

Publisher Simon & Schuster is launching the book next month. It was written by Ylvis and has illustrations drawn by Svein Nyhus.

The brothers had thought of the idea of creating a picture book from their song even before they uploaded it to YouTube.

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Lighter News

Silly, Catchy Viral Music Video Asks, “What Does The Fox Say?”

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Move over Psy, there’s a new viral music video on the Internet that’s getting millions of people dancing and laughing.

Psy is a singer who created Gagnam Style, a music video which featured a catchy tune and an interesting dance.

Gagnam Style has been viewed more than one billion times, by people all over the world. It went “viral.”

A “viral video” is one that is seen on the Internet by many people, and then the link to it is passed along to many more people.

Every time someone shares the link, the number of people who see the video increases.

A new music video called, “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)” has recently gone viral. At 123,000,000 views, it may even catch up to Gagnam.

The video asks the question, “What does the fox say?”

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News

Some Prominent Canadians Vying For Changes To “O Canada!” Lyrics

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When you sing your country’s national anthem, you may think the words never change.

But for O Canada!, Canada’s national anthem, they have been translated and changed and changed again.

Now, some people are saying O Canada! should be changed yet again, to be more inclusive.

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and other prominent Canadians, including former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, want the line “True patriot love in all thy sons command” to be gender-neutral.

They say the word “sons” excludes women and the line should be changed to “in all of us command.”

O Canada! was first written in 1880, in French. The words were from a French Canadian poem.

O Canada! was translated into English in the early 1900s. The English words were changed in 1908, to a less exact translation of the French words.

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News

Ray Charles To Be Honoured With US Postage Stamp

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Ray Charles was a famous American music composer, singer and piano player.

Charles is known as a music genius, partly because of the way in which his songs crossed genres.

He blazed a trail in the early days of blues, gospel, country, jazz, soul and rock and roll.

His music was—and still is—inspirational to millions of people around the world.

Charles had many mega-hits. Some of best-known are “Georgia On My Mind,” “Hit the Road Jack,” and “What’d I Say.”

On Monday, the U.S. Postal Service honoured Ray Charles by putting his image on a postage stamp.

The stamp is part of the “Music Icons Forever” series.

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News

Stolen Baby Grand Piano Found And Returned

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It’s a bit worse for wear, but it’s back and it can still hold a tune.

It’s a Boston Steinway baby grand piano and it was stolen in a brazen robbery from Toronto General Hospital last July.

A “baby grand” is a huge piano that weighs more than 225 kilograms. That’s one reason why the robbery was so bizarre.

Another reason is that the thief hired some movers and they simply walked out with it, right in broad daylight.

The movers didn’t know they were stealing the piano. They just thought they were being hired for a moving job.

Several people from the hospital stopped the movers and asked them what they were doing. They said they were taking the piano away to be repaired.

A man named Artem Stanislav Timofeyev, who is 27 years old and works as a model, has been arrested by Toronto police and charged with the theft.

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Kids Science

Chris Hadfield Sings With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Schoolchildren

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I’m watching history happen, right in front of my eyes.

It’s 12:30 Eastern Time on Monday, May 6.

On my computer screen, I’m watching a live satellite feed from space.

An astronaut is singing and playing guitar. He’s singing a song he wrote (with Canadian songwriter Ed Robertson from the band the Barenaked Ladies) called I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing)?

But the really exciting part is something I can’t see. Hundreds of thousands of children in Canada and throughout the world are also singing, right at this moment, singing the very same song.

It’s part of Music Monday, which is an annual event in Canada that began in 2005. Each year, a song is chosen and school children across the country learn it so they can sing it at the same time on the same day.

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News Science

Commander Hadfield’s Son, Evan, Helps Bring Space To Earth

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Chris Hadfield is the Canadian astronaut living and working on – and commanding – the International Space Station.

He’s the first astronaut to bring the “space experience” to Earthlings in the form of regular tweets, photos, Facebook posts, videos and even songs.

Hadfield lets us know what experiments he’s working on, what the Earth looks like from his vantage point and what it’s like to live in space.

Hadfield has three children, Kyle (30), Evan (27) and Kristin (26).

Evan lives in Darmstadt, Germany.

He has been helping his father communicate with Earth, via Twitter and other social media websites such as Facebook, tumblr and Soundcloud.

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