I Am Me

I Am Me is the second studio album by singer Ashlee Simpson. It was released in the United States on October 18, 2005 (see 2005 in music) and debuted at number one in sales. The album produced two top 25 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, "Boyfriend" and "L.O.V.E.". Simpson worked with John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi on this album, as she did on her first album, 2004's Autobiography. Shanks produced the album, and Simpson co-wrote all the songs with Shanks and DioGuardi. On December 15, I Am Me was certified Platinum by the RIAA for its shipments of over one million copies in the U.S. (as of April 2008, it had sold 987,000 copies). A new single from Simpson, "Invisible", was reportedly going to be included on a re-release of I Am Me in mid-2006, but was canceled. The song was later included as an international bonus track on Simpson's next album, Bittersweet World.

Production

Background

I Am Me was released about fifteen months after Autobiography, which was released in July 2004. According to Simpson, following her concert tour from February to April 2005, she was supposed to take a month off, but began working on the album early; as she said, "I got home and got bored, so I called John Shanks and was like, 'Can I come in the studio? Let's get a head start so the record company's not asking for the record right away or anything." She also said that she wanted to "get the pre-jitters or anything that was going wrong out of my system. And when I went in everything started going smooth. It was fun." According to Simpson, she felt less pressure when recording I Am Me than she did when recording Autobiography.

Stronger with Each Tear

Stronger with Each Tear (stylized as STRONGER withEach Tear) is the ninth studio album from American R&B and soul singer Mary J. Blige. The album was released in the US on December 21, 2009, under Blige's own imprint, Matriarch Records.

Internationally it was released December 18, 2009, in Australia and Germany, December 21 in France, December 23 in Japan, and on February 2, 2010, in Korea with further international releases (in some cases re-releases) in March, April and May 2010. With this album, Blige achieved a record of nine albums to have debuted at the top of the US R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Background

Blige started working on her ninth album while she toured with Robin Thicke in 2008. In an interview with Rap-Up magazine she said:

The album was initially titled Stronger after the song, "Stronger" which Blige recorded and released as the lead single from the soundtrack Music Inspired by More Than a Game from the LeBron James' documentary More Than a Game. However Rap-Up later revealed that the album had been re-titled Stronger with Each Tear.

I Am

I Am may refer to:

Music

Albums

Songs

Hitomi

Hitomi Furuya (古谷 仁美, Furuya Hitomi, born January 26, 1976), known mononymously as hitomi, is a Japanese singer-songwriter. She began her career as model, but after meeting Tetsuya Komuro he began managing her career as a pop singer. In 1998 she left the "Komuro Family" and started working with other musicians and producers, oriented to other musical genres such as pop rock, and more recently to electropop.

Biography

Early life

Born Hitomi Furuya (古谷 仁美, Furuya Hitomi) in Tochigi, Japan, Hitomi's family relocated to Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture when she was a child. Consequently, Hitomi always identified herself as a girl from Kanagawa. hitomi was an enthusiastic athlete throughout her childhood, playing baseball, soccer, and basketball, as well as an avid reader of manga. When hitomi was 16 years old, she was spotted and approached by a scout from a modelling agency. Hitomi signed a short modelling contract and began appearing in magazines while she was still in high school.

In 1993, then 17 years old, Furuya was spotted by eminent Avex music producer Tetsuya Komuro at an audition. Komuro signed Furuya to Avex, put Furuya through vocal training, and decided that she should use an all-lowercase 'hitomi' as her stage name. The following year, in November 1994, hitomi released her debut single, "Let's Play Winter", through Avex Trax, to which she wrote the lyrics. Since then, Hitomi has been the lyricist for almost all of her songs.