George Best, a Northern Irish professional footballer who played as a winger for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team. In 1968, he won the European Cup with Manchester United, and was named the European Footballer of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year

George Best (22 May 1946 – 25 November 2005) was a Northern Irish professional footballer who played as a winger for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team. In 1968, he won the European Cup with Manchester United, and was named the European Footballer of the Year and FWA Footballer of the Year. The Irish Football Association described him as the "greatest player to ever pull on the green shirt of Northern Ireland".^[2]
Born and brought up in Belfast, Best began his club career in England with Manchester United, with the scout who had spotted his talent at the age of 15 sending a telegram to manager Matt Busby which read: "I think I've found you a genius."^[3] After making his debut aged 17, he scored 179 goals from 470 appearances over 11 years, and was the club's top goalscorer in the league for five consecutive seasons.^[4]
Regarded as one of the greatest dribblers in the history of the sport, his playing style combined pace, skill, balance, feints, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to beat defenders.^[5][6][7] Best unexpectedly quit United in 1974 at age 27, but returned to football for a number of clubs around the world in short spells, until retiring in 1984, age 37. In international football, he was capped 37 times and scored nine goals between 1964 and 1977, although a combination of the team's performance and his lack of fitness in 1982 meant that he never played in the finals of a European Championship or World Cup.
Best was one of the first celebrity footballers, earning the nickname "El Beatle" in 1966,^[8] but his subsequent extravagant lifestyle led to various problems, most notably alcoholism, which he suffered from for the rest of his life. These issues affected him on and off the field, at times causing controversy.^[9] He said of his career: "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds [women] and fast cars – the rest I just squandered".^[10] After football, he spent some time as a football analyst, but his financial and health problems continued into his retirement.^[9] He died in 2005, age 59, due to complications from the immunosuppressive drugs he needed to take after a liver transplant in 2002.^[11] He continued drinking after the transplant.^[12] Best was married twice, to two former models, Angie Best and then Alex Best. His son Calum Best was born in 1981 from his first marriage.
Best was voted 8th in the World Soccer 100 greatest football players of the 20th century election in 1999 and was voted 16th in the IFFHS World Player of the Century election in 1999. He was on the six-man short list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century in 1999. Best was one of the inaugural 22 inductees into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2004, he was voted 19th in the public UEFA Golden Jubilee Poll and was named in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players. Best was once quoted as saying, “Pelé called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life.”^[13] On what would have been his 60th birthday, Belfast City Airport was renamed the George Best Belfast City Airport. According to the BBC, Best was remembered by mourners at his public funeral held in Belfast as "the beautiful boy" [with a] "beautiful game".^[14]

Tori Amos, an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos,^[1] August 22, 1963^[2]) is mezzo-soprano vocal range.^[10]
an American singer-songwriter, pianist and composer. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range.
Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full scholarship to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University at the age of five, the youngest person ever to have been admitted. She was expelled at the age of eleven for what Rolling Stone described as "musical insubordination."^[11] Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion.^[12]
Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor", and "A Sorta Fairytale", her most commercially successful single in the U.S. to date.^[13] Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations, eight Grammy nominations, and has won an Echo award for her classical work. She is listed on VH1's "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" list. 

Early life and education

Amos is the third child of Mary Ellen (Copeland) and the Rev. Edison McKinley Amos.^[15] She was born at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, North Carolina during a trip from their Georgetown home in Washington, D.C. Amos has said that her maternal grandparents each had an Eastern Cherokee grandparent of their own; of particular importance to her as a child was her maternal grandfather, Calvin Clinton Copeland, who was a great source of inspiration and guidance, offering a more pantheistic spiritual alternative to her father and paternal grandmother's traditional Christianity.^[16]
When she was two years old, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had transplanted his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, D.C. Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Amos didn't need them. From the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play: when she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once,^[17] and, by the age of three, she was composing her own songs. She has described seeing music as structures of light since early childhood, an experience consistent with chromesthesia:

The song appears as light filament once I've cracked it. As long as I've been doing this, which is more than thirty-five years, I've never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns, but try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever—after the initial excitement, you start to focus on each element's stunning original detail. For instance, the sound of the words with the sound of the chord progression combined with the rhythm manifests itself in a unique expression of the architecture of color-and-light. ... I started visiting this world when I was three, listening to a piece by Béla Bartók; I visited a configuration that day that wasn't on this earth. ... It was euphoric.^[18]

At five, she became the youngest student ever admitted to the preparatory division of the Peabody Conservatory of Music.^[19][20] She studied classical piano at Peabody from 1968 to 1974.^[19] In 1974, when she was 11, her scholarship was discontinued and she was asked to leave. Amos has asserted that she lost the scholarship because of her interest in rock and popular music, coupled with her dislike for reading from sheet music.^[21][17][22]
In 1972, the Amos family moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, where her father became pastor of the Good Shepherd United Methodist church. At 13, Amos began playing at gay bars and piano bars, chaperoned by her father.^[21][17]
Amos won a county teen talent contest in 1977, singing a song called "More Than Just a Friend".^[20] As a senior at Richard Montgomery High School, she co-wrote "Baltimore" with her brother Mike Amos for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles. The song won the contest and became her first single, released as a 7" single pressed locally for family and friends during 1980 with another Amos-penned composition as a B-side, "Walking With You". Before this, she had performed under her middle name, Ellen, but permanently adopted Tori after a friend's boyfriend told her she looked like a Torrey pine, a tree native to the West Coast.^[23][24]

Career

Beginnings

By the time she was 17, Amos had a stock of homemade demo tapes that her father regularly sent out to record companies and producers.^[20] Producer Narada Michael Walden responded favorably: he and Amos cut some tracks together, but none were released.^[20] Eventually, Atlantic Records responded to one of the tapes, and, when A&R man Jason Flom flew to Baltimore to audition her in person, the label was convinced and signed her.^[19]
In 1984, Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career^[20] after several years performing on the piano bar circuit of the D.C. area.

Y Kant Tori Read (1986–88)

In 1986, Amos formed a musical group called Y Kant Tori Read, named for her difficulty sight reading.^[25] In addition to Amos, the group was composed of Steve Caton (who would later play guitars on all of her albums until 1999), drummer Matt Sorum, bass player Brad Cobb and, for a short time, keyboardist Jim Tauber. The band went through several iterations of songwriting and recording; Amos has said interference from record executives caused the band to lose its musical edge and direction during this time. Finally, in July 1988, the band's self-titled debut album, Y Kant Tori Read, was released. Although its producer, Joe Chiccarelli, stated that Amos was very happy with the album at the time,^[26] Amos has since criticized it, once remarking: "The only good thing about that album is my ankle high boots."^[27]
Following the album's commercial failure and the group's subsequent disbanding, Amos began working with other artists (including Stan Ridgway, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart) as a backup vocalist. She also recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien; in the credits, the song is attributed to a band called Tess Makes Good.^[28]

The Atlantic years (1990–2001)

Despite the disappointing reaction to Y Kant Tori Read, Amos still had to comply with her six-record contract with Atlantic Records, which, in 1989, wanted a new record by March 1990. The initial recordings were declined by the label, which Amos felt was because the album had not been properly presented.^[29] The album was reworked and expanded under the guidance of Doug Morris and the musical talents of Steve Caton, Eric Rosse, Will MacGregor, Carlo Nuccio, and Dan Nebenzal, resulting in Little Earthquakes, an album recounting her religious upbringing, sexual awakening, struggle to establish her identity, and sexual assault.^[19] This album became her commercial and artistic breakthrough, entering the British charts in January 1992 at Number 15.^[19] Little Earthquakes was released in the United States in February 1992 and slowly but steadily began to attract listeners, gaining more attention with the video for the single "Silent All These Years".^[19]
Amos traveled to New Mexico with personal and professional partner Eric Rosse in 1993 to write and largely record her second solo record, Under the Pink. The album was received with mostly favorable reviews and sold enough copies to chart at No. 12 on the Billboard 200,^[30] a significantly higher position than the preceding album's position at No. 54 on the same chart.^[31] However, the album found its biggest success in the UK, debuting at number one upon release in February 1994.

Her third solo album, Boys for Pele, was released in January 1996. The album was recorded in an Irish church, in Delgany, County Wicklow, with Amos taking advantage of the church's acoustics. For this album, Amos used harpsichord, harmonium, and clavichord as well as the piano. The album garnered mixed reviews upon its release, with some critics praising its intensity and uniqueness while others bemoaned its comparative impenetrability. Despite the album's erratic lyrical content and instrumentation, the latter of which kept it away from mainstream audiences, Boys for Pele is Amos's most successful simultaneous transatlantic release, reaching No. 2 on the UK Top 40^[32] and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 upon its release.^[30]
Fueled by the desire to have her own recording studio to distance herself from record company executives, Amos had the barn of her home in Cornwall converted into the state-of-the-art recording studio, Martian Engineering Studios.^[33]
From the Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back, released in May 1998 and September 1999, respectively, differ greatly from previous albums as Amos's trademark acoustic piano-based sound is largely replaced with arrangements that include elements of electronica, dance music, and vocal washes. The underlying themes of both albums deal with womanhood and Amos's own miscarriages and marriage. Reviews for From the Choirgirl Hotel were mostly favorable and praised Amos's continued artistic originality. Debut sales for From the Choirgirl Hotel are Amos's best to date, selling 153,000 copies in its first week.^[34] To Venus and Back, a two-disc release of original studio material and live material recorded from the previous world tour, received mostly positive reviews and included the first major-label single available for sale as a digital download.^[35]
Shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Amos decided to record a cover album, taking songs written by men about women and reversing the gender roles to reflect a woman's perspective.^[36][37] That became Strange Little Girls, released in September 2001. The album is Amos's first concept album, with artwork featuring Amos photographed in character of the women portrayed in each song.^[37] Amos would later reveal that a stimulus for the album was to end her contract with Atlantic without giving them original songs; Amos felt that since 1998, the label had not been properly promoting her and had trapped her in a contract by refusing to sell her to another label.^[38]

Luciano Pavarotti, an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.^[1][2]
As one of the Three Tenors, Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of "Nessun dorma" at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin,^[3] Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others. He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.