title: The Craft (film)

text: Emanuel Levy of "Variety" described it as "a neatly crafted film that begins most promisingly as a black comedy a la "Heathers", but gradually succumbs to its tricky machinery of special effects". Roger Ebert also felt the film was mired in excessive special effects, but praised the performances of the four leads, as did Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle". Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" echoed other reviews, praising the first half of the film as a "celebration of adolescent nonconformity and female independence", but criticized the last half as a "heavy-handed sermon about karma" with "garish" special effects. Rita Kempley of "The Washington Post" called it "a brew of Hawthorne, "Heathers" and Hollywood hocus-pocus" that was nonetheless a "bubbling mess of a movie" that "leaves us more bothered than bewitched".


title: The Craft (film)

text: The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and Fairuza Balk for Best Supporting Actress. Balk and Tunney also won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.


title: The Craft (film)

text: The film is often labeled a "cult classic" and has acquired a loyal fan base and social media presence. The "Huffington Post", writing in 2016, praised "The Craft" for departing from clichés of the teen movie genre and incorporating darker themes, saying it became "part of the '90s teen canon and a cult classic of its own merit." "Complex" magazine praised the relevance of the film 20 years later, saying it "feels much more progressive than many of the movies that come out today" and calling the viewing of the film "a rite of passage" for young women. Angelica Jade Bastién of "Vulture" wrote, ""The Craft" earned a generation of devoted fans because of how it charts the friendship between these four girls — its tentative beginnings, the joys of its strength, and its ultimate downfall," and singled out "Fairuza Balk’s fierce performance... [as] perhaps "The Craft"s greatest legacy... She's a beguiling and fearsome portrait of female anger."


title: The Craft (film)

text: In 2013, three of the main actresses, with the exception of Fairuza Balk, reunited for a special Halloween screening of the film at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.


title: The Craft (film)

text: A straight-to-DVD sequel was in the works, but it was terminated. In May 2016, Sony Pictures announced that a sequel of "The Craft" was currently in development and it would be written and directed by Leigh Janiak. The announcement of the sequel spawned negative reactions from fans of the original film.


title: The Craft (film)

text: In March 2019, it was announced that the development of the sequel had been taken over by Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions company, and it was also announced that the film would be distributed by Columbia Pictures. Zoe Lister-Jones signed on to write the script and direct the film with filming scheduled to begin in July 2019. Daniel Casey later joined the production as screenwriter. In June 2019, Cailee Spaeny was cast as one of the leads. In September 2019, Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone and Zoey Luna were cast for the remaining three lead roles. In October 2019, David Duchovny joined the cast in an undisclosed role. Later, Michelle Monaghan joined the film in an undisclosed role. Two more casting announcements were made in October 2019, also in undisclosed roles, Nicholas Galitzine and Julian Grey. Filming began on October 22, 2019.


title: The Craft (film)

text: In late September 2020, Sony released an official trailer and announced that instead of a theatrical release, the film would be released on demand everywhere on October 28, 2020.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually walk on the Moon. Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Much third-party evidence for the landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the Lunar Module descent stages and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions' American flags erected on the Moon still standing. The exception is that of Apollo 11, which has lain on the lunar surface since being blown over by the Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The conspiracy theories have sustained public interest for more than 40 years. Opinion polls taken in various locations have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the crewed landings were faked. Even as late as 2001, the Fox television network documentary "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: An early and influential book about the subject of a Moon-landing conspiracy, "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle", was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing, Kaysing was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne, the company that built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket. He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company's Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. The many allegations in Kaysing's book effectively began discussion of the Moon landings being faked. The book claims that the chance of a successful crewed landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR, it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams' film "Capricorn One" (1978), which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-Vietnam War era. Dégh sees a parallel with other attitudes during the post-Watergate era, when the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts. Dégh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In "A Man on the Moon", first published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968, similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Those who believe the Moon landings were faked give several theories about the motives of NASA and the United States government. The three main theories are below.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Motivation for the United States to engage the Soviet Union in a Space Race can be traced to the then on-going Cold War. Landing on the Moon was viewed as a national and technological accomplishment that would generate world-wide acclaim. But going to the Moon would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by President John F. Kennedy famously stating in a 1962 speech that the United States chose to go "because" it was hard.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Hoax theory debunker Phil Plait says in his 2002 book "Bad Astronomy", that the Soviets – with their own competing Moon program, an extensive intelligence network and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data – would have 'cried foul' if the United States tried to fake a Moon landing, especially since their own program had failed. Proving a hoax would have been a huge propaganda win for the Soviets. Instead, far from calling the landings a hoax, the third edition (1970–1979) of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (which was translated into English between 1974 and 1983 by Macmillan Publishers, and was later made available online by TheFreeDictionary.com) contained many articles reporting the landings as factual, such as its article on Neil Armstrong.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Conspiracist Bart Sibrel responded, incorrectly asserting that, "the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep space craft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled."


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In fact, the Soviets had been sending uncrewed spacecraft to the Moon since 1959, and "during 1962, deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14," the latter having a range. The Soviet Union tracked the Apollo missions at the Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment." Vasily Mishin, in an interview for the article "The Moon Programme That Faltered," describes how the Soviet Moon program dwindled after the Apollo landings.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Also, there was nothing "abrupt" about the Apollo cancellations, which were made for cost-cutting reasons. These were announced in January and September 1970, two full years before the "late 1972" claimed by Sibrel. (See Vietnam War below.)


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA faked the landings to avoid humiliation and to ensure that it continued to get funding. NASA raised "about US$30 billion" to go to the Moon, and Kaysing claimed in his book that this could have been used to "pay off" many people. Since most conspiracists believe that sending men to the Moon was impossible at the time, they argue that landings had to be faked to fulfill Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." In fact, NASA accounted for the cost of Apollo to the US Congress in 1973, totaling US$25.4 billion.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Mary Bennett and David Percy claimed in the 2001 book "Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers", that, with all the known and unknown hazards, NASA would not risk broadcasting an astronaut getting sick or dying on live television. The counter-argument generally given is that NASA in fact "did" incur a great deal of public humiliation and potential political opposition to the program by losing an entire crew in the Apollo 1 fire during a ground test, leading to its upper management team being questioned by Senate and House of Representatives space oversight committees. There was in fact no video broadcast during either the landing or takeoff because of technological limitations.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The American Patriot Friends Network claimed in 2009 that the landings helped the United States government distract public attention from the unpopular Vietnam War, and so crewed landings suddenly ended about the same time that the United States ended its involvement in the war. In fact, the ending of the landings was not "sudden" (see Space Race above). The war was one of several federal budget items with which NASA had to compete; NASA's budget peaked in 1966, and fell by 42% by 1972. This was the reason the final flights were cut, along with plans for even more ambitious follow-on programs such as a permanent space station and crewed flight to Mars.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Many Moon-landing conspiracy theories have been put forward, claiming either that the landings did not happen and that NASA employees have lied, or that the landings did happen but not in the way that has been told. Conspiracists have focused on perceived gaps or inconsistencies in the historical record of the missions. The foremost idea is that the whole crewed landing program was a hoax from start to end. Some claim that the technology to send men to the Moon was lacking or that the Van Allen radiation belts, solar flares, solar wind, coronal mass ejections and cosmic rays made such a trip impossible.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Vince Calder and Andrew Johnson, scientists from Argonne National Laboratory, have given detailed answers to conspiracists' claims on the laboratory's website. They show that NASA's portrayal of the Moon landing is fundamentally accurate, allowing for such common mistakes as mislabeled photos and imperfect personal recollections. Using the scientific process, any hypothesis that is contradicted by the observable facts may be rejected. The 'real landing' hypothesis is a single story since it comes from a single source, but there is no unity in the hoax hypothesis because hoax accounts vary between conspiracists.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: According to James Longuski, the conspiracy theories are impossible because of their size and complexity. The conspiracy would have to involve more than 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, the 12 men who walked on the Moon, the 6 others who flew with them as command module pilots, and another 6 astronauts who orbited the Moon. Hundreds of thousands of people – including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers – would have had to keep the secret. Longuski argues that it would have been much easier to really land on the Moon than to generate such a huge conspiracy to fake the landings. To date, nobody from the United States government or NASA linked to the Apollo program has said the Moon landings were hoaxes. Penn Jillette made note of this in the "Conspiracy Theories" episode of his television show "" in 2005. With the number of people involved, and noting the Watergate scandal, Jillette noted that "someone" would have outed the hoax by now.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: One rebuttal by Sibrel to this claim is that NASA had compartmentalized all of the work on the Apollo program. This would have allowed for only a small number of people to actually know the truth about faking the Moon landings.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Moon-landing conspiracists focus heavily on NASA photos. They point to oddities in photos and films taken on the Moon. Photography experts (including those unrelated to NASA) have replied that the oddities are consistent with what should be expected from a real Moon landing, and are not consistent with tweaked or studio imagery. Some main arguments (set in plain text) and counter-arguments (set in italics) are listed below.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 1. In some photos, the crosshairs appear to be behind objects. The cameras were fitted with a Réseau plate (a clear glass plate with a reticle etched on), making it impossible for any photographed object to appear "in front" of the grid. Conspiracists often use this evidence to suggest that objects were "pasted" over the photographs, and hence obscure the reticle.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 4. There are no stars in any of the photos; the Apollo 11 astronauts also stated in post-mission press conferences that they did not remember seeing any stars during extravehicular activity (EVA). Conspiracists contend that NASA chose not to put the stars into the photos because astronomers would have been able to use them to determine whether the photos were taken from the Earth or the Moon, by means of identifying them and comparing their celestial position and parallax to what would be expected for either observation site.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 6. There are identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart. This suggests that a painted background was used.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 8. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground. These may be labeled studio props.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 9. A resident of Perth, Western Australia, a woman named Una Ronald (a pseudonym created by the authors of the source), said that for two or three seconds she saw a Coca-Cola bottle roll across the lower right quadrant of her television screen that was displaying the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 EVA. She also said that several letters appeared in "The West Australian" discussing the Coca-Cola bottle incident within ten days of the lunar landing.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 10. The 1994 book "Moon Shot" contains an obviously fake composite photo of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 11. There appear to be "hot spots" in some photos that look like a large spotlight was used in place of the Sun.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see radiation poisoning and health threat from cosmic rays). Some conspiracists have suggested that Starfish Prime (a high-altitude nuclear test in 1962) formed another intense layer on the Van Allen belt.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 4. The Apollo 16 crew could not have survived a big solar flare firing out when they were on their way to the Moon.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon. This suggests that it was filmed on Earth and a breeze caused the flag to flutter. Sibrel said that it may have been caused by indoor fans used to cool the astronauts since their spacesuit cooling systems would have been too heavy on Earth.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 7. The alleged Moon landings used either a sound stage or were filmed outside in a remote desert with the astronauts either using harnesses or slow-motion photography to make it look like they were on the Moon.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 2. The second stage of the launch rocket or the Lunar Module ascent stage or both made no visible flame.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 3. The Lunar Modules weighed 17 tons and made no mark on the Moondust, yet footprints can be seen beside them.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 4. The air conditioning units that were part of the astronauts' spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 1. There should have been more than a two-second delay in communications between Earth and the Moon, at a distance of .


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 3. The Parkes Observatory in Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the site that would be relaying communications from the first moonwalk. However, five hours before transmission they were told to stand down.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 4. Parkes supposedly had the clearest video feed from the Moon, but Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United States.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: 5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon was on the opposite side of the planet.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Blueprints and design and development drawings of the machines involved are missing. Apollo 11 data tapes containing telemetry and the high-quality video (before scan conversion from slow-scan TV to standard TV) of the first moonwalk are also missing.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Dr. David R. Williams (NASA archivist at Goddard Space Flight Center) and Apollo 11 flight director Eugene F. Kranz both acknowledged that the original high-quality Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Conspiracists see this as evidence that they never existed. The Apollo 11 telemetry tapes were different from the telemetry tapes of the other Moon landings because they contained the raw television broadcast. For technical reasons, the Apollo 11 lander carried a slow-scan television (SSTV) camera (see Apollo TV camera). To broadcast the pictures to regular television, a scan conversion had to be done. The radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia was able to receive the telemetry from the Moon at the time of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Parkes had a bigger antenna than NASA's antenna in Australia at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, so it received a better picture. It also received a better picture than NASA's antenna at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. This direct TV signal, along with telemetry data, was recorded onto one-inch fourteen-track analog tape at Parkes. The original SSTV transmission had better detail and contrast than the scan-converted pictures, and it is this original tape that is missing. A crude, real-time scan conversion of the SSTV signal was done in Australia before it was broadcast worldwide. However, still photos of the original SSTV image are available (see photos). About fifteen minutes of it were filmed by an amateur 8 mm film camera and these are also available. Later Apollo missions did not use SSTV. At least some of the telemetry tapes from the ALSEP scientific experiments left on the Moon (which ran until 1977) still exist, according to Dr. Williams. Copies of those tapes have been found.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Others are looking for the missing telemetry tapes for different reasons. The tapes contain the original and highest quality video feed from the Apollo 11 landing. Some former Apollo personnel want to find the tapes for posterity while NASA engineers looking towards future Moon missions believe the tapes may be useful for their design studies. They have found that the Apollo 11 tapes were sent for storage at the U.S. National Archives in 1970, but by 1984, all the Apollo 11 tapes had been returned to the Goddard Space Flight Center at their request. The tapes are believed to have been stored rather than re-used. Goddard was storing 35,000 new tapes per year in 1967, even before the Moon landings.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In November 2006, COSMOS Online reported that about 100 data tapes recorded in Australia during the Apollo 11 mission had been found in a small marine science laboratory in the main physics building at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. One of the old tapes has been sent to NASA for analysis. The slow-scan television images were not on the tape.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In July 2009, NASA indicated that it must have erased the original Apollo 11 Moon footage years ago so that it could re-use the tape. In December 2009 NASA issued a final report on the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes. Senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who was in charge of the live TV recordings during the Apollo missions, was put in charge of the restoration project. After a three-year search, the "inescapable conclusion" was that about 45 tapes (estimated 15 tapes recorded at each of the three tracking stations) of Apollo 11 video were erased and re-used, said Nafzger. In time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, Lowry Digital had been tasked with restoring the surviving footage. Lowry Digital president Mike Inchalik said that, "this is by far and away the lowest quality" video the company has dealt with. Nafzger praised Lowry for restoring "crispness" to the Apollo video, which will remain in black and white and contains conservative digital enhancements. The US$230,000 restoration project took months to complete and did not include sound quality improvements. Some selections of restored footage in high-definition have been made available on the NASA website.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Grumman appears to have destroyed most of its LM documentation, but copies of the blueprints for the Saturn V exist on microfilm.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Four mission-worthy Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRV) were built by Boeing. Three of them were carried to the Moon on Apollos 15, 16, and 17, used by the astronauts for transportation once on the Moon, and left there. After Apollo 18 was canceled, the other LRV was used for spare parts for the Apollos 15 to 17 missions. The 221-page operation manual for the LRV contains some detailed drawings, although not the blueprints.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Bart Sibrel cites the relative level of the United States and USSR space technology as evidence that the Moon landings could not have happened. For much of the early stages of the Space Race, the USSR was ahead of the United States, yet in the end, the USSR was never able to fly a crewed spacecraft to the Moon, let alone land one on the surface. It is argued that, because the USSR was unable to do this, the United States should have also been unable to develop the technology to do so.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: For example, he claims that, during the Apollo program, the USSR had five times more crewed hours in space than the United States, and notes that the USSR was the first to achieve many of the early milestones in space: the first artificial satellite in orbit (October 1957, Sputnik 1); the first living creature in orbit (a dog named Laika, November 1957, Sputnik 2); the first man in space and in orbit (Yuri Gagarin, April 1961, Vostok 1); the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, June 1963, Vostok 6); and the first spacewalk (Alexei Leonov in March 1965, Voskhod 2).


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: However, most of the Soviet gains listed above were matched by the United States within a year, and sometimes within weeks. In 1965, the United States started to achieve many firsts (such as the first successful space rendezvous), which were important steps in a mission to the Moon. Furthermore, NASA and others say that these gains by the Soviets are not as impressive as they seem; that a number of these firsts were mere stunts that did not advance the technology greatly, or at all, "e.g.", the first woman in space. In fact, by the time of the launch of the first crewed Earth-orbiting Apollo flight (Apollo 7), the USSR had made only nine spaceflights (seven with one cosmonaut, one with two, one with three) compared to 16 by the United States. In terms of spacecraft hours, the USSR had 460 hours of spaceflight; the United States had 1,024 hours. In terms of astronaut/cosmonaut time, the USSR had 534 hours of crewed spaceflight whereas the United States had 1,992 hours. By the time of Apollo 11, the United States had a lead much wider than that. (See List of human spaceflights, 1961–1970, and refer to individual flights for the length of time.)


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Moreover, the USSR did not develop a successful rocket capable of a crewed lunar mission until the 1980s – their N1 rocket failed on all four launch attempts between 1969 and 1972. The Soviet LK lunar lander was tested in uncrewed low-Earth-orbit flights three times in 1970 and 1971.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The digital technology on Earth during the time of the Moon landings was just in its infancy. The astronauts had relied on computers to aid in the Moon missions. The Apollo Guidance Computer was on the Lunar Module and the command and service module. Many computers at the time were very large despite poor specs. For example, in 1973, one year after the final Moon landing, the Xerox Alto was released. This computer had 96kB of memory. Most personal computers as of 2019, use 50,000–100,000 times this amount of RAM. Conspiracy theorists claim that the computers during the time of the Moon landings would not have been advanced enough to allow for human space travel to the Moon and back; they similarly claim that other contemporary technology (radio transmission, radar, and other instrumentation) was likewise insufficient for the task.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In a televised program about the Moon-landing hoax allegations, Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of ten astronauts and two civilians related to the crewed spaceflight program as part of an alleged cover-up.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Two of the above, X-15 pilot Mike Adams and MOL pilot Robert Lawrence, had no connection with the civilian crewed space program that oversaw the Apollo missions. Baron was a quality control inspector who wrote a report critical of the Apollo program and was an outspoken critic of NASA's safety record after the Apollo 1 fire. Baron and his family were killed as their car was struck by a train at a train crossing. The deaths were an accident. All of the deaths occurred at least 20 months "before" Apollo 11 and subsequent flights.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: , four of the twelve Apollo astronauts who landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 are still alive, including Buzz Aldrin. Also, six of the twelve Apollo astronauts who flew to the Moon without landing between 1968 and 1972 are still alive.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The number of deaths within the American astronaut corps during the run-up to Apollo and during the Apollo missions is similar to the number of deaths incurred by the Soviets. During the period 1961 to 1972, at least eight Soviet serving and former cosmonauts died:


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Additionally, the overall chief of their crewed-spaceflight program, Sergei Korolev, died while undergoing surgery in January 1966.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In June 1977, NASA issued a fact sheet responding to recent claims that the Apollo Moon landings had been hoaxed. The fact sheet is particularly blunt and regards the idea of faking the Moon landings to be preposterous and outlandish. NASA refers to the rocks and particles collected from the Moon as being evidence of the program's legitimacy, as they claim that these rocks could not have been formed under conditions on Earth. NASA also notes that all of the operations and phases of the Apollo program were closely followed and under the scrutiny of the news media, from liftoff to splashdown. NASA responds to Bill Kaysing's book, "We Never Went to the Moon", by identifying one of his claims of fraud regarding the lack of a crater left on the Moon's surface by the landing of the lunar module, and refuting it with facts about the soil and cohesive nature of the surface of the Moon.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The fact sheet was reissued on February 14, 2001, the day before Fox television's broadcast of "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" The documentary reinvigorated the public's interest in conspiracy theories and the possibility that the Moon landings were faked, which has provoked NASA to once again defend its name.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick is accused of having produced much of the footage for Apollos 11 and 12, presumably because he had just directed "", which is partly set on the Moon and featured advanced special effects. It has been claimed that when "2001" was in post-production in early 1968, NASA secretly approached Kubrick to direct the first three Moon landings. The launch and splashdown would be real but the spacecraft would stay in Earth orbit and fake footage broadcast as "live from the Moon." No evidence was offered for this theory, which overlooks many facts. For example, "2001" was released before the first Apollo landing and Kubrick's depiction of the Moon's surface differs greatly from its appearance in the Apollo footage. The movement of characters on the Moon in "2001" differs from that of the filmed movement of Apollo astronauts, and does not resemble an environment with 1/6 the gravity of Earth. Several scenes in "2001" show dust billowing as spacecraft landed, something that would not happen in the vacuum environment of the Moon. Kubrick did hire Frederick Ordway and Harry Lange, both of whom had worked for NASA and major aerospace contractors, to work with him on "2001". Kubrick also used some 50 mm f/0.7 lenses that were left over from a batch made by Zeiss for NASA. However, Kubrick only got this lens for "Barry Lyndon" (1975). The lens was originally a still photo lens and needed changes to be used for motion filming.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The mockumentary based on this idea, "Dark Side of the Moon", could have fueled the conspiracy theory. This French mockumentary, directed by William Karel, was originally aired on Arte channel in 2002 with the title "Opération Lune". It parodies conspiracy theories with faked interviews, stories of assassinations of Stanley Kubrick's assistants by the CIA, and a variety of conspicuous mistakes, puns, and references to old movie characters, inserted through the film as clues for the viewer. Nevertheless, "Opération Lune" is still taken at face value by some conspiracy believers.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: An article titled "Stanley Kubrick and the Moon Hoax" appeared on Usenet in 1995, in the newsgroup "alt.humor.best-of-usenet". One passage – on how Kubrick was supposedly coerced into the conspiracy – reads:


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: NASA further leveraged their position by threatening to publicly reveal the heavy involvement of Mr. Kubrick's younger brother, Raul, with the American Communist Party. This would have been an intolerable embarrassment to Mr. Kubrick, especially since the release of "Dr. Strangelove".


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Kubrick had no such brother – the article was a spoof, complete with a giveaway sentence describing Kubrick shooting the moonwalk "on location" on the Moon. Nevertheless, the claim was taken up in earnest; Clyde Lewis used it almost word-for-word, whereas Jay Weidner gave the brother a more senior status within the party:


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: No one knows how the powers-that-be convinced Kubrick to direct the Apollo landings. Maybe they had compromised Kubrick in some way. The fact that his brother, Raul Kubrick, was the head of the American Communist Party may have been one of the avenues pursued by the government to get Stanley to cooperate.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In July 2009, Weidner posted on his webpage "Secrets of the Shining", where he states that Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) is a veiled confession of his role in the scam project. This thesis was the subject of refutation in an article published on Seeker nearly half a year later.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In December 2015, a video surfaced which allegedly shows Kubrick being interviewed shortly before his 1999 death; the video purportedly shows the director confessing to T. Patrick Murray that the Apollo Moon landings had been faked. Research quickly found, however, that the video was a hoax.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In 2002, NASA granted US$15,000 to James Oberg for a commission to write a point-by-point rebuttal of the hoax claims. However, NASA canceled the commission later that year, after complaints that the book would dignify the accusations. Oberg said that he meant to finish the book. In November 2002, Peter Jennings said "NASA is going to spend a few thousand dollars trying to prove to some people that the United States did indeed land men on the Moon," and "NASA had been so rattled, [they] hired [somebody] to write a book refuting the conspiracy theorists." Oberg says that belief in the hoax theories is not the fault of the conspiracists, but rather that of teachers and people (including NASA) who should provide information to the public.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In 2004, Martin Hendry and Ken Skeldon of the University of Glasgow were awarded a grant by the UK-based Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council to investigate Moon landing conspiracy theories. In November 2004, they gave a lecture at the Glasgow Science Centre where the top ten claims by conspiracists were individually addressed and refuted.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: An episode of "MythBusters" in August 2008 was dedicated to the Moon landings. The "MythBusters" crew tested many of the conspiracists' claims. Some of the testings were done in a NASA training facility. All of the conspiracists' claims examined on the show were labeled as having been "Busted", meaning that the conspiracists' claims were not true.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Moon-landing conspiracists claim that observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope should be able to photograph the landing sites. This implies that the world's major observatories (as well as the Hubble Program) are complicit in the hoax by refusing to take photos of the landing sites. Photos of the Moon have been taken by Hubble, including at least two Apollo landing sites, but the Hubble resolution limits viewing of lunar objects to sizes no smaller than , which is insufficient resolution to see any landing site features.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In April 2001, Leonard David published an article on space.com, which showed a photo taken by the Clementine mission showing a diffuse dark spot at the site NASA says is the Apollo 15 lander. The evidence was noticed by Misha Kreslavsky, of the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University, and Yuri Shkuratov of the Kharkiv Astronomical Observatory in Ukraine. The European Space Agency's SMART-1 uncrewed probe sent back photos of the landing sites, according to Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program. "Given SMART-1's initial high orbit, however, it may prove difficult to see artifacts," said Foing in an interview on space.com.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In 2002, Alex R. Blackwell of the University of Hawaii pointed out that some photos taken by Apollo astronauts while in orbit around the Moon show the landing sites.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: "The Daily Telegraph" published a story in 2002 saying that European astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) would use it to view the landing sites. According to the article, Dr. Richard West said that his team would take "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites." Marcus Allen, a conspiracist, answered that no photos of hardware on the Moon would convince him that human landings had happened. The telescope was used to image the Moon and provided a resolution of , which was not good enough to resolve the wide lunar landers or their long shadows.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched their SELENE Moon orbiter on September 14, 2007 (JST), from Tanegashima Space Center. SELENE orbited the Moon at about altitude. In May 2008, JAXA reported detecting the "halo" generated by the Apollo 15 Lunar Module engine exhaust from a Terrain Camera image. A three-dimensional reconstructed photo also matched the terrain of an Apollo 15 photo taken from the surface.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: On July 17, 2009, NASA released low-resolution engineering test photos of the Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 landing sites that have been photographed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as part of the process of starting its primary mission. The photos show the descent stage of the landers from each mission on the Moon's surface. The photo of the Apollo 14 landing site also shows tracks made by an astronaut between a science experiment (ALSEP) and the lander. Photos of the Apollo 12 landing site were released by NASA on September 3, 2009. The "Intrepid" lander descent stage, experiment package (ALSEP), Surveyor 3 spacecraft, and astronaut footpaths are all visible. While the LRO images have been enjoyed by the scientific community as a whole, they have not done anything to convince conspiracists that the landings happened.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: On September 1, 2009, India's lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 took photos of the Apollo 15 landing site and tracks of the lunar rovers. The Indian Space Research Organisation launched their uncrewed lunar probe on September 8, 2008 (IST), from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. The photos were taken by a hyperspectral camera fitted as part of the mission's image payload.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: China's second lunar probe, Chang'e 2, which was launched in 2010, can photograph the lunar surface with a resolution of up to . It spotted traces of the Apollo landings.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The Apollo program collected of Moon rocks during the six crewed missions. Analyses by scientists worldwide all agree that these rocks came from the Moon – no published accounts in peer-reviewed scientific journals exist that dispute this claim. The Apollo samples are easily distinguishable from both meteorites and Earth rocks in that they show a lack of hydrous alteration products, they show evidence of having undergone impact events on an airless body, and they have unique geochemical traits. Furthermore, most are more than 200 million years older than the oldest Earth rocks. The Moon rocks also share the same traits as Soviet samples.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Conspiracists argue that Marshall Space Flight Center Director Wernher von Braun's trip to Antarctica in 1967 (about two years before the Apollo 11 launch) was to gather lunar meteorites to be used as fake Moon rocks. Because von Braun was a former SS officer (though one who had been detained by the Gestapo), the documentary film "Did We Go?" suggests that he could have been pressured to agree to the conspiracy to protect himself from recriminations over his past. NASA said that von Braun's mission was "to look into environmental and logistic factors that might relate to the planning of future space missions, and hardware." NASA continues to send teams to work in Antarctica to mimic the conditions on other planets.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: It is now accepted by the scientific community that rocks have been blasted from both the Martian and lunar surface during impact events, and that some of these have landed on the Earth as meteorites. However, the first Antarctic lunar meteorite was found in 1979, and its lunar origin was not recognized until 1982. Furthermore, lunar meteorites are so rare that it is unlikely that they could account for the of Moon rocks that NASA gathered between 1969 and 1972. Only about of lunar meteorites have been found on Earth thus far, despite private collectors and governmental agencies worldwide searching for more than 20 years.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: While the Apollo missions gathered of Moon rocks, the Soviet Luna 16, Luna 20 and Luna 24 robots gathered only combined (that is, less than one-thousandth as much). Indeed, current plans for a Martian sample return would only gather about of soil, and a recently proposed South Pole-Aitken basin robot mission would only gather about of Moon rock. If NASA had used similar robot technology, then between 300 and 2,000 robot missions would have been needed to collect the current amount of Moon rocks that is held by NASA.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: On the makeup of the Moon rocks, Kaysing asked: "Why was there never a mention of gold, silver, diamonds or other precious metals on the moon? Wasn't this a viable consideration? Why was this fact never dicussed ["sic"] in the press or by the astronauts?" Geologists realize that gold and silver deposits on Earth are the result of the action of hydrothermal fluids concentrating the precious metals into veins of ore. Since in 1969 water was believed to be absent on the Moon, no geologist discussed finding these on the Moon in any great amount.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: Aside from NASA, a number of groups and individuals tracked the Apollo missions as they happened. On later missions, NASA released information to the public explaining where and when the spacecraft could be sighted. Their flight paths were tracked using radar and they were sighted and photographed using telescopes. Also, radio transmissions between the astronauts on the surface and in orbit were independently recorded.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: The presence of retroreflectors (mirrors used as targets for Earth-based tracking lasers) from the Laser Ranging Retroreflector Experiment (LRRR) is evidence that there were landings. Lick Observatory attempted to detect from Apollo 11's retroreflector while Armstrong and Aldrin were still on the Moon but did not succeed until August 1, 1969. The Apollo 14 astronauts deployed a retroreflector on February 5, 1971, and McDonald Observatory detected it the same day. The Apollo 15 retroreflector was deployed on July 31, 1971, and was detected by McDonald Observatory within a few days. Smaller retroreflectors were also put on the Moon by the Russians; they were attached to the uncrewed lunar rovers Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In a 1994 poll by "The Washington Post", 9% of the respondents said that it was possible that astronauts did not go to the Moon and another 5% were unsure. A 1999 Gallup Poll found that 6% of the Americans surveyed doubted that the Moon landings happened and that 5% of those surveyed had no opinion, which roughly matches the findings of a similar 1995 "Time/CNN" poll. Officials of the Fox network said that such skepticism rose to about 20% after the February 2001 airing of their network's television special, "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?", seen by about 15 million viewers. This Fox special is seen as having promoted the hoax claims.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: A 2000 poll conducted by the ("ФОМ") in Russia found that 28% of those surveyed did not believe that American astronauts landed on the Moon, and this percentage is roughly equal in all social-demographic groups. In 2009, a poll held by the United Kingdom's "Engineering & Technology" magazine found that 25% of those surveyed did not believe that men landed on the Moon. Another poll gives that 25% of 18- to 25-year-olds surveyed were unsure that the landings happened.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: There are subcultures worldwide which advocate the belief that the Moon landings were faked. By 1977 the Hare Krishna magazine "Back to Godhead" called the landings a hoax, claiming that, since the Sun is away, and "according to Hindu mythology the Moon is farther away than that", the Moon would be nearly away; to travel that span in 91 hours would require a speed of more than a million miles per hour, "a patently impossible feat even by the scientists' calculations."


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: James Oberg of ABC News said that the conspiracy theory is taught in Cuban schools and wherever Cuban teachers are sent. A poll conducted in the 1970s by the United States Information Agency in several countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa found that most respondents were unaware of the Moon landings, many of the others dismissed them as propaganda or science fiction, and many thought that it had been the Russians that landed on the Moon.


title: Moon landing conspiracy theories

text: In 2019, Ipsos conducted a study for C-Span to assess the level of belief that the 1969 Moon landing was faked. Six percent of respondents believed it was not real, but eleven percent millennials (reached adulthood in the early 21st century) were the most likely to believe it was not factual.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (born February 24, 1994), also known by his stage name Earl Sweatshirt, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Kgositsile was originally known by the moniker Sly Tendencies when he began rapping in 2008, but soon changed his name when Tyler, the Creator invited him to join his alternative hip hop collective Odd Future in late 2009.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: He gained recognition and critical praise for his debut mixtape, "Earl", which he released in March 2010, at the young age of 16. Shortly after its release, his mother sent him to a boarding school in Samoa for at-risk teens for a year and a half. He was unable to record music during his tenure there, but returned to Los Angeles in February 2012, just before his eighteenth birthday. Kgositsile rejoined Odd Future and started producing new music, releasing his debut studio album, "Doris", in August 2013.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: His second album, "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside", followed in March 2015, and his third, "Some Rap Songs", released in November 2018. His projects have all received widespread critical praise. He is currently signed to his independent label Tan Cressida, which was formerly distributed by Columbia Records. On November 1, 2019, Kgositsile released an EP titled "Feet of Clay". Earl dropped the deluxe version of Feet Of Clay a few months after and then took a year off from music to start working on his next album. In late 2021 Earl released the first single from his 4th studio album. That single was "2010" and then released 2 more singles before releasing his album SICK!.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Thebe Neruda Kgositsile was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Cheryl Harris, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and Keorapetse Kgositsile, a South African poet and political activist. Harris and Kgositsile separated when Thebe was six years old.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: He attended the UCLA Lab School in Los Angeles and New Roads High School and Middle School in Santa Monica, California.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile first started rapping in the seventh grade. In 2007, under the name Sly Tendencies, he posted tracks from his mixtape, "Kitchen Cutlery", via MySpace. He and two of his friends, Loofy and JW Mijo, formed a rap trio called The Backpackerz. They intended to release a mixtape titled "World Playground", but disbanded sometime in 2009.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: In 2009, fellow rapper Tyler, the Creator discovered Kgositsile via his MySpace account after he reached out to Tyler to tell him he was a fan of his work. Kgositsile later changed his pseudonym to Earl Sweatshirt and eventually joined Tyler's rap group Odd Future.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: His debut mixtape, "Earl", was self-released on March 31, 2010, for free digital download on the Odd Future website. Most of the mixtape was produced by Tyler, the Creator. "Earl" was named the 24th-best album of 2010 by "Complex".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Despite positive reactions from both critics and fans, various sources indicated that Kgositsile had stopped making music with Odd Future. Posts from Tyler, the Creator's Twitter and Formspring accounts seemed to indicate that Kgositsile's mother would not grant permission to release any of her son's music; although after his return, Kgositsile later expressed in an interview that his mother sent him to Samoa due to getting into trouble with friends. Kgositsile attended Coral Reef Academy, a therapeutic retreat school for at-risk boys, located outside of the Samoan capital of Apia. At Coral Reef Academy, Kgositsile worked to earn back privileges, and the opportunity to return home. At the beginning of his enrollment, he was unable to use the bathroom unsupervised. While there, he read Manning Marable's biography on Malcolm X and Richard Fariña's counterculture fiction. He wrote rhymes, including most of his verse on "Oldie", his only contribution to Odd Future's mixtape "The OF Tape Vol. 2". Kgositsile was brought back from Samoa by Leila Steinberg, the first manager of Tupac Shakur, who today still manages his career.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile's hiatus from making music lead to a movement known as "Free Earl", which stemmed from a post on Odd Future's Tumblr. Chants of the phrase would ensue at the group's shows, and would appear throughout several songs by both the collective and its individual members – leading to media coverage of the movement itself.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On February 8, 2012, rumors spread around the internet that Kgositsile had returned to the U.S. when a video of him surfaced on YouTube with a preview of a new song saying if viewers wanted "the full thing" they would have to give him 50,000 followers on Twitter. He also later confirmed on his new Twitter account that he had returned to his home in Los Angeles.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile appeared on the song "Oldie" from Odd Future's debut album "The OF Tape Vol. 2". This was Earl's return to official Odd Future releases and his first appearance on an Odd Future Records release. On March 20, a video released on the official Odd Future YouTube page featured Kgositsile in a cipher-style music video rapping along to his verse from "Oldie" with the other members of the crew. That same day, Kgositsile performed with the group at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on March 20, 2012. On April 9, 2012, rapper Casey Veggies released a mixtape titled "Customized Greatly 3" that included a song featuring Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler the Creator, Domo Genesis, and Hodgy Beats titled "PNCINTLOFWGKTA." During that month Kgositsile signed on to create his own record label imprint, Tan Cressida, to be distributed through Columbia Records. He turned down several other larger offers due to his priority of remaining close to Odd Future.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Earl Sweatshirt was featured on the track "Super Rich Kids" from Frank Ocean's debut album, "channel ORANGE" released digitally July 10, 2012. On July 16, Domo Genesis & The Alchemist released the first official single, "Elimination Chamber", from their collaboration album "No Idols", which featured Earl, Vince Staples, and Action Bronson. He was also later featured on the album again on the tracks "Daily News" (also featuring SpaceGhostPurrp & Action Bronson) & "Gamebreaker". On July 23, 2012, Flying Lotus released a song titled "Between Friends" on the Adult Swim Single series which features Earl Sweatshirt and Captain Murphy. Earl Sweatshirt was also featured on MellowHype's second and final studio album, "Numbers" on the track "P2".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On November 2, Kgositsile released his first solo single since his return from Samoa, titled "Chum". On November 12, he announced in a tweet that his debut studio album will be titled "Gnossos" but later decided against the title. On December 4, Kgositsile announced that the album will instead be called "Doris". That same day the music video for "Chum" was posted on YouTube. "Doris" was reported early on to feature vocals and/or production from Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, Ommas Keith, Thundercat, Domo Genesis, Mac Miller, the Neptunes, Christian Rich, Vince Staples, BadBadNotGood, Pharrell Williams, Samiyam, The Alchemist, Casey Veggies, The Internet and RZA. On March 6, 2013, while performing with Flying Lotus and Mac Miller, Earl premiered three new songs off "Doris": "Burgundy" produced by Pharrell Williams, "Hive" featuring Casey Veggies & Vince Staples and "Guild" featuring Mac Miller. Kgositsile also confirmed the next single to be titled "Whoa" featuring Tyler, the Creator. The song was released to iTunes on March 12, 2013, along with the music video being released, which was directed by Tyler.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: "Doris" was released on August 20, 2013, under Tan Cressida and Columbia Records. "Doris" featured guest appearances from Odd Future members Domo Genesis, Frank Ocean, Tyler, the Creator, along with Vince Staples, RZA, Casey Veggies and Mac Miller. Production was primarily handled by Kgositsile under the pseudonym randomblackdude and production duo Christian Rich. Additional production was provided by Matt Martians, the Neptunes, RZA, Samiyam, BadBadNotGood, Frank Ocean, and Tyler, the Creator. In September 2013, "Complex" named Kgositsile the tenth best producer in hip hop. Upon its release, "Doris" was met with universal critical acclaim from music critics, including perfect scores by "The Guardian" and "Los Angeles Times", which praised Kgositsile's rhyme schemes and lyrics along with the gritty underground production. The album also fared well commercially debuting at number five on the US "Billboard" 200 and number one on US Top Rap Albums chart.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On November 12, 2012, Kgositsile announced that he had begun working on his second studio project. The forthcoming album was to be named "Gnossos," citing inspiration from Richard Fariña's 1966 cult-classic novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me". Kgositsile ultimately decided to take the album in another direction under the name "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside". On October 10, 2014, Kgositsile confirmed that he had completed the follow-up album to "Doris". On November 5, 2014, he released a new song entitled "45" produced by The Alchemist.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On February 14, 2015, Earl debuted a new song titled "Quest/Power" via SoundCloud. Kgositsile continued to perform unreleased tracks since early 2015, such as "Swamp Vermin", "Vultures", "I Be Outside", "Hell", and "Flowers on the Grave".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On January 5, 2015, Kgositsile released a song titled "silenceDArapgame" with professional skateboarder Nakel Smith under the moniker Hog Slaughta Boyz.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On March 16, 2015, The pre-order for Kgositsile's second studio album, titled: "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside" appeared on the iTunes Store, without prior announcement. On March 17, 2015, Kgositsile released a music video for the song "Grief".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: The full album was released on March 22, 2015, but only the digital version; the physical version was released later on April 14, 2015. A later music video for the song "Off Top" was released on August 7, 2015. Kgositsile stated in an interview with NPR that his record label gave him no notice they would release the album. He says he considers this his first album because he feels he can "back up everything, the good and the bad".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On April 28, 2015, a ten-minute track named "Solace" was released via YouTube and has gained much attention; gaining more than 100,000 views on YouTube in 24 hours. He stated to NPR that he was making an album called "Solace" inspired by his mother; however, many believe it is instead an extended play. The project has not been addressed fully. It was widely debated if Kgositsile left Odd Future or not. It seems he has confirmed he has left through his Twitter on May 28, 2015, by saying "No sympathy for male virgins who're in their feelings about Tyler pointing out and solidifying the obvious" after Tyler, the Creator tweeted what everyone thought was the disbandment of Odd Future, although Tyler denies an Odd Future disbandment. Earl did not appear at Camp Flog Gnaw 2015 on November 14, 2015. Many speculated that Tyler, the Creator did not invite Earl to perform at the Carnival because of a feud or conflict between the two. However, Tyler tweeted the day after the carnival "Thebe and I are fine by the way".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On January 25, 2016, Kgositsile released three new tracks on SoundCloud, "Wind in My Sails", produced by The Alchemist, and "Bary" and "Skrt Skrt", produced under his alias 'randomblackdude'. "Wind in My Sails" contains samples from Captain Murphy's song "Children of the Atom" and vocal samples from Gene McDaniels's song "The Parasite (For Buffy)". "Bary" contains vocal samples from Kanye West's song "Barry Bonds". "Skrt Skrt" contains vocal samples from 21 Savage's song "Skrrt Skrrt". On March 4, 2016, Kgositsile was featured on Samiyam's 4th album, "Animals Have Feelings". The song, "Mirror", was originally meant for "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside". According to Kgositsile, the song wasn't included since "the tracklist got fucked up". The music video for "Mirror" was released on June 21, 2016. On August 1, 2016, an instrumental track called "Pelicula" was posted on Apple Music. On August 17, 2016, Kgositsile was featured on "Adult Swim Singles Program 2016" on the track "Balance", produced by Knxwledge. On September 4, a new Kgositsile track called "Death Whistles" was released on Earl's and Knxwledge's livestream show on Red Bull Music Academy, produced by King Krule.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On September 21, 2018, frequent collaborator The Alchemist released the track listing to his EP "Bread", which contains the track "E. Coli" featuring Earl Sweatshirt. On November 2, 2018, frequent collaborator Vince Staples released his album "FM!" featuring the track "New earlsweatshirt – Interlude" containing a 20-second verse from the rapper. Vince later said "Earl is back" and that "his album coming soon" on his Beats 1 show 'Ramona Radio'.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On November 7, 2018, Kgositsile teased the release of new music on social media in a video clip captioned, "NOWHERE2GO TOMORROW MORNING TAP IN." The single "Nowhere2go" was released on November 8, 2018, and received positive reception. On November 20, 2018, Kgositsile released the single "The Mint" and announced his third studio album, "Some Rap Songs" which he slated for a November 30, 2018, release. According to Kgositsile, "Some Rap Songs" was intended to be themed around his father's death.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On November 30, 2018, Kgositsile released his third studio album, "Some Rap Songs" to widespread critical acclaim. In January 2019, Kgositsile said that "Some Rap Songs" would be his last album with Columbia Records and that he was "excited to be free because then [he] can do riskier shit".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: In May 2019, Kgositsile appeared in a song with Zelooperz titled "Easter Sunday". On November 1, 2019, Kgositsile released his EP "Feet of Clay". A deluxe version of "Feet of Clay", which included two bonus tracks, was released the following June.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: On November 18, 2021, Kgositsile returned with a music video for a new single, "2010", the first commercial release since his 2019 EP "Feet of Clay". On December 9, 2021, Kgositsile released a music video for another single titled "Tabula Rasa", featuring rap group Armand Hammer. Alongside "Tabula Rasa", he announced his fourth studio album, "Sick!", which was released on January 14, 2022. Kgositsile released the third and final single, the Black Noi$e-produced "Titanic" on January 7, 2022. The album features ZelooperZ, and rap group Armand Hammer with a range of production from Kgositsile himself, The Alchemist, Black Noi$e, Samiyam and more.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile has been called a "hip-hop prodigy" and in 2011 was branded as "the most exciting rapper to emerge in years, a virtuoso who was just starting to figure out what he could do with words." He is characterized primarily by his voice, which has been classified as a "deep baritone".


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile's mother is a noted academic, critical race theorist, and UCLA School of Law professor, Cheryl Harris. His father, Keorapetse Kgositsile, was a South African poet and political activist who died on January 3, 2018, at 79. Keorapetse was often mentioned in Kgositsile's music and was called a "complicated figure" by Pitchfork due to being presented as a person that was often absent in his life due to Keorapetse living in South Africa while Kgositsile lived in Los Angeles, California. Speaking on his own relationship with Keorapetse, Kgositsile said "Me and my dad had a relationship that's not uncommon for people to have with their fathers, which is a non-perfect one, talking to him is symbolic and non-symbolic, but it's literally closure for my childhood. Not getting to have that moment left me to figure out a lot with my damn self."


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile currently lives in the neighborhood of Mid-City in Los Angeles, California. He lived in Samoa for over a year after his mother found out about his early music, most particularly his debut mixtape "Earl", as well as his drug habits, sending him to Coral Reef Academy, a reform boarding school. The time in Samoa led to Kgositsile getting sober, though, eventually, he relapsed upon returning to the United States and caught pneumonia whilst on tour. Kgositsile attributes his time with his collective Odd Future, who were similar ages to him, and leaving a long-term relationship to his drug abuse, saying he was often smoking marijuana and drinking lean before quitting as he reached adulthood.


title: Earl Sweatshirt

text: Kgositsile was raised as a Nichiren Buddhist and, after a period away from the belief system, stated in 2016 that he had returned to the religion.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Wizards of Waverly Place is an American fantasy teen sitcom created by Todd J. Greenwald that aired on Disney Channel for four seasons between October 2007 and January 2012. The series centers on Alex Russo (Selena Gomez), a teenage wizard living on the titular street in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, who undertakes training alongside her siblings, Justin (David Henrie) and Max (Jake T. Austin), who are also equipped with magical abilities. The siblings are trained knowing that one day they will compete to win sole custody of their family's powers. Episodes focus on Alex's challenges in keeping her secret powers hidden while she deals with the social and personal issues of her youth. She frequently uses magic in her everyday life, sometimes irresponsibly, and develops her supernatural abilities over the course of the series. The main themes depicted include family, friendship and adolescence; the series also contains fantasy elements.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: The Walt Disney Company developed the series to follow on from its successful line of comedy series in the 2000s, including "Lizzie McGuire", "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" and "Hannah Montana". It's a Laugh Productions produced the program and it premiered on Disney Channel on October12, 2007. A made-for-television film adaptation, "" aired on the network in 2009 and was awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program in 2010. The series ended on January6, 2012, to allow Gomez to take on more mature roles. After its conclusion, the cast returned for a stand-alone television special, "", in 2013. Every season has been distributed through digital download and on the Disney+ streaming service.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: "Wizards of Waverly Place" enjoyed consistently high viewership in the United States on broadcast television and tie-ins included merchandise, a soundtrack album and video game adaptations. Television critics praised the show for its humor and cast; Gomez's affiliation with the network led to a prominent musical career apart from the program. "Wizards of Waverly Place" won two additional Emmys for Outstanding Children's Program in 2009 and 2012, as well as two Artios Awards from the Casting Society of America for Outstanding Achievement in CastingChildren's Series Programmingbetween 2009 and 2012. Its series finale was the most-watched final episode of any Disney Channel show.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Alex, Justin and Max Russo are three teenage wizards-in-training living in an apartment on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City. In his spare time, their father Jerry Russo, a former wizard, provides his children with daily lessons in their secret lair on how to use magic responsibly. Jerry and his wife Theresa run a family business, a sandwich shop designed to look like a subway station, on the ground level of their apartment building. According to the rules of the "Wizard World", once they complete their training, the Russo children will compete to determine which sibling will retain their powers permanently and become the sole wizard of the family. Since the other children will eventually lose their powers, Jerry tries to teach them not to become dependent on magic. Jerry descends from a family of wizards and won his own family's competition as a teenager, but relinquished his powers when he married Theresa, who is a mortal. His powers were transferred to his younger brother, Kelbo. Alex must keep her powers hidden from her best friend, Harper Finkle, which causes an occasional strain on their relationship. Alex reveals her secret to Harper in the second season; however, the existence of wizards must remain hidden to the wider mortal world.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: In the third season Harper moves in with the Russo family and Max's efforts to win the family wizard competition become more serious. Leading into the fourth and final season Alex and Justin are both tricked into exposing the existence of wizards to government officials and a group of reporters. It is revealed that the whole scenario was a test devised as part of their training, and consequently, Alex and Justin are demoted to lower positions in the family competition. Alex is overwhelmed by her loss of progress and quits; she later rejoins to continue dating her werewolf boyfriend, Mason Greyback. Meanwhile, Justin becomes a tutor for a group of delinquent wizards, which assists him in recovering his position in the competition. At the conclusion of the series, the siblings compete to see who will retain their supernatural abilities. Alex wins the family wizard competition and is awarded full magic powers, while Justin is allowed to retain his abilities when he assumes the role of headmaster at WizTech, a boarding school for young wizards-in-training. Max loses his powers but becomes the new manager of the family's sandwich shop, also securing investments from the wizard world.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: The series deals with the theme of secret identities. It explores the fantasy that children may experience of wanting magical powers, in the same way "Hannah Montana" explores the fantasy of being a pop star. Series such as "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and the "Harry Potter" franchise, and a trend towards the fantasy television genre, made stories about children with magical powers popular. Episodes of "Wizards of Waverly Place" typically show the Russo children using magic to solve an issue in their personal lives quickly, but they learn not to become dependent on their powers, as only one of the siblings is expected to retain them following the family competition. The children try to live normal lives; the show presents the idea that life can be enjoyable without magic. Conflicts in the series arise from Alex's struggle to balance both her private and her public life; her identity is built upon the magical powers which she must keep hidden. Scholar Colin Ackerman suggests that the concept of magic in the series is a form of social privilege and the Russo children are encouraged to keep their advantage hidden. He believed that the characters are influenced by consumer-driven values, for things which they are easily able to attain using magic.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: The program's stories center on family, friends and growing up. The Russo family is depicted as working class and they run a family business in the service industry. Jerry and Theresa teach their children the significance of family, hard work and responsibility; the characters regularly learn lessons such as the importance of staying true to one's self. Academic Heidi Denzel de Tirado argued that Alex understands the depth of family values only during the wizard competition, when she and Justin decide to set aside their personal success for the benefit of family. The series explores family heritage; the Russo family have a mixed backgroundItalian, Mexican and Americanbut their culture is not prominently featured in most episodes, with occasional exceptions such as Alex's quinceañera. Scholar Morgan Genevieve Blue said Alex is designed to be representative of Latina-American girlhood.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: In the early 2000s, The Walt Disney Company found success through its pay television network Disney Channel with a pattern of original comedy series for a tween and family audience, such as "Lizzie McGuire", "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" and "Hannah Montana". The network planned to build on these successes with a new comedy series aimed at girls. "Wizards of Waverly Place" was created by Todd J. Greenwald, who had previously worked on the first season of "Hannah Montana". He had also worked on a pilot for NBC; Disney hired him after seeing it. Greenwald adopted the network's idea of a show centering on a family of wizards. The series is set in a fictionalized version of Waverly Place in Greenwich Village. Peter Murrieta had worked previously on the sitcom "Hope & Faith" in New York City and had moved to Los Angeles before being approached by Disney to help develop the series. When Murrieta joined the project as an executive producer, it was titled "The Amazing O'Malleys"; he thought they would produce only a pilot. He had never produced a show targeted at a youth audience and was apprehensive about being involved. Murrieta helped guide the writing and casting throughout the development process and re-wrote the pilot. Adam Bonnett, a Disney Channel programming executive, cited the influence of sitcoms "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" on the series.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Disney executives first became aware of Selena Gomez at an open casting call in Texas at age twelve, and she went on to appear in guest roles on Disney Channel programs, including "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody". The network saw potential in Gomez and wanted her to star in a full series. She filmed two pilots for the network, "Arwin!" (a spin-off of "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody") and "Stevie Sanchez" (a spin-off of "Lizzie McGuire"); neither of these series were green-lit, but Gomez was ultimately cast in "Wizards of Waverly Place". The unaired pilot was set in a magic store and featured only two siblings, Jordan and Julia. The show was green-lit after this pilot. Gomez was attached to the series by February 2007, as well as David Henrie and Jake T. Austin; the characters were named Brooke, Sully and Max O'Malley at this stage. In March 2007 the network officially announced "Disney's Wizards" as an upcoming comedy to premiere in the fall. At the time of the announcement, the characters were named Alexa, Aaron and Max Esposito. Greenwald and Murrieta served as executive producers; Murrieta changed the family's surname to Russo and wrote the children as mixed-race. Gomez appeared in a guest role on "Hannah Montana" as cross-promotion for the new series; "Wizards" would eventually be aired in a timeslot after its peer series.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Selena Gomez portrays the central character of Alex Russo. Gomez had left traditional school after the seventh grade and moved to Los Angeles. She sings the series' theme song, "Everything Is Not What It Seems". Her band Selena Gomez & the Scene was signed by Disney to their label, Hollywood Records; Gomez subsequently pursued a prominent solo music career. Alex has been described as dark, crass and a jerk, as well as a "wisecracking underachiever". She is characterized by her tomboyish, rebellious and lazy attitude. Gomez asked for her character to remain edgy to resemble her own style. Jennifer Aniston's portrayal of Rachel Green on "Friends" inspired Gomez, who adopted similar mannerisms while playing Alex.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: David Henrie plays Justin Russo, who is considered to be sarcastic. Greenwald described Justin as a nerd, in comparison to Alex's "tough female character". Henrie wrote two episodes of the series, "Alex's Logo" and "Meet the Werewolves". Max Russo is portrayed by Jake T. Austin, who said the character was unintelligent, but becomes slightly smarter toward the end of the series. His character was temporarily transformed into a younger female in the fourth season because of a magic spell; Bailee Madison played the female counterpart, Maxine, while Austin took a hiatus from the program. Maria Canals-Barrera plays the children's mother Theresa Russo; David DeLuise plays their father Jerry Russo. The parents are described by Barry Garron of "The Hollywood Reporter" as loving but "slightly goofy". DeLuise was not featured in the unaired pilot. Jennifer Stone portrays Alex's best friend, Harper, who was described as "comic relief" by "Boston.com"s Joanna Weiss. Stone had previously auditioned for a Disney Channel pilot called "Bus Life", which was not picked up. Guest stars during the course of the series include Bridgit Mendler as Juliet van Heusen, Justin's vampire girlfriend, and Gregg Sulkin as Mason Greyback, Alex's werewolf boyfriend.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: "Wizards of Waverly Place" was filmed at Hollywood Center Studios. The series was renewed for a third season in May 2009, with eight episodes added to the order in September.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Murrieta chose to write the Russo family as mixed-race, and he felt that the argumentative relationships between the Russo siblings resembled those of his childhood. Greenwald believed that the brother–sister dynamic was at the heart of the show.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: The series was renewed for a fourth season in June 2010; Murrieta left the program in April prior to the renewal. Vince Cheung and Ben Montanio became the new showrunners and executive producers alongside Greenwald; Gomez announced in July that it would be the final season of the program. Austin claimed the series ended to allow Gomez to pursue more mature roles; "The A.V. Club"s Marah Eakin speculated that Gomez had become more popular than the show itself and it was time for her to move on. The series finale aired on January6, 2012; the episode depicts the family's wizard competition.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: "Wizards of Waverly Place" has received positive reviews for its actors and their comedic skills. Marah Eakin felt that it was a positive departure from Disney's typical series, with minimal slapstick humor but still having exaggerated acting. Gomez was praised for her comic timing and sarcastic delivery; the "Los Angeles Times"s Mary McNamara described her portrayal of Alex as "sweet and sassy". Additionally, McNamara believed that Justin and Max did not serve as comic relief; Jake T. Austin was called "absurdly hilarious" by blogger Mark Robinson. The central characters were described as "cute, precocious, but far from angelic" by Garron, who said child viewers would want to watch more. In addition to the cast and humor, the series' concept and themes were also praised. Critics suggested that the series capitalized on the success of the "Harry Potter" franchise, and it was also compared to "Bewitched" for the similarities in their magical elements. It was listed as one of Disney's best sitcoms by Robinson, who wrote that the series combined fantasy and comedy "seamlessly". While the fourth season was on air, Eakin said the quality of the series had not diminished, and has a lot of heart, depth and "actual feeling". McNamara praised the show for not relying on shtick or its laugh track.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Some characters were criticized by reviewers; Paul Asay of Christian website "Plugged In" did not view Alex as a positive role model because of her rebellious nature, and the parents were described as foolish by Weiss. Ackerman found fault with the show's contradictory messages, saying there are never consequences for the Russo children abusing their magical powers; he felt that the characters seem to forget the lessons they learn and continue to make the same mistakes. The lessons Jerry teaches about how to live life without magic were interpreted as pointless, as when the series ends, both Alex and Justin retain their abilities. The setting of Greenwich Village was also problematic for Ackerman, as he suggested that the Russos, a working-class family, would not be financially able to live in one of the most expensive New York neighborhoods. The show has been criticized for its predictable premise and supernatural elements, described as "less magical than milquetoast" by Weiss. Reviewing the series finale, Eakin criticized the quality of the wizards' robe costuming and the use of a laugh track. Critics have found fault with the program's special effects, such as the computer animation of a griffin. Asay referred to the program's depiction of angels as "spiritually misleading".


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: "Wizards of Waverly Place" premiered on October12, 2007, on the same night as the network's premiere of "Twitches Too", and attracted 5.9million viewers. The one-hour series finale, "Who Will Be the Family Wizard?", aired on January6, 2012, and became the show's most-watched episode, with an audience of 9.8million. It was the finale with the highest rating for any Disney Channel series.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Disney Channel asked the series executive team, including Murrieta and Greenwald, to adapt the series into a made-for-television film. "" aired on the network on August28, 2009, and starred Gomez, Henrie, Austin, Stone, Canals-Barrera and DeLuise. It was filmed on location in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and depicts the Russo family on a Caribbean vacation. In the film, which was written by Dan Berendsen, Alex unintentionally performs a magic spell which alters history so that her parents have never met. The broadcast had 11.4million viewers, and won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2010 for Outstanding Children's Program. A second television film was ordered in June 2010, scheduled to enter production in 2011. In 2012, however, Austin said it had been canceled because of the maturing careers of the cast. Berendsen was to write the screenplay.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: It was reported in September 2012 that an hour-long television special, "", would be produced for the network, with Gomez in an executive producer role alongside Cheung, Dan Cross and David Hoge. Gomez, Austin, Stone, Canals-Barrera, DeLuise and Sulkin returned for the special which began filming in October in Los Angeles. The special depicts the Russo family traveling to Tuscany, Italy, to meet with relatives, before Alex accidentally casts a spell which creates a good and evil version of herself. Cheung, Montanio and Berendsen wrote the screenplay, and Victor Gonzalez directed. The special premiered on March15, 2013, watched by 5.9million viewers.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: A Malaysian adaptation of the series, "Wizards of Warna Walk", was produced for Disney Channel in Southeast Asia in 2019. The series ran for 14episodes and was filmed at Pinewood Studios in Johor, over two months. Set in Kuala Lumpur, the adaptation was designed to use local actors, music compositions, the Malaysian language and Asian values. Network executives considered adapting other series such as "Hannah Montana", but ultimately found that "Wizards" resonated the best with test audiences. "Wizards of Warna Walk" was broadcast in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: Walt Disney Records released a soundtrack album for the series on August4, 2009, including songs from, and inspired by, the series and film. Disney Interactive Studios released two video games based on the series for the Nintendo DS: "Wizards of Waverly Place" in August 2009, and "" in November 2010.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: The possibility of a reunion series has been mentioned by several main cast members since 2017. In August 2020, Henrie commented that all key actors were open to producing a revival of the series. He clarified that formal discussions with Disney had not yet occurred.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: In October 2017, Greenwald said he would like to see "Wizards of Waverly Place" continue with a high-budget feature film in the vein of "Harry Potter". He also shared an idea for a prequel series which would follow Jerry as he attended WizTech in his high school years, and would feature his siblings. Henrie suggested that the revival could revolve around a disconnected Russo family, several years later, who are all finding success separately but must learn to come together again.


title: Wizards of Waverly Place

text: It was teased in December 2022 that DeLuise and Stone would begin hosting a podcast entitled "Wizards of Waverly Pod".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: Kirsty Anna MacColl (10 October 1959 – 18 December 2000) was a British singer and songwriter, daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl. She recorded several pop hits in the 1980s and 1990s, including "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis" and cover versions of Billy Bragg's "A New England" and The Kinks' "Days." Her song "They Don't Know" was covered with great success by Tracey Ullman. MacColl also sang on recordings produced by her then-husband Steve Lillywhite, most notably "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues. Her death in 2000 has led to the Justice for Kirsty campaign.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: Kirsty MacColl was the daughter of folk singer Ewan MacColl (1915–1989) and dancer Jean Newlove (1923–2017). Her father was born in England of Scottish parents. MacColl and her older brother, Hamish MacColl, grew up with their mother in Croydon, where she attended Park Hill Primary School, Monks Hill High School and John Newnham High School, making appearances in school plays. At the time of her birth, her father had been in a relationship with folk singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Peggy Seeger since 1956 (a relationship that would continue until his death in 1989), and already had a son with her.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: She came to notice when Chiswick Records released an EP by local punk rock band the Drug Addix (originally called Tooting Fruities) with MacColl on backing vocals ("The Drug Addix Make A Record") under the pseudonym Mandy Doubt (1978). Stiff Records executives were not impressed with the band, but liked her and subsequently signed her to a solo deal.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: Her debut solo single "They Don't Know", released in 1979, peaked at number two on the Music Week airplay chart. However, a distributors' strike prevented copies of the single getting into record stores, and the single consequently failed to appear on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl recorded a follow-up single, "You Caught Me Out", but felt she lacked Stiff Records's full backing, and left the label shortly before the song was to be released. The single was pulled, and only a few "white label" promo copies of the single are known to exist.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl moved to Polydor Records in 1981. She had a number 14 UK hit with "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis", from her critically acclaimed debut album "Desperate Character". In 1983, Polydor dropped her just as she had completed recording the songs for a planned second album (to be called "Real") which used more synthesizers and had new wave-styled tracks. She returned to Stiff, where pop singles such as "Terry" and "He's on the Beach" were unsuccessful, but a cover of Billy Bragg's "A New England" in 1985 reached number 7 on the UK charts. This included two extra verses specially written for her by Bragg. Also around this time, MacColl wrote and performed the theme song "London Girls" for Channel 4's short-lived sitcom "Dream Stuffing" (1984).


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: In the United States, MacColl was most likely recognisable as the writer of "They Don't Know", when Tracey Ullman turned it into a "Billboard" Top Ten hit. Ullman's version reached No. 8 on the US Hot 100 in April 1984 (and did even better in the UK, hitting No. 2 in September 1983). MacColl also sang back-up on the track, providing the "Baay-byy" because it was too high a pitch for Ullman. It was played over the closing credits of Ullman's HBO show "Tracey Takes On"... in 1996. Ullman also recorded three more of MacColl's songs, "You Broke My Heart In 17 Places" and "You Caught Me Out", as the title tracks of her first and second albums respectively, and "Terry" which was released as a single in 1985.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: In 1986, she contributed backing vocals for the Smiths song "Ask". Kirsty contributed backing vocals to the Simple Minds 1984 album, "Sparkle in the Rain". Her vocals can be heard on the tracks "Speed Your Love to Me" and "Street Hassle".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: When Stiff Records went bankrupt in 1986, MacColl was left unable to record in her own right, as no record company bought her contract from the official receiver. However, she had regular session work as a backing vocalist, and she frequently sang on records produced or engineered by her husband, Steve Lillywhite, including tracks for Robert Plant, the Smiths, Alison Moyet, Shriekback, Simple Minds, Talking Heads, Big Country, Anni-Frid Lyngstad (of ABBA) and the Wonder Stuff, among others. She appeared in the videos "Welcome to the Cheap Seats" for the Wonder Stuff and "(Nothing But) Flowers" for Talking Heads (along with Johnny Marr, ex-member of the Smiths). MacColl also set the track sequencing for U2's acclaimed breakthrough album "The Joshua Tree", for which Lillywhite provided mixes.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl re-emerged in the British charts in December 1987, reaching number 2 with the Pogues on "Fairytale of New York", singing a duet with Shane MacGowan. This led to her accompanying the Pogues on their British and European tour in 1988, an experience which she said helped her temporarily overcome her stage fright. In March 1989, MacColl sang backing vocals on the Happy Mondays' "Hallelujah" EP.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: After the contract issue was resolved, MacColl returned to recording as a solo artist and received critical acclaim upon the release of "Kite" (LP) in 1989. The album was widely praised by critics, and featured collaborations with David Gilmour and Johnny Marr. MacColl's lyrics addressed life in Margaret Thatcher's Britain and addressed the vagaries of love in "Don't Come the Cowboy with Me Sonny Jim!". Although "Kite" contained many original compositions, MacColl's biggest chart success from the album was the cover of the Kinks' song "Days", which gave her a UK top 20 hit in July 1989. A bonus track on the CD version of "Kite" was a cover of the Smiths song "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: During this time, MacColl featured on the British TV sketch comedy "French and Saunders", appearing as herself, singing songs including "15 Minutes" and "Don't Come the Cowboy with Me Sonny Jim!" (from "Kite"), "Still Life" (the B-side of the "Days" single), "Girls on Bikes" (a reworking of B-side "Am I Right?") and, with comedy duo Raw Sex, the Frank and Nancy Sinatra hit "Somethin' Stupid". She continued to write and record, releasing the album "Electric Landlady" in 1991. The album's title was coined by Johnny Marr as a play on the Jimi Hendrix album title "Electric Ladyland". It included her most successful chart hit in North America, "Walking Down Madison", co-written with Marr and a top 30 hit in the UK. Despite the song's U.S. chart success, "Landlady" was not a hit for Virgin Records and in 1992, when Virgin was sold to EMI, MacColl was dropped from the label.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl released "Titanic Days", informed by her failing marriage with Lillywhite, in 1993, but ZTT Records had agreed only to release the album as a "one-off" and declined to sign her to a contract. In 1995, she released two new singles on Virgin, "Caroline" and a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (a duet with Evan Dando), together with the "best of" compilation "Galore".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: "Galore" became MacColl's only album to reach the top 10 in the UK Albums Chart, but neither of the new singles, nor a re-released "Days", made the Top 40. MacColl did not record again for several years; her frustration with the music business was exacerbated by a lengthy case of writer's block. MacColl herself admitted that she was ready to give up her music career and become an English teacher in South America.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: In 1998, the album "What Do Pretty Girls Do?" was released, containing BBC Radio 1 live sessions (featuring Billy Bragg on two songs) that were broadcast between 1989 and 1995.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: After several trips to Cuba and Brazil, MacColl recorded the world music-inspired (particularly Cuban and other Latin American forms) "Tropical Brainstorm", which was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. It included the song "In These Shoes?", which garnered airplay in the U.S., was covered by Bette Midler and featured in the HBO show "Sex and the City". After MacColl's death it was adopted by Catherine Tate as the theme tune for her BBC TV show and featured on the soundtrack to film "Kinky Boots".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: However, despite the relative success of "Tropical Brainstorm", MacColl had been dropped by V2 Records prior to her death.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl featured regularly in the third series of the "French and Saunders Show", a comedy show on the BBC. Unlike other guests on the show, she was not part of any of the sketches but sang her songs whilst performing as in a music video. She also made regular appearances on Jools Holland's TV shows, also on the BBC, singing during the 1995 "Hootenanny" a rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets" with the Pipes and Drums of the Irish Guards.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl appeared in the 1991 Channel 4 historic musical fantasy "The Ghosts of Oxford Street" as Kitty Fisher, performing "Fairytale of New York" opposite Shane MacGowan as the Duke of York.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: In 2000, following her participation in the presentation of a radio programme for the BBC in Cuba, MacColl took a holiday in Cozumel, Mexico, with her sons and her boyfriend, musician James Knight. On 18th December, 2000, she and her sons went diving at the Chankanaab reef, part of the National Marine Park of Cozumel, in a designated diving area that watercraft were restricted from entering. With the group was a local veteran divemaster, Iván Díaz. As the group was surfacing from a dive, a powerboat moving at high speed entered the restricted area. MacColl saw the powerboat coming before her sons did. Louis, age 13 at the time, was not in its path, but Jamie, age 15, was. She was able to push him out of the way (he sustained minor head and rib injuries), but she was struck by the powerboat that ran over her. MacColl suffered severe chest and head injuries and died instantly. MacColl's body was repatriated to the United Kingdom and was cremated after a humanist funeral at Mortlake Crematorium in Kew.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: The powerboat involved in the collision was controlled by Guillermo González Nova, multimillionaire president of the Comercial Mexicana supermarket chain, who was on board with members of his family. The boat was owned by Carlos González Nova, brother and founder of the chain. One employee of Guillermo González Nova, boathand José Cen Yam, stated that he was in control of the boat at the time of the incident. Eyewitnesses said that Cen Yam was not at the controls and that the boat was travelling much faster than the speed of one knot that González Nova said.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide and was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison. He was allowed under Mexican law to pay a punitive fine of 1,034 pesos (about €63, £61 or US$90) in lieu of the prison sentence. He was also ordered to pay approximately US$2,150 in restitution to MacColl's family, an amount based on his wages. People who said they spoke to Cen Yam after the killing said he received money for taking the blame.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: MacColl's family launched the Justice for Kirsty campaign in response to the events surrounding her death. Among the group's efforts:


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: On 20 August 2009, Carlos González Nova, brother of Guillermo González Nova, died at 92, from natural causes. In December of the same year, a statement was issued by the Justice for Kirsty Campaign Committee announcing that the campaign was being terminated since it "was successful in achieving most of its aims" and "it is unlikely that any more could be achieved". The campaign's remaining funds were to be divided between two charities, Casa Alianza México and Cuba Music Solidarity, a gesture of which, the statement read, "Kirsty would have approved".


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: Since MacColl's death, Billy Bragg has always included her extra verses when performing "A New England". She was honoured in 2002 with a memorial concert in London at the Royal Festival Hall, featuring a number of musicians who had worked with her or been influenced by her. A similar memorial concert took place on her birthday (10 October 2010) at the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, to support her favourite charity, The Music Fund for Cuba.


title: Kirsty MacColl

text: In 2001, a bench was placed by the southern entrance to London's Soho Square as a memorial to her, after a lyric from one of her most poignant songs: "One day I'll be waiting there / No empty bench in Soho Square". Every year on the Sunday nearest to MacColl's birthday, 10 October, fans from all over the world hold a gathering at the bench to pay tribute to her and sing her songs.