It’ll take more than a spoonful of sugar for the “discriminatory language” of 1964’s “Mary Poppins” to be overlooked by the UK’s movie-rating system.

The classic film, which stars Julie Andrews as the titular nanny, has officially been reclassified from a “U” (universal) rating to “PG” (parental guidance) by the British Board of Film Classification. BBC first reported the rating switch.

The reason for the stricter rating more than 50 years later? The Oscar-winning musical includes a “derogatory term originally used by white Europeans about nomadic peoples in southern Africa” in reference to “soot-faced chimney-sweeps,” per the BBC. The term, which historically referenced the the Khoikhoi and San people, is used twice by Admiral Boom (Reginald Owen). Usage of the word is considered offensive today.

Due to its inclusion, the BBFC noted the film “exceeds our guidelines” for a U rating.

“Most recently, the film was resubmitted to us in February 2024 for another theatrical re-release, and we reclassified it PG for discriminatory language,” a BBFC spokesperson told the BBC. “While ‘Mary Poppins‘ has a historical context, the use of discriminatory language is not condemned, and ultimately exceeds our guidelines for acceptable language at U. We therefore classified the film PG for discriminatory language.”

The reasoning included the “potential to expose children to discriminatory language or behavior which they may find distressing or repeat without realizing the potential offense”.

The BBFC originally classified the film in 1964 as U. It revisited — and reinstated — the rating in 2013 for a re-release. A U rating states that a film is suitable for children four years and over; PG is for kids eight and older.

The original “Mary Poppins” is rated G by the MPA (Motion Picture Association, fka MPAA) in the U.S. Its long-awaited sequel in 2018 is rated PG. The MPA cannot change its rating of a movie unless the owner or studio behind a movie, in this case Disney, asks the MPA to re-rate the movie. That’s because the MPA is a voluntary system and has a relationship and trust with the studios on the self-evaluation of its movies. The BBFC on the other hand is affiliated with the government and has more autonomy.

Disney did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would request a rating change from the MPA for “Mary Poppins.”

Emily Blunt is the present-day Mary Poppins. Lin-Manuel Miranda played Bert the chimney sweep, originally portrayed by Dick Van Dyke in the 1964 film.

The original “Mary Poppins” isn’t the only film being scrutinized by the UK ratings system: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-nominated “Poor Things” was recut to land a certified 18 rating by the BBFC. The modified scene included a brothel sequence in which Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) teaches two young boys how to have sex as they watch her and their father consummate.

When the MPA gives a rating, a filmmaker can either accept that rating or appeal the ruling, or they can re-edit the film to attempt for a different rating. The MPA deals with roughly 1-3 appeals each year.

Additional reporting by Brian Welk

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SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk may want to send “tweet” back to the birds, but the ubiquitous term for posting on the site he now calls X is here to stay — at least for now.

For one, the word is still plastered all over the site formerly known as Twitter. Write a post, you still need to press a blue button that says “tweet” to publish it. To repost it, you still tap “retweet.”

With “tweets,” Twitter accomplished in just a few years something few companies have done in a lifetime: It became a verb and implanted itself into the lexicon of America and the world. Upending that takes more than a top-down declaration, even if it is from the owner of Twitter-turned-X, who also happens to be one of the world’s richest men.

A worker removes a character from a sign on the Twitter headquarters building July 24 in San Francisco.

Godofredo A. Vásquez, Associated Press

“Language has always come from the people that use it on a day-to-day basis. And it can’t be controlled, it can’t be created, it can’t be morphed. You don’t get to decide it,” said Nick Bilton, the author of “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal” about Twitter’s origins.

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Twitter didn’t start out as Twitter. It was “twttr” — without vowels, which was the trend in 2006 when the platform launched and SMS texting was wildly popular. The iPhone only came out in 2007.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams “went one day and purchased the vowels, two vowels for essentially $7,500 each,” when he bought the URL for twitter.com from a bird enthusiast, Bilton said.

At the beginning, people didn’t “tweet” — it was “I’m going to twitter this,” Bilton recalled. But “twittered” doesn’t roll off the tongue and “tweet” soon took over, first in the Twitter office, then San Francisco, then everywhere.

We’ve been tweeting for well over a decade. World leaders, celebrities and athletes, dissidents in repressive regimes, propaganda trolls, sex workers and religious icons, meme queens and actual queens. Former President Donald Trump’s incendiary use of the bird app quickly punted “tweet” into near-constant headlines during his presidency. People who never signed up for Twitter knew what the word meant.

For now, we still tweet, retweet and quote tweet, and sometimes — perhaps not often enough — delete tweets. News sites embed tweets in their stories and TV programs scroll them. No other social network has a word for posting that’s entered the vernacular like “tweet” — though Google did the same for “googling.”

An index card shows the entry “tweet” Aug. 24, 2011, at Merriam-Webster headquarters in Springfield, Mass.  

Charles Krupa, Associated Press

The Oxford English Dictionary added “tweet” in 2011. Merriam-Webster followed in 2013. The Associated Press Stylebook entered it in 2010.

“Getting into the dictionary is an indication that people are already using it,” said Jack Lynch, a Rutgers University English professor who studies the history of language.  

As Twitter grew into a global communications platform and struggled with misinformation, trolls and hate speech, its friendly brand image remained. The blue bird icon evokes a smile, like the Amazon up-turned-arrow smile — in contrast to the X that Musk has imposed.

Martin Grasser was two years out of art school when Twitter hired him for the logo redesign in 2011. His wasn’t the first bird logo for Twitter, but it would be the most enduring.

“They knew they wanted a bird. So we weren’t starting completely over, but they wanted it to be on par with Apple and Nike. That was really the brief,” he said.

Twitter launched Grasser’s design in May 2012; the company went public on Wall Street later that year.

It was Noah Glass, another co-founder who never quite got the credit he deserved for his role in hatching Twitter, who had the winning idea.

Elon Musk’s Twitter page on July 24 shows the new X logo that he introduced a day before.  

HONS

Glass, Bilton said, “had been thinking about, like, heartbeats and emotions. He was going through a divorce and he literally went through the dictionary word by word until he came across the word twitter. And he just knew instantly that was it.”

“He was one of the four founders who had the emotional intelligence to be able to understand that this was about connecting with humans,” Bilton said. “It was inviting, it was emotional. It was about connecting with humans and your friends and your loved ones.”

Musk began his quest erasing Twitter’s corporate culture and image in favor of his own vision as soon as he took over the company in October 2022. He lost three-quarters of the company’s staff through firings, layoffs and voluntary departures, auctioned off furniture and décor, and upended policies on hate speech and misinformation. The rebranding to X was no surprise.

Twitter’s rebranding is rooted in ambition that Musk began to pursue nearly a quarter century ago after he sold his first startup, Zip2, to Compaq Computer. He set out to create a one-stop digital shop for finance called X.com — an “everything” service that would provide bank accounts, process payments, make loans and handle investments.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors Inc., introduces the Model X car Sept. 29, 2015, at the company’s headquarters in Fremont, Calif.  

Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press

He has not given up on the dream. Twitter is now X, falling in line with Musk’s other X-named brands, SpaceX and Tesla’s Model X. Not to mention his young son, whom he calls “X.”

His goal for X is to turn it into an “everything” app — for video, photos, messaging, payments and other services, although he has given few details. For now, X.com is still, essentially Twitter.com, even as the blue bird and other playful tidbits start to disappear.

“There used to be a saying inside Twitter that Twitter was the company that couldn’t kill itself. I think that still rings true, whether it’s called Twitter or X,” Bilton said.

“I think that it’s kind of become a fabric of society. And even Elon Musk may not be able to break it.”

Elon Musk and Twitter: A timeline

January 31: Musk begins building up his Twitter stake

Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

March 14: Musk’s Twitter stake tops 5%

Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

March 24: Asking whether Twitter should change

The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

Christian Marquardt/Getty Images

March 26: Musk reaches out to Jack Dorsey

Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

AP Photo/Richard Drew, File

April 3: Twitter leadership meets to discuss Musk

Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File

April 4: Surprise! Musk becomes Twitter’s largest shareholder

Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File

April 5: Musk agrees to join the board

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File

April 10: Just kidding. Musk ditches the board

Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company — and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File

April 14: Musk offers to buy Twitter and ‘unlock’ its potential

Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

AP Photo/Eric Risberg

April 15: The poison pill

Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn

April 21: Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing

Musk lines up $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

AP Photo/Richard Drew

April 25: Twitter agrees to sell itself to Elon Musk

Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File

April 29: Musk cashes out billions in Tesla stock

Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

May 4: With a little help from his billionaire friends

Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

AP Photo/Paul Sakuma

May 10: Musk says he would reinstate Trump’s account

Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

Alex Brandon/AP

May 6: Musk’s lofty goals for Twitter, revealed

Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

AP Photo/John Raoux, File

May 12: A partial hiring freeze and executive departures

Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

AP Photo/Gregory Bull

May 13: Twitter deal ‘temporarily on hold’

Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate <5% fake/spam/duplicate.”

AP Photo/Gregory Bull

May 14: Oops. NDA problems?

Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

Hannibal Hanschke/Pool Photo via AP, File

May 16: Poop emoji

The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

AP Photo/Eric Risberg

May 17: Musk says Twitter deal ‘cannot move forward.’ Twitter disagrees

Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

AP Photo/Martin Meissner

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk may want to send “tweet” back to the birds, but the ubiquitous term for posting on the site he now calls X is here to stay — at least for now.

For one, the word is still plastered all over the site formerly known as Twitter. Write a post, you still need to press a blue button that says “tweet” to publish it. To repost it, you still tap “retweet.”

But it’s more than that.

With “tweets,” Upending that takes more than a top-down declaration, even if it is from the owner of Twitter-turned-X, who also happens to be one of the world’s richest men.

“Language has always come from the people that use it on a day-to-day basis. And it can’t be controlled, it can’t created, it can’t be morphed. You don’t get to decide it,” said Nick Bilton, the author of “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal” about Twitter’s origins.

Twitter didn’t start out as Twitter. It was “twttr” — without vowels, which was the trend in 2006 when the platform launched and SMS texting was wildly popular. The iPhone only came out in 2007.

Twitter co-founder Evan Williams “went one day and purchased the vowels, two vowels for essentially $7,500 each,” when he bought the URL for twitter.com from a bird enthusiast, Bilton said.

At the beginning, people didn’t “tweet” — it was “I’m going to twitter this,” Bilton recalled. But “twittered” doesn’t roll off the tongue and “tweet” soon took over, first in the Twitter office, then San Francisco, then everywhere.

We’ve been propaganda trolls, sex workers and religious icons, meme queens and actual queens. Former president Donald Trump’s incendiary use of the bird app quickly punted “tweet” into near-constant headlines during his presidency. People who never signed up for Twitter knew what the word meant.

For now, we still tweet, retweet and quote tweet, and sometimes — perhaps not often enough — delete tweets. News sites embed tweets in their stories and TV programs scroll them. No other social network has a word for posting that’s entered the vernacular like “tweet” — though Google did the same for “googling.”

The Oxford English Dictionary added “tweet” in 2011. Merriam-Webster followed in 2013. The Associated Press Stylebook entered it in 2010.

“Getting into the dictionary is an indication that people are already using it,” said Jack Lynch, a Rutgers University English professor who studies the history of language. “Dictionaries are usually pretty tentative or cautious about letting new words in, especially for new phenomena, because they don’t want things to be just a flash in the pan.”

As Twitter grew into a global communications platform and struggled with misinformation, trolls and hate speech, its friendly brand image remained. The blue bird icon evokes a smile, like the Amazon up-turned-arrow smile — in contrast to the X that Musk has imposed.

Martin Grasser was two years out of art school when Twitter hired him for the logo redesign in 2011. His wasn’t the first bird logo for Twitter, but it would be the most enduring.

“They knew they wanted a bird. So we weren’t starting completely over, but they wanted it to be on par with Apple and Nike. That was really the brief,” he said.

Twitter launched Grasser’s design in May 2012; the company went public on Wall Street later that year.

One early in-house design shown to Grasser looked like “a flying goose with a tail. It looked kind of like a dragon. It was crazy,” he said. Jack Dorsey, another co-founder (and twice-CEO) wanted something simpler.

The bird represented a vision of Twitter as a friendly place “where everyone can weigh in and chat,” Grasser said.

“The round form evokes a sense of optimism, the bird even being sort of turned upward, as corny as that sounds, I think is different than a bird flying down or flat,” he said. “We wanted to give it this idea of like soaring.″

The word “Twitter” itself is playful, as is “tweet.” This was no accident, Bilton said.

Other names that floated as the platform started out included “Status” and “Friend Stalker.”

It was Noah Glass, another co-founder who never quite got the credit he deserved for his role in hatching Twitter, who had the winning idea.

Glass, Bilton said, “had been thinking about like heartbeats and emotions. He was going through a divorce and he literally went through the dictionary word by word until he came across the word twitter. And he just knew instantly that was it.”

“He was one of the four founders who had the emotional intelligence to be able to understand that this was about connecting with humans,” Bilton said. “It was inviting, it was emotional. It was about connecting with humans and your friends and your loved ones.”

Musk began his quest erasing Twitter’s corporate culture and image in favor of his own vision as soon as he took over the company in October 2022. He lost three-quarters of the company’s staff through firings, layoffs and voluntary departures, auctioned off furniture and décor, and upended policies on hate speech and misinformation. The rebranding to X was no surprise.

Twitter’s rebranding is rooted in ambition that Musk began to pursue nearly a quarter century ago after he sold his first startup, Zip2, to Compaq Computer. He set out to create a one-stop digital shop for finance called X.com — an “everything” service that would provide bank accounts, process payments, make loans and handle investments.

He has not given up on the dream. Twitter is now X, falling in line with Musk’s other X-named brands, SpaceX and Tesla’s Model X. Not to mention his young son, whom he calls “X.”

His goal for X is to turn it into an “everything” app — for video, photos, messaging, payments and other services, although he has given few details. For now, X.com is still, essentially Twitter.com, even as the blue bird and other playful tidbits start to disappear.

“There used to be a saying inside Twitter that Twitter was the company that couldn’t kill itself. I think that still rings true, whether it’s called Twitter or X,” Bilton said.

“I think that it’s kind of become a fabric of society. And even Elon Musk may not be able to break it.”

—

AP Technology Writers Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, and Michael Liedtke contributed to this story.

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“What if I have nothing to say?” she asked when she agreed to an interview after many years. I promised her that wouldn’t happen, but she was really concerned since Laura Nyro hadn’t spoken to the press or really participated in the machinery of the music industry in more than a decade. Like many of our greatest artists, burned by a company that often throws icons in the trash, she has been reluctant to have conversations that might include, “Where have you been all these years?”

But since she had been an American treasure for a long time, one of the most soulful and unique singer-songwriters of all time, the focus was on her songs, on the beauty of the melodies, the unlinked individuality of the structures, the lush chord changes, her unique abbreviation of soul -Texts. She had nothing to worry about.

We talked for three hours, after which she said, “That was great. Can we do it again tomorrow “And we did.

She wrote a variety of wonder songs in her short life. “And When I Die”, “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “Save the Country”, “Stoney End”, “Blowing Away”, “Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp”, “Eli’s Coming” and so many more than that, everything poured out of her heart like honey.

“You are dealing with the language of love.”

Although she didn’t die until she was 49, she did a lot at first. And it started with greatness. With the exception of the extraordinary John Prine, who wrote many of his masterpieces prior to his first album, most songwriters spend years in the trenches before writing something great.

But her first song – written when she was only 17 – wasn’t just great in terms of the sophistication of the craft. It also had text that contained real wisdom. Which usually takes many years to acquire.

And when I die
And when I’m gone
A child is born
And a world to go on
Keep going

From “And when I die”
From Laura Nyro

Laura Nyro, “And if I die”

“Nothing heals as well as time and love.”
Phoebe Snow, “Time and Love”

From then on she composed a number of masterpieces. Despite being a white Jewish girl, her songs were so soulful and full of real joy that many of them became hits as recorded by black artists and groups, including The Fifth Dimension who recorded five of their songs, all of which were hits were: “Blowing Away”, “Wedding Bell Blues”, “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “Sweet Blindness” and “Save the Country”.

“Can you surrey? Can you picnic ”
The fifth dimension, “Stoned Soul Picnic” by Laura Nyro

Her music has also been recorded by artists of all genres, from Peter, Paul & Mary and Blood, Sweat & Tears (both cut “And When I Die”) to Barbra Streisand (“Save the Country”) and Three Dog Night (” Eli is coming “). Their music profoundly shaped the sound and spirit of the 1960s. Later there were other great covers, especially Phoebe Snow’s “Time and Love” which is timelessly funky.

For Laura lovers who are fanatical in their devotion, all covers are meaningless. To her, it was Laura’s own recordings, some of the most intimate soul recordings ever made, like New York Tendaberry, which paved the way for blue soul landscapes for subsequent heart-to-heart masterpieces by Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones and others.

“When you have a vision of peace, it is strange to live in a world of war. When you’re a woman who values ​​your roots, it’s strange to be in a male-dominated business. ”

Born October 18, 1947 in the Bronx, Laura Nigro was surrounded by art and jazz as a child and said she was “already deeply into music” as a teenager when she absorbed the compositional brilliance of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Unlike most musicians who are introduced to music by learning its limits, their first lesson was that music has no limits, and this understanding has forever shaped their art.

“I’m not interested in conventional restrictions,” she said. “As an artist, I can do anything, say anything. It’s about self-expression. It doesn’t know a package. “As she memorably wrote in” And when I die “:” Give me my freedom … All I ask of life is not to have chains on me. “

A year after she wrote her first songs, she was on stage at Hungry I in San Francisco when Clive Davis heard her and asked her to audition for Columbia (which she did in his hotel room with all the lights on but a television). and won him.

He signed her and she made a name for herself, recording a number of landmark albums and having her songs covered by almost all of the great singers of the time, from the above to Aretha Franklin, Cass Elliot, Frank Sinatra, Carmen McRae, Chet Atkins and many other others.

Unlike many songwriters who complain that the process of songwriting is excruciating, she loved him.

“All I know,” she said, “is when I start getting serious about songwriting … it’s like a playground.” All responsibilities elude and you are with your essence. There can be joy and self-discovery there. You can dance there … I consider it my serious playground. “

She is famous for writing songs of extreme extremes, from the deepest melancholy to sheer exultant joy. Like Carole King and Joni Mitchell, she knew all the rules of songwriting and why they should be broken.

But the rules dictated by the industry were never easy to follow, and like most artists, she felt lost in the corporate structure of the music business.

Three dog nights, “Eli’s Coming” by Laura Nyro

“When you have a vision of peace,” she said, “it is strange to live in a world of war. When you’re a woman who values ​​your roots, it’s strange to be in a male-dominated business. “

When asked how she managed to overcome these mismatches, she said by connecting with the joy of music.

“You get beyond suffering. And you focus on the sweetness of your vision. “

She said that singing – whether her own songs or songs she loved – connected her to the source.

“There is a certain feeling when I go out to sing that happens to everyone. It’s a healing thing. Some of the old songs remind us of the sweet, innocent child in us. You are dealing with the language of love. “

“Children of the Junks”
From Laura Nyro

Flowers in the sun
Luminous
To the children of the world
The night is coming
Sleep for me
It’s nothing, just moon-hewn garbage
On the sea
Kowloon
All junk sleep
Spin flowers in the shade
All junk sleep
But street cats and renegades

Laura Nyro, “Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp”

Above by a Chinese lamp
From Laura Nyro

Market on the cool white morning
Traders sell while women buy
Milk, tobacco, soap and matches
Mop the floor
While the dishes are drying
Spring whispered in her ear
Like gentle Mediterranean wailing
Sleepy woman at the window
Dream in the morning air
From the one who takes her sweetness
With a Chinese lamp above

The steam of the porcelain tea
You could hear the woman singing
In the soft flames of spring
Spring has swept the scarlet back streets
Stroke the winds, undress, invite
Above by a porcelain lamp
They talk quietly in the cool spring night

Barbra Streisand, “Stoney End”, written by Laura Nyro

The Roches, “Wedding Bell Blues”

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