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| Music in the News
Thursday 14 March 2002
Vocabulary from the world of music. Listen to and read the story then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Amateur singer scores a global hit
Summary: A song posted on an internet site as a joke is about to be released as a single, after topping an internet chart across the world. It took its author, Fintan O'Rourke, less than four weeks to go from an unknown to a chart topper.
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| | The News 
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| | | Fintan O'Rourke, the 35-year-old internet designer from Northumbria in England, has been writing songs since he was a kid. But, instead of badgering record companies, he simply kept them on his computer.
His brother stumbled across the songs while hunting for a file on the computer and, for a joke, he decided to upload the songs onto MP3 and post them onto the internet.
Unexpectedly, within less then four weeks Fintan O'Rourke beat off chart-topping acts like Alanis Morrisette and Craig David and went top of the charts on the MP3.com website with 'Always In My Heart'.
Mr O'Rourke told the BBC he was angry when he discovered what his brother and friends had done, but added that, 'in the end it backfired on them because the following week it went to number one in the UK then it was number one in Europe, and then it went to number one globally, which is just amazing.'
The song is now set to bereleased as a single, with all money raised going to charity.
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| | The Words | |
| | | badgering
if you badger someone, you repeatedly ask them something, or tell them to do something
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| | | stumbled across
here - found by accident
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| | | hunting for
here - looking for
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| | | MP3
a compressed version of a large computer file which makes it possible to send/download audio via the internet
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| | | beat off
did better than, defeated
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| | | went top of the charts
became a number one hit
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| | | backfired
if a plan backfires, it has the opposite result to the one that was intended
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| | | globally
across the world
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| | | to be released
to go on sale, to be made available in the shops
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| | Other stories
Retro English
Music Directory
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