Question must be answered based on the following song.

Available at: https://www.letras.mus.br/lady-gaga/die-with-a-smile-feat-bruno-mars/

Text 7A1-II

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken. 1916 (adapted).  

From: https://schulzmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1963-05-01_WEBscaled.jpg  

The mysterious death of Alexander the Great

    When Alexander the Great’s body seemingly remained unchanged for six days after his death in 323 BCE, his contemporaries could offer only one explanation. Alexander must have been a god. So… was he?

    Alexander the Great first fell ill during a days-long series of parties, during one of which he collapsed, complaining of a searing pain in his back. After 10 days of intense fever, Alexander’s soldiers were brought in to see him one final time. As reported by the historian Arrian, at that point the king “could no longer speak… but he struggled to raise his head and gave each man a greeting with his eyes.”

    When Alexander was declared dead on June 13, theories began forming. Had he been poisoned? Sabotaged? Had he been killed by drinking too much wine? Today we have an explanation for Alexander’s death and his period of bodily freshness that relies less on the supernatural and more on science. In 2018 Dr. Katherine Hall, a lecturer in New Zealand, proposed that Alexander the Great had Guillain-Barré syndrome, an acute autoimmune condition that results in muscle paralysis. In other words, Alexander may have been alive when he was declared dead—a mistake that could have been made when physicians mistook the shallow breathing of a coma patient for no breathing at all. If this was the case, Alexander may have been effectively murdered during embalming—a process that would have seen him disemboweled.

    While we can’t travel back in time to confirm Hall’s theory, it is the only one that takes into account all the details of Alexander’s death—and his body’s mysterious life.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Adaptation 

Read the text to answer question.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

― James Joyce, Dubliners

Read Text I and answer question.

Text I: The speed of sound

    Some music fans now know 15-second sped up snippets of songs better than the real thing. It’s thanks to an emerging trend on social media, particularly TikTok, of creators changing the tempo of popular songs by 25-30%, to accompany short viral videos of dances or other themes. This phenomenon presents a very modern challenge – how can singers create the next hit tune when the one people actually listen to might sound so different?

    Sped-up listening emerged in the early 2000s as “Nightcore”, launched by a Norwegian DJ duo of the same name, who sped up a song’s pitch and speed. This is now commonplace on social media apps, where the speed of podcasts, voice notes, movies and more can be increased so that people can consume them in less time. But what people might not know is that unofficial sped-up or slowed down tunes are different to a professional remix because they are far shorter and can be easily made by anyone, including on TikTok, Instagram Reels and other apps. 

    In 2023, more than a third of Spotify listeners in the US sped up podcasts and nearly two-thirds played songs at a quicker tempo. The streaming service recently confirmed to the BBC that it was testing a new and more widespread feature that could potentially allow its customers to remix the tempo of songs and share them. In addition, some popstars are embracing this phenomenon. In November 2022, for example, fan-made sped-up versions of RAYE’s single “Escapism” helped the artist to achieve her first ever number one on the UK Official Singles Chart, nearly three months after its original release. Furthermore, Billie Eilish has also released official fast and slow versions of songs and Sabrina Carpenter’s hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” received similar treatment.

    Dr Mary Beth Ray, an author focused on digital music culture, says short-form video platforms like TikTok “constrain our ways of listening into snippets, but those constraints also let you experience a track in a new way”. She also said that “short clips provide a quicker line to that dopamine rush social media wants us to feel – so there is an addictive element which we’re pushed towards.”

    BBC Radio 1 DJ Maia Beth feels it's now getting hard for established labels and musicians to ignore this trend because it can sometimes feel like if they don't release the sped up version, then someone else will. Beth, who admits she can't imagine sitting and listening to a sped-up version of a song the whole way through, believes the trend shouldn't necessarily be a major distraction for musicians though. “Sped-up versions of tracks can help artists break through or go viral, although that initial success may not last,” she added.

    TikTok says it has noticed an increase in the number of sped-up and slowed down versions of catalogue tracks taken off the platform, then become officially released. These official changed-tempo releases are now grouped together with the original song in the UK Official Singles Chart, along with remixes, acoustic and live versions, helping artists to climb the ranks. 

    That said, not everyone is happy with the trend. The popularity of speed-altered versions can make it harder to distinguish original from remix while altering an artist's intended pacing, mood and tone. However, while some artists like them and others less so, it seems they are here to stay.

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqv5x2qe8q6o Published: August 17, 2024