Movable Type Knowledge Base: Who is Melody Nelson?

Question

Who is Melody Nelson, and why is her name used as Movable Type's default author?

Answer

The name comes from Serge Gainsbourg, a French singer-songwriter whose most influential work was a concept album titled Histoire de Melody Nelson (and based on the infamous novel Lolita).

The entire album is about the protagonist's brief (and disturbing) relationship with a teenage English girl named Melody. He meets her when she's riding her bicycle, and bumps into her with his Rolls. That begins a passionate but short love affair, which ends when Melody's plane crashes and she dies.

Ben and Mena's mutual love for this 1971 masterpiece was the inspiration for the default username and password for Movable Type.

(Bonus trivia: when they were first developing the system, they called it "Serge". Imagine the template tags: <SergeEntries>, <SergeComments>! Then Mena came up with "Movable Type", which we all think is a much better name.)

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