Van Gogh's "Empty Chair," an inspiration for the Don McLean song.
The party tune "Mambo No 5 (A Little Bit Of)" was the theme song for the 2000 Democratic Convention (the party of Bill Clinton), until someone noticed the line, "A little bit of Monica in my life."
Jimmy Webb was inspired to write The 5th Dimension song "Up-Up and Away" after seeing a hot-air balloon his friend flew on promotions for the Southern California radio station KMEN.
"Unchained Melody" first appeared in a 1955 movie called Unchained. The Righteous Brothers recorded it in 1965, and their version was resurrected in the 1990 movie Ghost.
In Beastie Boys' "Paul Revere," the title refers to the name of a horse. They took it from a song in the musical Guys And Dolls where a character sings, "I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere."
References to David Bowie, Tom Waits and Allan Ginsburg are peppered into the Bush song "Everything Zen."
When the Elvis stamps came out in 1993, lots of folks used them to mail letters with bad addresses so they would be Returned To Sender.
He's a singer and an actor, but as a songwriter Paul helped make Kermit a cultured frog, turned a bank commercial into a huge hit and made love both "exciting and new" and "soft as an easy chair."
Revisit the awesome glory of Night Ranger and Damn Yankees: cheesily-acted videos, catchy guitar licks, long hair, and lyrics that are just plain relatable.
Glen Ballard talks about co-writing and producing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill album, and his work with Dave Matthews, Aerosmith and Annie Lennox.
Newman makes it look easy these days, but in this 1974 interview, he reveals the paranoia and pressures that made him yearn for his old 9-5 job.
Who writes a song about a name they found in a phone book? That's just one of the everyday things these guys find to sing about. Anything in their field of vision or general scope of knowledge is fair game. If you cross paths with them, so are you.
Mike Rutherford talks about the "Silent Running" storyline and "Land Of Confusion" in the age of Trump.