"Today" by Smashing Pumpkins is sarcastic in the line "today is the greatest day." Lead singer Billy Corgan wrote it about the crippling depression he was battling following the band's first big tour.
Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start The Fire" after a 21-year-old told him, "everyone knows that nothing happened in the '50s."
Sweet's hit "Ballroom Blitz" was inspired by an incident in 1973 when the band were performing in Scotland and driven offstage by a barrage of bottles.
Before the game when he hit a famous shot to win a playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Michael Jordan was listening to Anita Baker's "Giving You The Best That I Got."
Neil Young rarely allows his songs to be sampled, but he let the Canadian group Redlight King use "Old Man" in their 2011 song, also called "Old Man."
"I Want It That Way" is the most popular Backstreet Boys song, but the lyric doesn't make much sense. That's because it was written by the hitmaking swedish producers Max Martin and Andreas Carlsson, who were more worried about how it sings than what it means.
Dean wrote the screenplay and lyrics to all the songs in Footloose. His other hits include "Fame" and "All The Man That I Need."
Are classic songs like "Over The Rainbow" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the public domain?
The rock revolutionist on songwriting, quitting smoking, and what she thinks of Rush Limbaugh using her song.
Do their first three albums have French titles? Is "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" really meaningless? See if you can tell in this Fact or Fiction.
A look at the good (Diana Ross, Eminem), the bad (Madonna, Bob Dylan) and the peculiar (David Bowie, Michael Jackson) film debuts of superstar singers.
Jon Anderson breaks down the Yes classic "Seen All Good People" and talks about his 1000 Hands album, which features Chick Corea, Rick Derringer, Ian Anderson, and many other luminaries.