Adele's "Someone Like You" is the first song with just piano and voice to hit #1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which started in 1958.
The third verse of "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by Crash Test Dummies ("they shook and lurched all over the church floor...") was inspired by girl whose parents would speak in tongues at their Pentecostal service.
Puff Daddy didn't get permission to sample the Police song "Every Breath You Take" on his Notorious B.I.G. tribute "I'll Be Missing You," but he later reached an agreement and even performed the song with Sting.
"Just Dance" was Lady Gaga's first hit, and it also brought the techno-synth sound that had been popular in Europe for the previous decade to the United States.
The rockabilly sound was big in the late 1950s, when Buddy Holly was popular. One of the biggest hits in that genre was the #1 "Party Doll" by Buddy Knox, which used a cardboard box filled with cotton as the drums.
The line "satellite of love" in the Def Leppard song "Rocket" came from the title of a 1972 Lou Reed song.
The Celtic music maker Loreena McKennitt on finding musical inspiration, the "New Age" label, and working on the movie Tinker Bell.
Roger reveals the songwriting formula Clive Davis told him, and if "Eight Miles High" is really about drugs.
With a few clues (Works at a diner, dreams of running away), can you name the character in the song?
Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues.
Nirvana, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen are among those who wrote songs with cities that show up in this quiz.
The Stax legend on how he cooked up "Green Onions," the first time he and Otis Redding saw hippies, and if he'll ever play a digital organ.