The eerie percussion and guitar for Portsihead's "Sour Times was sampled from Lalo Schifrin's "Danube Incident," music composed by the Argentine composer for an episode of Mission Impossible.
At the end of the Doors song "Touch Me," Jim Morrison chants, "Stronger than dirt!" The line is from an Ajax commercial where a white knight rides around destroying dirt.
Before she was famous on Friends, Courteney Cox danced on stage with Bruce Springsteen in his "Dancing In The Dark" video.
AC/DC's "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)" is titled after a phrase Roman gladiators said heading into battle: "We who are about to die salute you."
"Cotton Eye Joe" is a folk song dating to the 1800s, but it became a hit when a Swedish act called Rednex did a psychokinetic version in 1994.
The Sam & Dave classic "Soul Man" was re-recorded by Sam Moore and Lou Reed for the 1986 movie Soul Man, about a white guy who pretends to be black so he can get a scholarship to Harvard.
You may not recognize his name, but you will certainly recognize Peter Lord's songs. He wrote the bevy of hits from Paula Abdul's second album, Spellbound.
Doubt led to drive for Francis, who still isn't sure why one of Status Quo's biggest hits is so beloved.
Kristian talks songwriting technique, like how the chorus should redefine the story, and how to write a song backwards.
A Soul Train dancer takes us through a day on the show, and explains what you had to do to get camera time.
When televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart took on rockers like Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica, the rockers retaliated. Bono could even be seen mocking the preachers.
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.