"Piano Man" was inspired by Billy Joel's time playing at a piano bar in Los Angeles. The "real estate novelist" was a guy who always talked about writing a book, but spent all his spare time in the bar.
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.
"True" by Spandau Ballet is about chief songwriter Gary Kemp's unrequited love for Altered Images singer and Gregory's Girl star Clare Grogan.
"Tainted Love" started as a 1964 soul song by Gloria Jones, became a huge hit when Soft Cell covered it in 1981, and was the basis for Rihanna's 2006 #1 "S.O.S. (Rescue Me)."
"Cruise" climbed from 6-5 on the Hot 100 in its 34th week. In doing so it set a record for the slowest ascent to the Top 5 in the chart's history, which was beaten by Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive" 42-week clamber to #4 three weeks later.
Don Johnson, who starred as Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, had a #5 hit in 1986 with "Heartbeat."
Are classic songs like "Over The Rainbow" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the public domain?
"Dead Skunk" became a stinker for Loudon when he felt pressure to make another hit - his latest songs deal with mortality, his son Rufus, and picking up poop.
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.
David Gray explains the significance of the word "Babylon," and talks about how songs are a form of active imagination, with lyrics that reveal what's inside us.
The '70s gave us Muppets, disco and Van Halen, all which show up in this groovy quiz.
Evelyn McDonnell, editor of the book Women Who Rock, on why the Supremes are just as important as Bob Dylan.
